I've got 7040 tracks/238 gigs on a 256G PNY Elite stick and only takes 2 minutes on 2.42.40 with the car off. Very happy. Two bugs remain for me. If I leave the car in the middle of a song overnight it will start that same song over again rather than picking up where it left off. Also as someone else pointed out artists that start with "The" such as The Beatles are hard to search. They appear under "T". Finally, in a sampling of 50 albums all art shows up on MP.
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Comprehensive USB Bug List
- Thread starter supratachophobia
- Start date
jgs
Active Member
Huh. Mine (with energy saving off now) is continuing to load slow as molasses for me -- maybe later this afternoon it will be loaded, who knows, hope springs eternal, but so far it hasn't successfully made the stick available. Also PNY, size/organization as previously indicated.
Is your 2 minutes if you force a fresh scan, or is it resuming from cached scan?
BertL
Active Member
Bert’s Media Player 8.0 2.42.40 Observations & Workarounds
I updated from 2.36.108 to 2.42.40 upon receipt this morning, and spent several more hours trying to identify what is going on with the “new” Media Player. Consider this a delta update to my last couple of long upstream posts, with the same caveats.
NET is even with a lot of people’s excitement, I’m honestly disappointed. While 2.42.40 has fixed some things, it’s broken others in some even stranger ways — and ways I cannot overcome without more compromise than I had with 2.36.108 and its workarounds. IMHO, that's why some folks here think life is now rosy with USB support, while others are having odd problems that are hard to explain and get a handle on. The devil is once again in some really nasty detail.
YMMV and if you’re a happy camper, that’s WONDERFUL -- skip this post and move on to something more important. If you care about at least my POV what I think is going on, follow along and especially focus on SORT ORDER half-way down…
Physical USB Device Characteristics & Formats
Other Bugs & Hot Buttons Not Mentioned Above
Bert’s 8.0 2.42.40 Workaround - November 2, 2016
My objectives:
After all that, a few things have been fixed in .40 which is great, but I honestly believe more important problems have been introduced as it relates to sorting and playback sequence. If you play on random most of the time, you’ll be happy as it is. Tesla, IMHO, just needs to take a more holistic view of Media Player USB from a large music library owner’s POV -- they’d make difference choices and test a whole lot more completely, I’m sure.
Good luck. My Mac will soon be starting on it’s 20-hour conversion task once again.
I updated from 2.36.108 to 2.42.40 upon receipt this morning, and spent several more hours trying to identify what is going on with the “new” Media Player. Consider this a delta update to my last couple of long upstream posts, with the same caveats.
NET is even with a lot of people’s excitement, I’m honestly disappointed. While 2.42.40 has fixed some things, it’s broken others in some even stranger ways — and ways I cannot overcome without more compromise than I had with 2.36.108 and its workarounds. IMHO, that's why some folks here think life is now rosy with USB support, while others are having odd problems that are hard to explain and get a handle on. The devil is once again in some really nasty detail.
YMMV and if you’re a happy camper, that’s WONDERFUL -- skip this post and move on to something more important. If you care about at least my POV what I think is going on, follow along and especially focus on SORT ORDER half-way down…
Physical USB Device Characteristics & Formats
- Note the 10/20/2016 Owners Manual now states FAT32 and NTFS formats are supported. Being a Mac kinda guy these days, I have not tried NTFS, but you Windows folks have another official option it appears.
- The former 8.0 Device Volume Label BUG not handling spaces has been resolved. TU
- Unlike some reports I’ve read here on TMC, I see no real difference between scan and rescan times from 2.36.108 to 2.42.40, e.g. my 61xx Tracks in 2-3 level directory structure took 15-20 mins with 7.1, and 6 mins in all three 8.0 releases I’ve had. If people are coming directly from 7.1, yes, there is a big improvement.
- M4A Lossless has the same BUG where it is scanned and populates the interface, but displays “loading error” when you try to play the track. (M4A Lossy continues to work fine)
- ALBUM (title) - used correctly
- ALBUMARTIST - not used, but perhaps should be as previously described
- DISCNUMBER - STILL not used, which is a BUG as previously described
- GENRE - used correctly
- PARTOFCOMPILATION - not used
- TRACKARTIST - used correctly, perhaps to a fault. Same suggestions as before
- TRACKNUMBER - not consistently used, even though it’s now very prominently displayed. SEE SORT ORDER and BUGS below.
- TRACKTITLE - used
- Has the same sort of odd failures as previously described across parts of my embedded JPG and PNG artwork. dBpoweramp workaround changing album art to JPEG 300x300 seems to continue resolving the issue whatever it may be -- I've not had a single blank piece of USB art since implementing my workaround.
- No change. Continue to not be supported.
- I have not spent enormous time as to exactly what does and does not work, but I suspect ALBUMTITLE, TRACKTITLE, and TRACKARTIST are the tags being used with USB in the search box (exact match or partial) or via verbal command.
- Of particular note is the search works with partial search strings against the full contents of the tags, e.g.
- typing “Ella” or "Fitz" will get me both Albums and specific tracks where Ella Fitzgerald is one of the artists
- typing “ting” will get me tracks, albums or artists where that is part of the tag contents. Perfect.
- Within Search Options, I have not figured out exactly what “Top” really does or does not do with USB, but it’s a lot more evident if you use the Album, Artist, etc selections to narrow your search criteria. Frankly, I’d love to just have an option to turn off streaming sources whenever I do searches so only USB is displayed. I suspect "streaming people" would like the opposite as it relates to USB.
- Vertical Alpha Selection is back on all views (Songs, Artists, Albums, Genre, Folder) where there is more than 1-screen worth of data to view. TU
- Scrolling is notably more responsive and less jerky. Hurrah! TU
- Random Playback is a lot more random. TU
- SORT ORDER IS HORRIBLY PROBLEMATIC (yes, I’m screaming!) if you use all parts of the interface and think about this design from a real music-owner’s POV, not just a technical one
- Note: If you are looking for items that start with a number, they are after alpha characters. OK, so be that.
- The greater challenge for me is the inconsistent secondary sort depending upon what view you use, and how it many times just isn't presenting tracks they way you want to play them. Some of this has changed from 2.36.108, and not all for the better. After hours of trying to figure this out, here’s what I believe 2.42.40 is doing as you drill down to individual tracks being displayed using each Media Player USB view:
- Songs
- Alphanumeric list by TRACKTITLE (track title tag). Good
- An enhancement would be to then sort this list secondarily by ALBUM (title)+ALBUMARTIST so any duplicate track titles are in sequence by album. Not a biggie IMHO, but a nice to have.
- Alphanumeric list by TRACKTITLE (track title tag). Good
- Artists
- Alphanumeric list by TRACKARTIST. Good.
- Alphanumeric list by ALBUM (title). Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by FILENAME. BUG!
- This should be DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER so your tracks are shown and played in correct sequence. Period.
- Albums with the same ALBUM (title) and even different ALBUMARTIST across the USB device are being merged into a single album within the interface. BUG!
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by FILENAME. BUG!
- Alphanumeric list by ALBUM (title). Good.
- Alphanumeric list by TRACKARTIST. Good.
- Albums
- Alphanumeric list by ALBUM (title). Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by FILENAME. BUG!
- This should be DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER so your tracks are shown and played in correct sequence. Period.
- Albums with the same ALBUM (title) and even different ALBUMARTIST across the USB device are being merged into a single album within the interface. BUG!
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by FILENAME. BUG!
- Alphanumeric list by ALBUM (title). Good.
- Genre
- Alphanumeric list by GENRE. Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by TRACKTITLE (track title rag).
- From a usability perspective, I frankly see this as a BUG, not a requested enhancement, but I agree the point could be debated. IMHO, the TRACKTITLEs within a genre should be presented in ALBUMTITLE+DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER sequence to make any real sense out of this long list.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by TRACKTITLE (track title rag).
- Alphanumeric list by GENRE. Good.
- Folder
- Note: Within Folder View, subdirectory folders are sorted alphabetically and in-line with tracks. A great enhancement would be for Tesla to move Folders to the top of the list like all other browsers and players do.
- Alphanumeric list by Folder Name. Good.
- Further drill down are also alphanumeric lists by Folder Name until you reach the lowest level directory containing tracks. Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by TRACKTITLE. That’s a BUG at least from my POV!
- IMHO, since Folder View is by it’s very nature, a RYO environment, Tesla should not mix use of directory names and tag data as they are. Instead tracks should be sorted alphanumerically by DIRECTORY and FILENAME, and don’t use tag data for sorting anywhere within Folder View.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by TRACKTITLE. That’s a BUG at least from my POV!
- Further drill down are also alphanumeric lists by Folder Name until you reach the lowest level directory containing tracks. Good.
Sorry, but it’s no bloody wonder why it’s become even harder to follow posts about some people seeing things working right, when others do not. The order tracks are now presented is pretty well mixed-up between tags and physical filenames across the interface -- from at least my perspective as someone that has worn both a programming hat, and who owns a large music library he listens to for hours each and every day.
Other Bugs & Hot Buttons Not Mentioned Above
- BUG: DISCNUMBER and TRACKNUMBER are not consistently used together for proper sequenced display and playback of tracks within the UI
- DISCNUMBER is an optional ID3 tag (in it’s absence, 1 is assumed), but in combination with TRACKNUMBER, is the only way to be able to play all tracks in proper sequence with boxed-sets and multi-disc albums. Tesla simply ignores this, so it is a problem for those people with multi-disc albums that want to play back all tracks in sequential order. No owner wants to listen to all of the first tracks, then the second, and the thirds…
- Not to beat a dead horse, but as a pointer: Secondary sort order is out-of-whack in several views within the UI. See SORT ORDER above for more on all that.
- Tesla should use ALBUMARTIST in lieu of TRACKARTIST
- Even with Tesla having now corrected some of the album abnormalities that split single albums into multiples because of varying TRACKARTIST in different tracks of the same album, the display still has problems in some situations. Some of this could be because of the new bug related to merging of Albums with the same name -- IDK.
- I still think this is a better long term solution, with the same reasoning and detail as before
- No Automatic Volume Leveling
- I appreciate this is an enhancement request, not a bug, but to emulate what other mfgrs do on-the-fly for CD and USB sources, the same workaround I had with 2.36.108 still works
- A, An, The
- A feature request to eliminate "A, An, The" prefixes when sorting, but always display properly would be a great improvement
- USB Device Error Recovery -- IDK if it's the same or different
- Effect of Energy Saving ON causing more pervasive and unnecessary USB Rescan as we had with 2.36.108 (and before?)
Bert’s 8.0 2.42.40 Workaround - November 2, 2016
My objectives:
- Make no permanent changes to my master iTunes audio/video library, composed primarily of M4A Lossy, M4A Lossless, and a few MP3 files, which have been meticulously tagged over the years
- Be able to play single and multi-disc albums in proper DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER sequence
- Make use of the standard Tesla UI Songs, Artists, Albums, and Genre tabs, in addition to Folder View
- Workaround Artists & Albums View bug which merges the same ALBUM (title), by keeping albums with more common ALBUM (title)s separate
- Replace TRACKARTIST with ALBUMARTIST in every track
- Convert Album Art to JPG allowing even more Album Art to display, and while I’m at it, reduce to a max 300x300 to save a little space and compute time
- Apply Automatic Volume Leveling to each track, reducing the need to make as many manual volume changes during playback, and emulating what other mfgrs offer as an on-the-fly playback option
- I get to look at disc+track numbers in front of track title and filenames again
- Vertical Alpha Selection becomes usable in Songs & Genre Views because of the track sequence workaround taking precedence (there are now too many's 1's in the first position of the title). I generally play these two views on random anyway (e.g. all Pop or Country music), so it’s an inconvenience, not a deal breaker for me. YMMV. The Alpha Selection still works to get to Artists, Album (titles), and Folders where lists tend to be longest. I frankly don't care as much about the Vertical Alpha Selection once I get to the tracks inside an Album or the lowest level folder, which for me is an album -- a couple scrolls and I'm where I need to be.
- Folder View plays back in DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER sequence, not alphanumerical if that’s what you were expecting.
- Extract files from iTunes that I want to listen to in my MS into a temporary subdirectory on my iMac SSD (it’s faster than USB and I have the work space)
- I either drag & drop copies of tracks directly from iTunes to the temporary location, or
- on my Mac, I use a tool called Export for iTunes ($7.99 on the macOS Store, and no, I have no affiliation with it) that gives me point-n-click access to my iTunes Playlists and Albums, and it does the extraction for me while I off doing something more important. (To keep things straight, I do not let it do any conversion that it is capable of on it's own.)
- Use dBpoweramp Music Converter for the complex automation and actual building of my USB device
- No, it’s not free as I need to use several of the fee-based options. dBpoweramp Reference is $39 for macOS and Windows. My experience is with the Mac version. I have no connection to dBpoweramp, and don’t receive some sort of kickback from them.
- Point dBpoweramp Batch Converter at your source files.
- Change the following settings:
- Converting To: FLAC
- Encoding: Lossless Level 5
- Specify Output Location as Dynamic. I use the format [album] - [album artist]/[disc][track] [title] If you elect to do something else, especially if you don’t name the physical tracks themselves like I do, you WILL have problems or some other thing happen that I don’t. You’ve been warned.
- Load my new V2a DSP Effects (attached)
- Click Convert. dBpoweramp Batch Converter then:
- performs Volume Normalize analysis against each track, in an adaptive peak-to-peak manner looking across 6000ms windows of time. This does a better job than you would with your finger on the volume control attempting to make some softer parts louder, and louder parts softer without clipping.
- This is a very compute intensive process. For the whole conversion of my 61xx tracks including Volume Normalize Adaptive, it takes 20+ hours on my quad core i7 iMac. If you are a music purist or just don’t want to take the time for this step, delete all of Volume Normalize within the DSP Effects — that will reduce your conversion time by as much as 18X (that’s right!).
- If ALBUMARTIST or TRACKARTIST is not specified in the source track, it will be added or changed to “Unknown”
- puts the contents of ALBUMARTIST into TRACKARTIST on every track
- changes all Album Art to JPEG and reduces it’s size to a max 300x300
- Append ALBUMARTIST to ALBUM (title) if it’s one of these specific titles: Christmas, The Collection, Collection, Greatest Hist, The Hits, Live, Tribute
- eliminates any DISCTOTAL and TRACKTOTAL tags (not used by the UI)
- changes TRACKTITLE to “DISCNUMBER-TRACKNUMBER TRACKTITLE”
- converts every source file of varying encoding types to FLAC. Lossless remains lossless; Lossy does not get better or worse.
- places the files once they are processed into the folder and in the structure you specified in the Dynamic Output Location
- performs Volume Normalize analysis against each track, in an adaptive peak-to-peak manner looking across 6000ms windows of time. This does a better job than you would with your finger on the volume control attempting to make some softer parts louder, and louder parts softer without clipping.
After all that, a few things have been fixed in .40 which is great, but I honestly believe more important problems have been introduced as it relates to sorting and playback sequence. If you play on random most of the time, you’ll be happy as it is. Tesla, IMHO, just needs to take a more holistic view of Media Player USB from a large music library owner’s POV -- they’d make difference choices and test a whole lot more completely, I’m sure.
Good luck. My Mac will soon be starting on it’s 20-hour conversion task once again.
Last edited:
BertL
Active Member
FWIW, I consider that a "rescan". Assuming you make no changes and cache remains in your MS, when you put your USB stick back in, it will see the same folder/filename structure and NOT spend the time to actually open each track to go through indexing. In my timings, a "rescan" is roughly 50% of the time of an initial Scan, assuming you're not driving, etc., etc.
I am still waiting for my update - but one thing I notice, but cannot definitively state, is I *think* that album art does not always come from the embedded art still.
As I'm driving its hard to note down when it looks wrong but I have remembered a couple of times and checked later on my PC and found that the displayed art is not the embedded. On one occasion it was one of the few tracks without it embedded and it displayed a track for a different album, by a completely different artist!
So not perfect there, at least on 2.40.21 still
As I'm driving its hard to note down when it looks wrong but I have remembered a couple of times and checked later on my PC and found that the displayed art is not the embedded. On one occasion it was one of the few tracks without it embedded and it displayed a track for a different album, by a completely different artist!
So not perfect there, at least on 2.40.21 still
BertL
Active Member
I have seen this problem when I've made a change to my stick, and reinsterted it, and the interface displays album art and or tag data that does not match the track being played -- appearing like it's completely random but actually something from another track in my library. I have always resolved this by changing the highest level directory name on my stick (which fakes out the interface and causes all tag data and art to be re-read) or doing a complete reboot of the CID (foot on brake, hold both wheel until Tesla T, then let up on all 3) which will flush the cache and cause your stick to be re-read.
Not saying you're wrong on what it appears like, but given constraints on memory, it would seem odd for Tesla to leave code in for Gracenotes and not use it more frequently... but we've got more weird stuff going on, so I look forward to your continued observations... I'll keep an eye out as well now that I have 2.42.40! New things to discover!
BertL
Active Member
Yes, but always have since 7.0 and taking delivery. I suspect it's the whole rescan thing I've described several times now in various threads, and how I bet Tesla is trying to save scan time by not opening files to look inside at the actual tag/art data if it already has cache data for the track with a same filename and up-level directory structure. In practice, that assumption on their part is flawed of course and can give the Owner some pretty odd results with mismatching tag data opposed to the audio track itself, but I get perhaps why they may have chosen to do it back in the pre-8.0 days when Scan/Rescan times were so much longer and we had so many unexpected CID reboots taking place.
If we're talking about the same thing, "Ghosting" is easily resolved by just keeping a top level directory on your stick that you rename every time you make changes to anything (folder or track contents) below it, or by doing a complete reboot of the CID before inserting the stick which will flush the Media Player cache so it won't rescan and will rebuild all it's structure from scratch again. I just change the top level directory name on my stick to the current date as a matter of course every time I make any change to my Tesla USB Stick and I have zero issues with this any more (except for a couple times today as I was running back-and-forth a couple dozen times to my MS trying variations and I got too caught up in the moment to remember my own process.
)Still not sure we are using the same terminology so here's what I did.
1. I rebooted the car, put the stick in, took about 2 minutes.
2. I pulled the stick out, put it back in and it took about 15 seconds for the USB tab to pop up and everything was populated.
BertL
Active Member
Right.
1. Cache was cleared on the reboot. Media Player went through a full Scan of your stick, building a map to your USB directory/filenames structure, opening each of those files, taking note of the tag data inside each supported track.
On a side note, you realize after you reboot the CID, parts of Media Player come back now fairly quickly, but other things keep initializing for a few minutes, e.g. LTE/WiFi comes later in the process, and who knows what else under the covers. It's IMHO timing-wise why a Scan of a USB a device that begins on a stick that is plugged in at reboot or very soon thereafter, can sometimes appear to take longer to scan the exact same stick that is inserted a few minutes after a reboot has completed and the CID has settled down with its initialization. Try it with a stopwatch... I have a couple minutes variability with my 61xx tracks I suspect because of that.
2. Media Player took less time on the "rescan"' because it first checked just the folder and filenames structure on your stick against what it had in cache from before you pulled it out, and I suspect said to itself, "it's the same, so no need for me to take more time and CPU cycles to open each file and look inside at the tag data, because I'll just assume it too is all the same like what I already have in cache." That of course can be a flawed assumption, but I bet is what Tesla is doing because of the enlongated Scan/Rescan times in pre-8.0 days.
Make sense now? I think we're on the same page.
Yes, but always have since 7.0 and taking delivery. I suspect it's the whole rescan thing I've described several times now in various threads, and how I bet Tesla is trying to save scan time by not opening files to look inside at the actual tag/art data if it already has cache data for the track with a same filename and up-level directory structure. In practice, that assumption on their part is flawed of course and can give the Owner some pretty odd results with mismatching tag data opposed to the audio track itself, but I get perhaps why they may have chosen to do it back in the pre-8.0 days when Scan/Rescan times were so much longer and we had so many unexpected CID reboots taking place.
If we're talking about the same thing, "Ghosting" is easily resolved by just keeping a top level directory on your stick that you rename every time you make changes to anything (folder or track contents) below it, or by doing a complete reboot of the CID before inserting the stick which will flush the Media Player cache so it won't rescan and will rebuild all it's structure from scratch again. I just change the top level directory name on my stick to the current date as a matter of course every time I make any change to my Tesla USB Stick and I have zero issues with this any more (except for a couple times today as I was running back-and-forth a couple dozen times to my MS trying variations and I got too caught up in the moment to remember my own process.
The problem I experienced was a voice search for "Norah Jones" which brought up six total results, duplicattes of 3 separate songs. Half of the songs played, the other half (the ghosts), did nothing when selected.
BertL
Active Member
Were the ghosts USB tracks or another media source? I assume the former, but since a I didn't know what your ghosts were, I better ask.
I'm not 100% sure on which USB setup you have... one USB stick, multi-USB sticks in a hub, single SSD, or one of your Droid tests that I don't really understand.
. I really don't how how all that may interact between one another, so if you happen to be switching between devices, I am confident it is best to always do a full CID reboot in-between (foot on brake; Both scroll wheels down until Tesla T; then release all 3)If USB, had you made any changes to the USB device(s) without doing the full reboot of the CID or changing the highest level directory name over anything that was modified on that device before reinserting it? I've had ghosts show up in Favorites I made of USB items, after I make directory/filename changes to the device. It appears Media Player keeps recents and favorites in cache somewhere which is great, but it's then on the Owner if they don't keep the same USB device with a matching file structure in place for it to find at some future point in time. I wonder if some variant of that is happening as Search looks in cache thinking something is still on your USB device, but it's in fact a left-over from some previous iteration you had plugged in, and no longer physically exists on the current USB device. (This whole "rescan" thing as I call it may well be causing more trouble than it's worth now with 8.0. IDK?). Does that make sense?
Bert’s Media Player 8.0 2.42.40 Observations & Workarounds
- Genre
- Alphanumeric list by GENRE. Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by TRACKTITLE (track title rag).
- From a usability perspective, I frankly see this as a BUG, not a requested enhancement, but I agree the point could be debated. IMHO, the TRACKTITLEs within a genre should be presented in ALBUMTITLE+DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER sequence to make any real sense out of this long list.
(I have gotten the update myself but have not yet had a chance to try it with my USB memory stick.)
(Sorry for the odd formatting, but I did not want to re-quote the entire long post.)
Were the ghosts USB tracks or another media source? I assume the former, but since a I didn't know what your ghosts were, I better ask.
I'm not 100% sure on which USB setup you have... one USB stick, multi-USB sticks in a hub, single SSD, or one of your Droid tests that I don't really understand.
If USB, had you made any changes to the USB device(s) without doing the full reboot of the CID or changing the highest level directory name over anything that was modified on that device before reinserting it? I've had ghosts show up in Favorites I made of USB items, after I make directory/filename changes to the device. It appears Media Player keeps recents and favorites in cache somewhere which is great, but it's then on the Owner if they don't keep the same USB device with a matching file structure in place for it to find at some future point in time. I wonder if some variant of that is happening as Search looks in cache thinking something is still on your USB device, but it's in fact a left-over from some previous iteration you had plugged in, and no longer physically exists on the current USB device. (This whole "rescan" thing as I call it may well be causing more trouble than it's worth now with 8.0. IDK?). Does that make sense?
It was from one of the 4 partitions I have on my SSD via USB. It was almost like it was showing an index from the previous USB structure (prior to renaming root folder to force a rescan). I'm about to go try it again now.
CuriousG
Active Member
I misspoke on the Navigation. When I tested it, I was in the garage and not moving. When the GPS detects movement, I guess the function buttons auto hide just like before. Since this is about USB, nobody called me out on it.
Bert’s Media Player 8.0 2.42.40 Observations & Workarounds
I updated from 2.36.108 to 2.42.40 upon receipt this morning, and spent several more hours trying to identify what is going on with the “new” Media Player. Consider this a delta update to my last couple of long upstream posts, with the same caveats.
- .....
- SORT ORDER IS HORRIBLY PROBLEMATIC (yes, I’m screaming!) if you use all parts of the interface and think about this design from a real music-owner’s POV, not just a technical one
- Note: If you are looking for items that start with a number, they are after alpha characters. OK, so be that.
- The greater challenge for me is the inconsistent secondary sort depending upon what view you use, and how it many times just isn't presenting tracks they way you want to play them. Some of this has changed from 2.36.108, and not all for the better. After hours of trying to figure this out, here’s what I believe 2.42.40 is doing as you drill down to individual tracks being displayed using each Media Player USB view:
- Songs
- Alphanumeric list by TRACKTITLE (track title tag). Good
- An enhancement would be to then sort this list secondarily by ALBUM (title)+ALBUMARTIST so any duplicate track titles are in sequence by album. Not a biggie IMHO, but a nice to have.
- Artists
- Alphanumeric list by TRACKARTIST. Good.
- Alphanumeric list by ALBUM (title). Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by FILENAME. BUG!
- This should be DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER so your tracks are shown and played in correct sequence. Period.
- Albums with the same ALBUM (title) and even different ALBUMARTIST across the USB device are being merged into a single album within the interface. BUG!
- Albums
- Alphanumeric list by ALBUM (title). Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by FILENAME. BUG!
- This should be DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER so your tracks are shown and played in correct sequence. Period.
- Albums with the same ALBUM (title) and even different ALBUMARTIST across the USB device are being merged into a single album within the interface. BUG!
- Genre
- Alphanumeric list by GENRE. Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by TRACKTITLE (track title rag).
- From a usability perspective, I frankly see this as a BUG, not a requested enhancement, but I agree the point could be debated. IMHO, the TRACKTITLEs within a genre should be presented in ALBUMTITLE+DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER sequence to make any real sense out of this long list.
- Folder
- Note: Within Folder View, subdirectory folders are sorted alphabetically and in-line with tracks. A great enhancement would be for Tesla to move Folders to the top of the list like all other browsers and players do.
- Alphanumeric list by Folder Name. Good.
- Further drill down are also alphanumeric lists by Folder Name until you reach the lowest level directory containing tracks. Good.
- Tracks are then displayed alphanumerically by TRACKTITLE. That’s a BUG at least from my POV!
- IMHO, since Folder View is by it’s very nature, a RYO environment, Tesla should not mix use of directory names and tag data as they are. Instead tracks should be sorted alphanumerically by DIRECTORY and FILENAME, and don’t use tag data for sorting anywhere within Folder View.
Sorry, but it’s no bloody wonder why it’s become even harder to follow posts about some people seeing things working right, when others do not. The order tracks are now presented is pretty well mixed-up between tags and physical filenames across the interface -- from at least my perspective as someone that has worn both a programming hat, and who owns a large music library he listens to for hours each and every day.
....
First of all, I want to commend BertL for all his work to investigate the effect of the latest release on USB functionality, and for the detailed write-up.
But I have to disagree with the OP's findings on certain points. I installed 2.42.40 yesterday and had a few minutes to test with my USB memory stick this morning.
Playing by Artist/Album -- Contrary to the OP, I found that the tracks play in track order, not alphabetical.
Playing by Album -- Again, I find the tracks play by track order.
Playing by Songs or Genre or Folder -- I agree that the order of songs is alphabetical by song title.
I do not know what the reason is for the difference in my findings versus BertL's. One reason might be that most of my music was ripped from CDs using software such as Roxio Burn. I did not start from an iTunes library as he did. (I do have some songs from my spouse's iTunes library, but I have not done enough testing to see if they behave differently.)
Looking at my tag data, I see that virtually all my tracks have the track number in the file name. That may explain why they play in order -- perhaps Tesla is using Filename as the sorting key when playing by artist or album. And it may be that I added the track number to the file name when I created the music library for the Tesla. I seem to recall that was recommended in the past -- but I have lost track of whether I did that myself or not. In any case, that may be why the songs play in track order in the Artist or Album mode.
Unfortunately, the sort order for Genre has changed from the initial release of version 8.0. Originally, the Genre sort order was by track number, but that has now been lost. (Which annoys me because I went to a fair amount of effort to create some additional genres to leverage that sort order for certain albums!) But now it appears that you can play an album in the correct order starting from Folder or Artist or Album, so starting from Genre is not needed.
There was one exception to my findings. I have one album that played in correct order when starting from Folder/Artist/Album. That particular album has the track number in the Track Title tag -- it is the only one in my collection that does, and I do not recall why it does. Probably just an artifact for how I did the data entry for that album (which, if I recall correctly, I had to do manually). And this is what BertL does with his workaround method posted above -- He adds Disc number and Track number to the Track Title tag. Which I agree is now the key to playing tracks in proper order when starting from Songs, Genre, or Folder, but apparently is not currently necessary to play from Artist or Album. So for my own sake, I hope that Tesla does not start using Track Title for all sorts, because then I would have to modify all my track title tags!
By the way, in all my comments I am ignoring disc number, because I have few if any multi-disc sets, so I do not know how they would work except for what the OP has written above. If I can find a suitable album to test that detail, I will.
BertL
Active Member
Appreciate your observations.
My thought for why you perceive a difference from my findings in some of the sort order is exactly as you surmise -- your ripping tool added track numbers as the prefix in the filenames. You may want to check it. Tracks with the numerical prefix play back correctly in those views where FILENAME is now involved without any additional manipulation. Some of my library has physical filenames with a sequence number prefix on each filename, others do not. I specifically tried both scenarios in my testing against each view, as I don't assume filename conventions are consistent across all Tesla owners. There is no standard (like ID3) for how physical filenames must be named in a music library, unless a particular player has some reason for it. ...and also as you found, different views within the UI are now sorting by TRACKTITLE opposed to FILENAME, so my workaround was to put track number as a prefix in both places to handle all views and playback sequence possibilities.
FWIW, I find nowhere that Tesla is presently using DISCNUMBER as part of their interface. I'm happy to have someone double check me though. There are plenty of old posts from others here on TMC where this has been an ongoing problem for years well before I took delivery -- where owners wondered why say all the track 1's were playing before all track 2's, and so forth in the same album. Assuming Media Player were operating correctly and not having these odd TRACKTITLE/FILENAME problems, the solution is one of two things:
- PERMANENT: Tesla always uses DISCNUMBER+TRACKNUMBER for determining playback sequence within an album (and defaults DISCNUMBER to 1 if not specified) just like every other modern player does
- WORKAROUND: The Owner puts DISCNUMBER|TRACKNUMBER in place of TRACKNUMBER for every converted track (you have to make sure you pad tracks 1-9 with a leading zero). It looks a little odd with track numbers starting at 101 instead of 1, and so forth in the interface, but it's programming-wise identical to what Tesla should be doing under the covers for the permanent solution I suggest above. I had this small bit of code already prepared, anticipating it's need with 2.42.40, before I found the other bugs that forced a different temporary solution to playback multi-disc albums in proper sequence.
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Boatguy
Active Member
I would also like to thank @BertL for his thorough analysis of the behavior of the latest incarnation of the media player, along with a set of solutions for its various anomalies.
Why doesn't Tesla just spend a few hours reading the posts by @BertL and fix these issues? Or buy a 10yr old iPod and understand how it works, then emulate that for USB play? How long will it take for Tesla to produce a media player that has the functionality offered by other manufacturers 5yrs ago?
AP is nice, but I listen to music more often than I can use auto-steer.
Why doesn't Tesla just spend a few hours reading the posts by @BertL and fix these issues? Or buy a 10yr old iPod and understand how it works, then emulate that for USB play? How long will it take for Tesla to produce a media player that has the functionality offered by other manufacturers 5yrs ago?
AP is nice, but I listen to music more often than I can use auto-steer.
Couple things. I too have track number in both the filename and tag, mine seems to pay in proper order as long as I'm not browsing by folder. Second, Tesla should not be perishing m programming to accommodate our workarounds or trying to fix miss labeled tags on our part. They should be designing a media player that adheres to best practices and then we should follow those. If you have a workaround that works though, more power to you.
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