USB memory stick , playing music

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CanisLupus

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 16, 2016
Messages
121
I now have a 2016 and a 2020 i3 .

For the 2016 , I've determined the following :


1. It will read both FAT32 and exFAT formatted drives .

2. It can't read .m4a files . It can read .wav files . Also it can read .aif files

that are converted from .wav .

3. First make sure that your 'Library' is organized as you would like .

I copied the 'Music' folder that resides in the 'iTunes Media' folder .

4. The bottom folders have a name that represents the album . It contains the song files

which for me are the .aif type . In this folder , also put an image type file (.jpg .jpeg .png seem to work)

of the album cover . Name that file cover.xxx where xxx is jpg etc. . This will show as the

album artwork when any of the songs in the folder play . The name of the song file will show as the song name . Layla for Layla.aif

5. I have yet to get the Artist and Album names to fill . I might try .flac to see if that type file will work .

That would require another app to convert to .flac .


For the 2020 things are a bit easier . A lot of the information is in the 'in car' manual .

1. It will read both FAT32 and exFAT formatted drives .

2. It can read .m4a (Apple Lossless) which I used , as well as others .

3. Everything on the screen populates from the metadata in the file . Also , I'm sure

that one of the album covers was brought in by iDrive somehow . So it might fill info on its' own too .

The one problem I found is that not all of the files are full of data . Album artwork is managed differently

by iTunes for (I believe) music purchased from the iTunes Store .

So , before you copy that 'Music' folder mentioned above you can check for the following

Look at the song files (.aif etc.) at the bottom of the directory . If they have a micro icon of the 'Album cover' then

it will show that for the song . If it doesn't then you can try number of things .

If the album doesn't have 'Album Artwork' you can add an image in option 'Album Info' .

If the album does have 'Album Artwork' already then try this . Copy the Artwork to a folder that you create somewhere .

Delete the artwork from 'album info' , then add it back from the folder that you created . You should then see the micro icon on the songs .


I hope this information can help . I'll keep an eye on this topic and do my best to answer any questions that might arise .

George
 
So it turns out that both my 2016 and 2020 can play FLAC and all metadata stored in it will show . There are plenty of free converters available . Also there are many free apps that will edit the tags or metadata within the files . What I would like now is a music library app that will accept FLAC .
 
Here's an update with more info . I was not getting all of the songs showing up . What I've determined is that getting rid of the 'Music' folder by putting all of the 'Artist' folders directly into the root directory has fixed the issue . My guess is that any given folder can only store a limited number of items or titles etc. or it has a limited size overall . All of the songs show up now . I will be trying the 'Shuffle' and 'Random' functions again . Hopefully they work properly now .
 
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