Two questions about MP3 players, rising from identical problems I have had with the last two I owned.
(By way of background, because I use the players in the gym, I buy the cheapest ones possible so I dont really care if they get crushed or smooshed up in my bag - they are bought to be disposable - so I am not talking about well known brands with extensive online support.)
Anyway, new one I have bought is a 1 Gig model, which by way of thinking suggests I should get 220-250 files onto it. But it absolutely will not let me put any more than 93 on it. These 93 take about 400 meg, so it’s clearly not a space issue. It won’t let me put any 94th file on - be it an mp3 or a .jpg or anything. My previous player had a similar quirk - it would not let me put any more than 84 on. Does anyone know of a reason for this (not that I need anymore than 93 tunes, but it just seems like a waste to pay for 1 gig and only get 400 meg useable) and/or how to defeat it?
Also, is there a way to make sure your files play in the right order? No matter how I name them or code them, they always seem to play in the order the player wants them to play and not me.
Sure - make is an MP3tech - there’s no model number on the box or instruction pamphlet. I’m conducting an intersting experiment with it at the moment to see if I can drag really big (300 meg plus) files onto it to see if it;s the numbe rof files thats the problem not their collective size…
A number of devices that use the windows USB drivers have a particular quirk that the root directory space will not expand beyond a certain size. I’m not sure if this usually leads to a hard and fast count limit, or if it varies based on filename length, file size etcetera, but otherwise it seems to perfectly match what you’ve described.
The usual fix is simple. Make a subdirectory on on the device (before you get up near the limit,) and put excess files into this directory. This assumes that the MP3 player is capable of scanning a folder below the root directory for songs, but if it isn’t and you have this problem, then you should really complain to the manufacturers that they blocked this workaround.
Regarding the play order, it may have to do with the order Windows copies them onto your device – which is normally not visible to you. You can try using the FATSort utility on your MP3 player (after you’ve copied over the songs and while it’s still connected to your computer). It MIGHT work.
Welcome mamboman. That trick was fresh in my mind because I had to use it last week, though not with an MP3 player as such.
I just got a 2gig SD card for transferring large numbers of files back and forth between home and the office, and the first thing I did was use it to import some napster WMA files so that I can play them on napster at the office, without using the office internet connection to download them from the napster server again.
but it wouldn’t let me put 2 gigs worth of music files into the root directory of the memory card either. I ended up with a folder named ‘1’ and EVERYTHING went into that folder.
As far as the order they’re played goes, there are two kinds of player, the cheap ones and the more sophisticated ones. The cheap ones just play it in the order the files are copied to the player.
The more sophisticated ones scan each song and create a database of ID3 tags that tells them the title, artist, album title, track number, genre, etc. for each file; they allow you to select and play each album, artist, genre, etc.
The downside of the more sophisticated player is that it has to scan all the files every time it boots up, resulting in a delay every time you turn the player on, and a much longer delay if anything has changed, since it then needs to rebuild its database. Also, the database files take a bit of space on the player, so you have less room for music or audiobooks. It’s not a very large amount of space, usually, but hey, it’s space that the simpler players don’t use.
I only ever buy the second kind of player now, because they’re just so much more versatile.
Oh, and there may be intermediate types of player that do something like, say, play files in alphabetical order rather than the order the files appear on the drive. None of mine have ever been that way, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they exist.
