how to get D2+ to play songs in ALBUM ORDER?

[Edsta]

ok, I've done a couple of searches on this and didn't find anything.

I just want songs to be played in the same order as they are on the original album, not ALPHABETICALLY as the Cowon wants to do.

Please tell me I don't have to go and manually rename every song title in my entire MP3 collection... Surely there must be some easier way? Hell, I'd be willing to pay for software to do that for me, if it exists!

Sigh. Am loving the D2's sound quality, but ease of use leaves a LOT to be desired... Still, I *want* to figure out this thing, because that SQ is so amazing.

[oskarthunberg]

Is your music collection completeley tag-free? How did it end up like that? Almost all legally and illegaly downloaded music is already tagged, and most ripping software auto-tags the music. Maybe your music is tagged already, but the folder browsing of the D2 doesn't seem to care? In that case, skip to 2.

There are two ways to solve this problem:

1. Tag your collection properly. I belive the track number tag is called just "track". There are lots of software to help you, but most of it requires you to take active part while doing it: auto tagging one album at a time.

2. The other way is putting numbers in front of the title name in your filenames. That would change the name of "I saw her standing there" to "1 - I saw her standing there". But then again, the easiest way to do this is to tag the collection properly, and then have MediaMonkey or such auto re-name all you tracks. A batch operation five mouse clicks away.


Good luck.

[dj_si]

Originally Posted by Edsta

ok, I've done a couple of searches on this and didn't find anything.

I just want songs to be played in the same order as they are on the original album, not ALPHABETICALLY as the Cowon wants to do.

How are you navigating to find the album? If you select Albums from the Music Library, then find the album, then start playing the first track, the rest of the tracks will play in the usual album order, assuming that the MP3 tags are correct (and most ripping s/w will have correctly set the tags anyway when you ripped the CD). If you're browsing via Albums and the tracks don't play in the usual album order, use MediaMonkey/mp3tag/whichever is your favourite media manager to check the MP3 tags of each track.

However, if you've selected Folders from the Music Library and then navigated to the folder containing the album, the tracks will be played alphabetically according to the actual name of each file.

[convergence]

Very old thread, but I'm going to resurrect it because it fits perfectly. I just got my old d2 back from RMA, and apparently they flashed it up to the d2+ fw, which may be the problem. First of all, I have verified that each file is tagged correctly. I used special tagging software to tag and sort my entire collection. Then, just to be sure, I plugged my d2 into my computer via usb, and manually checked several files to make sure that the tags hadn't been scrubbed by the file transfer. Let me be clear, the files are 100% tagged correctly.

Second, even if they weren't tagged correctly, they should still play in order! Let me explain: the file name format that I use goes like this "tracknumber - songtitle.mp3" (for example: 01 - The Wolf Is Loose.mp3) so even if it was being played in alphabetical order by filename, it would be played in the correct order.

However, what is actually happening is that the d2 parsed the tags and is playing them in alphabetical order by their tag title (not by their file name, and this IS an important distinction).

This is a very silly way to determine play order, and hopefully there is a simple way to resolve this matter.

ok, since I know someone will ask, the way that I played the files is by going to the music library then /artist/album and then I noticed that there was a problem, as the files were listed in alphabetical order. This is further evidence that the files are tagged correctly as if they weren't, then the artist/ album information would not show up at all.

OK, I realized that because of my meticulous filenaming scheme I am able to play the songs in order if I use the "folders" option. (because it will play it in alphanumeric order based on filename, and since my filenames start with the track number, it works) option. This is actually acceptable for now, but I'd still like to get it working properly.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: I tested vorbis

Tested Ogg Vorbis files. They play in the order that they should. This only seems to happen to MP3 files.

[doniago]

Hey, it would be cool if you could edit posts to add new information rather than making a bunch of consecutive posts in a short amount of time.

Thanks!

[Kerebron]

Originally Posted by convergence

the files are 100% tagged correctly.

Are you sure? There is a separate tag which determines a track number, hence playback order. What program are you using to check/change tags? I'm using Mp3tag, but I suppose that in most programs you can add or repair track number tag.

[convergence]

Originally Posted by Kerebron

Are you sure? There is a separate tag which determines a track number, hence playback order. What program are you using to check/change tags? I'm using Mp3tag, but I suppose that in most programs you can add or repair track number tag.

I use musicbrainz picard to tag my music files (usually into flac). I then used soundKonverter to convert to mp3 (Linux user). I then tested the tags by opening them up in an audio player and viewing the info. The tag information was complete including track number. I tried getting info from mp3info (so that I could easily paste the results here), but apparently mp3info only deals in id3 1.x tags (which answers the question of which tag version was used).

It seems that the D2 was able to parse the info from the tag, because as I mentioned above, the tag browser was able to organise them by their artist and album. Also the fact that they were played in alphabetical order is paradoxically further evidence that the tag info was parsed (seeing as how their file names started with a track number and therefore if they were being played in alphanumeric order by filename, they would have been played in the correct order.)

My conclusion is that my D2 parses the tag info, but instead of playing them in order of track number, alphanumeric order based on song title (found in the tag) and not the track number.

I've done a little more googling and found that other people have had the same problem. For example: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...479#post341479

In the meantime, and this isn't optimal because some of my files are already in mp3, I've just converted everything to .ogg. This bypasses the problem altogether, as it seems to organize those files just fine. By the way, my workflow for converting to .ogg is identical to my workflow when converting to .mp3.