djpadz

I was wondering if anybody had any tips on tagging MP3 and AAC files so that they work reliably with the 3G MMI. So far, here's what I've found:

- MP3 tags are read more reliably when they're ID3v2. ID3v1 tags seem flaky.

- As the manual states, you have to keep your overall ID3 tag length <= 50 characters. However, with ID3v1, it still may not read properly.

- AACs (which don't use ID3) seem to work fine, except for the fact that MMI3 doesn't appear to understand the trkn (track number) atom. So, album tracks are sorted alphabetically, instead of in track order. I've tried a number of variations, including inclusion/noninclusion of the disk (disc number) atom, and inclusion/noninclusion of the second value (total tracks or discs) in the trkn and disk atoms.

- Multibyte UTF-8 characters aren't handled reliably. I haven't done much exploration on this, to see if the problem is just with non-Latin characters, but, for example, the title of Billy Joel's album Концерт appears as a string of symbols (presumably Latin-1 byte-equivalents of the bytes comprising the multibyte characters).

Has anybody been able to work around any of these things, or observed something different? I'm running the 3G MMI in a 2010 Q5.

(and, please, don't suggest I just put an iPod into the glove box. I know that works, but that's not the point of the post :-) )

mike678

I've had trouble with correct tags in the jukebox, although the same files seem to work fine on the SD card reader.

I rip my CDs with Exact Audio Copy (EAC), encode to variable bit rate MP3s with RazorLAME, then import into iTunes and my iPod. I think EAC is the program that sets the ID3 tags from freedb. This process works great for the iPod and just copying the files to an SD card also works in the Q5. The Q5's jukebox seems to be reading different tag info. For example I have several albums that all list under Stevie Ray Vaughan on iTunes & the SD card reader. In the jukebox they list as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, and The Vaughan Brothers.

Using mp3tag (from www.mp3tag.de) I open the problem files (you can batch process whole folders at a time) and just re-save the tag info. After re-importing to the jukebox the files now display the same as everywhere else.

So far I have not had problems with songs sorting in track order, but I've only imported a few CDs. On another forum someone had to resort to renaming the songs with a track number prefix to get the songs to play in the correct order.

I would be interested to hear other methods of importing music to the Q5's jukebox.

djpadz

Hi, Mike-

Wait- you're saying that it reads the tags correctly from SD cards? Mine just seems to print filenames. No tag info at all. Is there a setting I missed?

The track ordering problems appear to be specific to AAC files. MP3 files don't have that problem. Has anybody gotten AAC files to order correctly?

bayridgeguy

djpadz,

In order for the MMI to read the tags, you've got to copy the songs onto the MMI's hard drive. Otherwise it just reads the file names when playing directly from the SD card.

djpadz

Okay, that's what I thought. Thanks for the sanity check.

mike678

oops - sorry for the confusion. I have the file name of each song set up as "<track number> <song name>", so of course they should match the ID3 tags.

mike678

And that didn't work either. File names are track number followed by song name.

MMIhack

Workaround for AAC losing track order (and other tags) here: http://www.go-audi.com/13512-audi-q5...html#post19694

djpadz

Thanks! I checked it out, and put together a droplet for the Mac, based on his work. Once I have a chance to test it, I'll post a link to it.