920BT, iPod letter shortcut tabs don't work

[TheCowGod]

Hey guys. I've got an issue with my new 920BT that I haven't been able to find any info about. I'd posted my question in a thread about a 710BT that appeared to be related, but now I realize that the 920BT is pretty much an entirely different codebase from the earlier X series, so this is probably better off as its own thread.

 

I have a 160GB iPod Classic connected to my 920BT using the official CD-IU50V cable. When I browse my music collection on the 920BT (almost always by artist), it shows all my artists in the list, but tapping any of the letter shortcut tabs on the left displays a "Not Found" message. The only letter shortcut that works is the "123" tab, which takes me to the beginning of the list.

 

If I scroll down into the list of artists, and then stop for a second, the letters on the left will scroll down to match (so, for example, if I scrolled down to Death Cab For Cutie, after a second the letter tabs on the left will scroll down to the letter D). However, if I then press the letter D, or any other tab other than "123", it still displays the "Not Found" message.

 

I thought it might have something to do with the fact that I have a few artists whose names start with a number (13 & God, 311, etc). So I renamed each of those artists and added a lowercase "a" to the beginning of each ("a 13 & God", "a 311", etc), just so that every artist name started with a letter. I still get the same behavior -- the only shortcut tab that works is the "123" one, which takes me to "a 13 & God".

 

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

 

Dan

[rcs2prsctr]

I'm having the exact same problem--i have an old 30 GB iPod Video and a 6G 80GB iPod Classic. Both of them present the same problem, although strangely, different letter tabs are non-functioning for each one. Took the X920BT in to the dealer who installed it. He plugged in two of his own iPods, both of which worked fine, so clearly the problem is somewhere in my own system. Since my two completely different iPods have the same problem, I'm thinking that maybe it's a problem with the ID3 tags of my songs--maybe the "Sort Artist" field is somehow screwed up?

 

For example, when I hit the "C" tab on my unit, it didn't work, but when I hit the "E" tab, it takes me to "Eric Clapton"...right in the middle of all of the rest of the "C" entries in proper order. The same thing happens with the "J" tab--it takes me to "Johnny Clueless," who is also right in the middle of all of my "C" entries. (I have the "Sort Artist" fields in my iTunes database organized in alphabetical order, so (ex:) Frank Sinatra comes under "S" for "Sinatra" not "F" for Frank, and "The Doors" come under "D" for "Doors," not "T" for "The").

 

Called Pioneer support, who were absolutely no help. If you have not called Pioneer support yet, please do so -- the tech I talked to had never heard of this problem, and maybe if more of us call, Pioneer will figure out what's going wrong.

[VBLUE42]

Restore and re-sync your iPod.

[rcs2prsctr]

Restoring/resetting iPod was Pioneer support's suggestion -- had no effect on either iPod.

[VBLUE42]

Where did you buy your cable?

[rcs2prsctr]

From the dealer -- had it installed by Pacific Stereo in California.

[rcs2prsctr]

Had it installed by the dealer where I bought the stereo -- Pacific Stereo in California (www.pacificstereo.com).

[VBLUE42]

Try a different iPod. Also go back to your dealer and try it on their demo unit. If you get the same result, its probably a software issue with the unit.

[rcs2prsctr]

The dealer and I tried four different iPods, with the following results:

 

(1) My 30GB 4th gen iPod Video loaded with about 400 songs -- didn't work

(2) My 80GB 6th gen iPod Classic loaded with about 3500 songs -- didn't work

(3) Dealer's iPod Nano loaded with about 400 songs -- worked

(4) Dealer's iPhone (unknown # of songs) -- worked

 

It's not a hardware issue with the iPod -- unless I happen to have two different iPods that both have hardware issues. It's also not an issue re: memory capacity -- my 400-song iPod didn't work, but the dealer's did. The most logical explanation seems to be that my ID3 tags are in some sort of format where they're not being read properly by the X920BT?

[TheCowGod]

And for reference, I got mine at Best Buy, so I'm confident that it's an official cable. I'll try putting some music on my iPhone, a few artists at a time, to see if I can reproduce the problem and narrow down which artists are causing it (I'd like to avoid having to re-load my entire 110gb of music on the iPod). I'll report any findings. Good to know it's happening to at least one other person though.

 

Dan

[VBLUE42]

Yea it may be some unique characters in the Artist, Album, or Song title that is causing the problem.

[rcs2prsctr]

For what it's worth, you may want to check the "Sort Artist" field. Here's one strange result I got: For Eric Clapton, my iTunes lists the "Artist" as "Eric Clapton," but "Sort Artist" as "Clapton, Eric." Thus, as far as iTunes/my iPod are concerned, Eric Clapton is a "C" artist. The X920BT seems to think differently, however, -- when I press the "C" tab on my X920BT, I get a "Not Found." When I press the "E" tab, I get the following display:

 

Eric Clapton

The Clash

The Clovers

Johnny Clueless

Tom Cochrane

 

So, on the one hand, the X920BT seems to think "Eric Clapton" is an "E" artist (since nothing happens when I press "C", but it thinks Eric Clapton is the very first "E" artist). On the other hand, in the list of Artists, the X920BT lists Eric Clapton along with the rest of the "C" artists. I'm wondering if the X920BT ignores the "Sort Artist" field when organizing its letter tab, and therefore gets confused when it sees "Eric Clapton" among the "C" artists on the iPod.

[Dineau]

I have the sameissue and it seems to be related to the iPods. In my cas I have an iPod and a iPhone both are synced from the same PC and sam playlist and on the iPod I have this issue but not on the iPhone. It really seems to be an incompatibility with some iPods.

[rcs2prsctr]

Think I might have found the problem, if not the solution. I took all of the songs off of my 30GB iPod. Then, in iTunes, I made a playlist of about 300-400 songs with artists from A to Z to 123. I then deleted the "Sort Artist" information from all of the songs in that playlist (so, for example, Frank Sinatra got placed under "F" for "Frank" instead of "S" for "Sinatra"). I loaded the "test" iPod with just the songs from my deleted-"Sort Artist" playlist, then plugged it into my X920BT. It worked perfectly--all of the letter tabs found the appropriate artists.

 

So, it appears that the AVIC series can't handle songs with "Sort Artist" information in iTunes. If, like me, you like to have your music sorted in true alphabetical order, it appears you have two choices: (1) put the data in the "Sort Artist" field in iTunes, knowing that it will screw with your Pioneer navi unit; or (2) actually rename all of your artists (for example, rename "Frank Sinatra" to "Sinatra, Frank" and rename "The Doors" to "Doors, The"). Neither solution is very satisfactory--this seems like something Pioneer could fix in a software update/bug fix. Anyone out there with connections to Pioneer that can suggest this fix to the appropriate people?

[TheCowGod]

Very interesting, thanks for doing the experiment, I've been out of town so haven't been able to try it myself. I use MediaMonkey to manage my iPod, so I'll have to dig in and see how the Sort Artist field is being set for me. I suspect it's not populating that field at all, which would explain why all tabs except "123" show "Not Found". I actually do have my artists named like "Physics Of Meaning, The", so maybe if I can just set all my Sort Artist fields to the same as Album Artist, it'll work (though of course the bug does need to be fixed). The only thing that makes me unsure is that I see the same behavior when browsing albums for an artist, etc. So there may be another issue at hand. I'll just have to do some experimentation when I get back. But it sounds like there's hope, at least. I'll post whatever I discover.

 

Dan