I just had my unit installed yesterday in my '08 Camry SE, with Sirius and HD Radio. First impressions - I'm really liking it, and I now remember why I loved having a nav (I had a Carrozzeria nav in my old Celica). However, even though this unit is state of the art here in the US, the '04 model year DVD nav I had (AVIC-DRZ80) STILL seems somewhat superior ). I will concede though that the gap has closed considerably.

ANYWAY, I'd like to know if there's any specific reason why the MP3s on the USB drive are showing up in a completely random order, ie not alphabetically, which is what I was hoping for.

I'm having the same issue, did you ever figure it out??

Also, I notice you can have several hundred mp3's in one single folder. I read somewhere where with the SD cards you're limited to something like 256 files per folder or something, is that true?

In the Appendix (of the Australian Manual) it has a little diagram called "Example of Hierarchy".

Basically, it seems to indicate that it drills down top level, then each subfolder level in order.

Does that seem to hold true for you? It's on page 153 of the Australian user manual.

(Manual available on this page: http://www.pioneer.com.au/Products/Navigation/In%20Dash%20Navigation/AVIC%20F10BT.aspx)

Also as per the manual (page 150) it appears that for SD you are limited to 300 folders, and total of 2,500 files.

Maximum playback time for USB/SD is 7.5hrs (450 minutes)

Importantly, it appears you cannot place DivX files on USB or SD, only on optical storage CD/DVD (maximum file size 4 Gb). You can however put (avi, mp4, m4v and wmv) as long as the files are no larger than 2Gb each, and the recommended video size is 320x240 bitrate 384 kbps / 30fps. MAXIMUM PLAYBACK TIME PER FILE - 150 minutes.

RE: SD/USB

You may want to check how your device is formatted. FAT16 will have less capability than FAT32 in terms of maximum files and file size. You'll have to google to find the exact limits of each format.

It lists the folders alphabetically, which is reasonable and makes sense, but once you open a folder there is no discernable order to how the individual mp3 files are arranged. They always appear in the exact same order every time, so it's not random, but I have no idea what it's looking at to put them in that order. Things it's NOT looking at is:

File size

Name

Date modified

I'm going to shoot an e-mail off to Pioneer to see if they know.

UPDATE

I heard back from a Pioneer support rep. today. He said he has had the same question from other users but he doesn’t know exactly what the unit uses to order them, but said other users have had luck using this application:

http://www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort.php

If that is true, the Z110BT is probably displaying/ordering the files in whatever physical order they appear on the memory device. I'm going to try this software tonight using the LFN Sort option and see if that'll put them in alphabetical order since that's all I really want.

I'll let you know if it works. Feel free to try it yourselves, be sure and post back with your results.

09/23/09 UPDATE:

This application works great. I tried it with both my SD card and USB drive and it put everything in alphabetical order when the Z110BT read it. Perfect solution.

Wow so it shows the random order that windows writes file. Well it is cool you got this fix.

Wish I would've had this bit of info before I embarked on the 3,500 mile road trip I bought the Z110 for (New Orleans to Chicago to Toronto to New York to New Orleans), but regardless, thanks for figuring this one out!

Awesome.. just ran this sort program and it works excellent!

Now if I could just get my video files to recognize!

Over three years later and the problem still exists. I just installed my z130bt this weekend, popped in an SD card this morning and was shocked to see my files scrambled within each folder. I listen to a lot of soundtracks, and if the tracks aren't in order it's a mess.

There is no sensible reason why a media player should sort files by create or update date ... the default sort order (and only sort order when the user has no ability to alter) should be alphabetical.

I just logged another service request with Pioneer. I'm really surprised this hasn't been fixed. Sure there are workarounds, but as a design "feature" this is unacceptable. At a minimum Pioneer should provide a PC/Mac utility to "prepare" SD and USB storage devices for playback on their head units.

** update **

The DiskSort web site is red-flagged so I didn't go to it.

I found this other program: http://software.magnus.de/tools/QQartikelZ23479/download/foldersort.html

Downloaded it and it seems to work fine, although it is slow.