I use a Mac and all of my audio files are tagged/sorted using iTunes. I'm using an 8GB SanDisk Cruzer formatted as FAT32. I've got a few hundred MBs of free space left but for some reason, the head unit will not save my database. Every time I start my car, I have to create a new database. I click "yes" to save the database and it tells me it has indeed been saved.

 

Before someone suggests it, I have the constant 12V wire hooked up correctly as the unit never loses time.

 

Another issue I'm having: some albums don't have album art, though I went through my entire library and ensured that each track has album art embedded in it's tag. The album art even shows up in Finder when viewing the files on the flash drive, but don't display on the head unit. Again, it's not all of them. Most tracks have album art.

 

Final problem: While most of my files play in the correct order, I've discovered one album that plays in alphabetical order for some strange reason. It's tagged correctly and the file names start with numbers, but this one particular album plays alphabetically only. I can't figure out why.

Hi,

 

I too, am using a Mac and saw similar problems.

 

With regards to the order in which the files play, then this behaviour is different, depending on the view you use to choose the music.

Once you've created a database, when you click on the magnifying glass to choose an album/track you have a choice of using the file viewer or the tag viewer.

If you choose the track to play from the tag view, then they will always play back in alphabetical order. I've not found a way to change this, and have actually logged a bug with Pioneer over this behaviour. It effectively makes Tag view totally useless.

 

If you choose to play tracks from the file view, then the tracks and albums are sorted based on the order they physically appear on the media. On Windows, it appears that Explorer writes the files to the media in some sort of sensible order.

 

e.g. If you have

01 - Track1.mp3

02 - Track2.mp3

etc.

 

then they are written in that order, and hence, display in that order on the unit. (I've noticed this is not always the case, though).

 

When you write with the Mac, then the order seems to be almost arbitrary, and you end up with mixed up orders for most albums.

 

The only way I've found to fix this is with a Windows program called 'DriveSort', which re-orgranises the order. If you do a search on the forum, you'll see it mentioned in several other posts.

 

With regards to album art, then I have also had this problem. There are several things to check for:

 

1) Your music only contains ID3v2.3 format tags (v2.4 is not supported well by most standalone hardware players).

    It's also possible that your music contains both ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags. This is also problematic for the Pioneer.

 

2) If you have the spectrum analyser (bouncy sound bars) thing enabled in the home screen on the Pioneer, then album art never displays. Period.

   If you change to a different background under Themes, then album art can be displayed (if present).

 

3) It's important that your embedded images are JPG format. I thought that you also needed to ensure they were 500x500 or less in size, but that does not appear to be the case.

 

I've ended up using a program called 'Bliss' to correct and manage my MP3 library. This is one of the few cross platform music managers that actually works.

If you can run Windows, then MP3Tag is also fantastic (and free).

 

Hope this helps,

 

Andy.

 

Thanks for the help. I got another flash drive and loaded 55GBs of music (my entire library) and I'm currently converting all the tags to ID3v2.3 in iTunes. Looks like it's going to take a few hours. I hope that works.

 

I'm gonna try Bliss and DriveSort too. Fingers crossed.

For future Googlers/members, Nothing solves my database saving issue. I've converted the tags, but there is no difference. Since I'm browsing by files instead of tags, everything plays in the correct order, so I guess I don't really need to save the database and the issue pertaining to playback in the wrong order is null.

 

As for album art, I used CoverScout. It was the ONLY thing that worked. It was tedious and when I tried using it on the files on the flash drive, it kept crashing, but when I used it on my iTunes library, it embedded all of the artwork. I then transferred my library to the flash drive all over again and the artwork shows up. I did notice some 1000x1000 artwork that didn't show up on the head unit, so there is a size limit. I kept everything at or below 600x600 and it solved that.

 

Recap:

Don't know why it wont save my database.

Use CoverScout on computer audio files FIRST, THEN transfer to flash drive.

Keep artwork at or below 600x600.

Update: I'm stupid.

 

The head unit WAS saving my database all along. The first time I saved my database, the "DB" icon disappeared. Every time I started my car, the "DB" icon was back. I assumed this meant the database needed to be created again. I didn't realize this was normal. I realize now, I can choose between file and tag view, indicating that the database is saved, but as fatfurrycat explained, stuff doesn't play in the correct sequence in tag view, so I don't see the point of using it.

 

Finally, some album art still doesn't show up after using CoverScout even though it seems to meet the head unit's requirements. If I find artwork that doesn't display, I plug the flash drive into my Mac and, using CoverScout, simply choose another artwork for those albums and it seems to work then. I don't think I'm gonna keep doing this for 7,000+ tracks. I think I'm just gonna accept the fact that not every album art is gonna show up. Whatever.