MP3 files not playing in the right order, although they look fine to me...

This "problem" has been slowly driving me absolutely nuts. I cannot for the life of my work out why this is?

Sometimes when I rip a CD or more common a downloaded MP3 album, the numbering sequence of the tracks looks right, be it in Windows, dbPoweramp or whatever, but when Winamp/VLC/Windows Media, and more importantly my car stereo (which can play MP3) starts it up, it plays it in totally the wrong order.

My example attached, looks fine in Explorer (and also dbPowerammp's file properties), but as you can see Winamp and just about every other program plays it in a different order?

HELP please<

 

It looks like that MP3 player just plays the files in alphabetical order. Likely that they sort the files on Name (instead of on the meta-data attribute #). Renaming files to include track number (so that they also appear in the correct order when sorted alphabetically on name) might resolve the issue.

 

Without knowing how your car stereo plays MP3s, I can only speculate that it might be ignoring the ID3 Track Number tag and just playing the files in alphabetical order(?).

A ugly way to work around this is to embed the track number in the file name:

"First_Song_Title.mp3" becomes "01_First_Song_Title.mp3", etc.

EDIT: Popmartijn got there before me.

 

Your right that is exactly what it seems to be doing, thanks.

I will have to investigate as dbPowerAmp doesn't appear to write the numbers in the prefix of the file name. I'll have to work out how to do that.

I just assumed that all MP3 players went by the tags, as that is how it resolves things like Name and Song title etc. Why the hell does it write track numbers then!

 

Thank you too. It is not just my car stereo, Winamp and VLC don't seem to bother either, which is perverse to me!

 

I play music on my car stereo almost exclusively from a USB drive. One of the things I've noticed if I drag an album folder to copy to the USB drive -the songs look to be in order on USB album folder (I prefix the track # before the title), but they won't necessarily play in order in the car. I believe it's the order they are copied onto the USB that takes precedence (i.e. time stamp on file).

 

We have a home HiFi CD player that is pathetically badly designed with regard to it's USB input.
The files actually have to be written sequentially to a USB stick to play in the correct order! Yes, I have to manually copy track one, wait 'till it finishes, then copy track 2 and so on. Thankfully I found TerraCopy (for Windows) which automates all this for me, but still, what the f**k were they thinking?!?

*edit, sounds like the above poster has the same problem. For me, I found a program which will allow editing of the file's (Windows) time stamp, but this did nothing as far as the CD player was concerned, only reflected in Windows.

 

^^ I use DriveSort to correct this after I copy the files. Works great.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/DriveSort.shtml

 

^ That looks like a dandy program, wish I knew about it sooner. Thanks
However, TeraCopy (one -t, my miss spelling earlier) is now integrated into Windows for me, and makes copying files from one place to another within the same drive faster, and reduces the thrashing. Windows XP, at least, is pathetic in this regard, if you try to copy 10 files from one partition of a drive to another, it will try to do all 10 at the same time, thrashing that poor HDD. TeraCopy creates an alphabetical list, and works through it sequentially, buffering into RAM. The more RAM you have available the faster it can work - so a solution to a problem has given me a solution to a future problem in a way. I think Linux does sequential copy using command line - but that's hardly user friendly

 

You can solve this by using an iPod...

 

dBpoweramp can do that: I use it to rip CDs and it writes the filenames as [track number] [artist] - [title], e.g. 01 The Blue Nile - Over The Hillside.m4a. It might be buried somewhere in the settings, but it's there.

 

Yeah, if using Windows, don't forget to use a two-digit numbering system for those files less than 10:

01 song.mp3
02 another song.mp3
03 yet another song.mp3
...
10 tenth song.mp3

Otherwise, it'll play song "10" first because Windows is dumb.

 

Nah, our CD player doesn't take iPods, just mass storage devices like sticks. I guess it could read an iPod, but it'd be the same problem with regard to file order.
Bottom line is that the company did not put enough thought into their USB input on an otherwise very nice (with respect to price) machine. Only WMA and MP3, no lossless or even WAV. MP3 is definitely worse than WMA on this player. And, of course, the above file order issue - just not a grand idea. They could've included a dummy [lug to cover the USB socket too - considering how neglected it is. I've said my piece. Back ON topic

 

Checkout MP3tag. MP3tag will take your entire mp3 collection if needed, take the tag info (or download this info if it is missing) and use this to reconfigure the actual file names, in a way that is fully customizable (track no/song name/band etc). You can even sort into folders with the command string format; for example, I created a string that automatically sorts the files into folders, first by artist, then by album; but you can can create which ever tag/folder hierarchy you want (make a backup first if you are doing the folder thing - this is powerful, and files can go bye bye ).

While it is handy to have everything tagged by your preferred ripper software, I think of MP3tag as my library manger. I once chucked my whole library into it to ratify everything, with great results. I have no problem with running order regardless of which MP3 player I use. It is fast to use once you get the hang of it, and it's great for recognising needledrops of albums too.

Oh - and it's free.

 

Is there any software that will do this for MP3 and FLAC.

 

MP3tag works for FLAC as well. I use it all the time to tag my FLAC files.

 

Another vote for MP3tag. Vidiot prefers Tag and Rename, which can do things MP3tag can't, but I find the user interface very confusing for what I do.

If you find yourself using it on a regular basis, though, PLEASE donate to the author!

 

Has anybody tried Tag&Rename software? I don't mind paying for something that works well, but if MP3tag works just as well, I will download that and donate.

 

MediaMonkey will also automatically rename files and organize them according to the way that you want them to based on the tags. As an example, my files are automatically arranged and named in one folder as follows:

/[First Character Of The Album Artist]/[Album Artist]/[Album]/[three digit track number] - [Song Title].[extension]

The reason I use three digits for the track number is that I have some albums and audiobooks that contain more than 100 tracks. Also, putting the track number first avoids duplicate files names.

One thing I like about MediaMonkey is that it gives you a great deal of control of how your files are organized and named, not only in the music collection on your computer, but also how they are arranged on your digital audio player.

 

Tag & Rename is the greatest. Fantastic software.