Long Islander

To answer my own question, it's easy to move your entire library and playlists to an SD card (which can be inserted inside my console) using Double Twist, which will import your iTunes library and playlists. When I got Double Twist, it was free for the basic version and it enables you to import an iTunes library and playlists to a non-Apple device. Once the SD card is installed in the car, you can access the playlists by using the "Search" feature of the car.

grossmsj

Wow. That's awesome. So simple. Thanks for sharing that discovery.

Egonvdv

wow indeed. it syncs iTunes with the usb stick, the same way as ITunes syncs an ipod.

2 things that I noticed though not a big issue:
it won't file "compilations" as iTunes does, but rather every artist shows up in the artist list.
It classes mp4 files under video.

Egonvdv

my usb stick often freezes when i start the car, i then have to either
- choose another source (iPhone for instance) and then go back to usb stick, or
- restart the command

anyone else have sim probs?

this just adds to the long list of "it sort of works, but not quite"

I'm happy about how the car drives, but besides that there are too many things that don't work flawless...

grossmsj

How often is 'often'? Every other time? One time in ten?
What brand is your USB stick? How much music is on it?
I'm wondering if there are poor two-way communications between COMAND and your USB stick that might be worsened by slow I/O rates on the USB stick or a lot of music that has to be loaded.
I put my music on a high performance SD card (SanDisk Extreme Pro) the sort used by professional photographers). When I was optimistic about how well things would work I put nearly half my music collection on it (maybe 200 GB). That would give me problems, which I think is related to how much music has to get loaded. When I cut that back to about 120 GB I don't have problems.
At least you get to have music play in the right order. I have not been able to overcome THAT frustration!

Egonvdv

128 gb sandisk (Clé USB 3.1 SanDisk Ultra Fit 128Go upto 130Mo/s )
with abt 60gb of music
once out of 3-4 times I would say.
there is not mention anywhere in the manual of any limitations in speed or size, so it should work.

grossmsj

Hmmm. That's a high quality USB device. You have a Mac, if I recall.
I found the Mac writes a few hidden files on my SD card. I think Double Twist also writes some files as well (it looks like some sort of database).
You might try finding the hidden files that aren't part of the Music files themselves. I think I read on another forum this was a problem for a person. I don't know why that would be, but its easy to try.

Egonvdv

I have a pc.. but will try deleting the DT data base.
only problem with that is that i'll have to resync from zero every time I connect to my pc

MikeO3

I have a Kingston Canvas 512GB media card (formatted = ~477GB) with about +7K flac files and plenty of playlists. It have not had any issues with hang, lag or other operational problems. It does take sometime to index and update the local database however just leaving it alone to do it's thing seems to be fine every time I have updated my media card library with new music. I did also elect to drop the jpg album artwork on the card also which resolved 99.5% of the missing artwork. I Use JRiver Media Center as my media manager.

What I haven't yet figured out is why a small number of titles are not being read correctly on the Search list (they show up as Track 01 - Title 1 instead of the tag information) but when playing they display correctly the artwork, artist, track & song title. Strange and maybe related to some tagging issue. I'll investigate when it really starts to bug me but the number is so low that I don't really care.

vladarh

That's all ok if you have a large library.
I don't, so I'm using Tidal (with Hi-Fi subscription) installed on an iPod Touch 6. Works ok, but there are bugs...

Egonvdv

new problem

doubletwist syncs ALL music to the usb, but non of the playlists are complete.

(IE: a playlist might have 1400songs, but in the car only has 700)

Q is: is it the car that doesn't read the playlist correctly, or was the playlist only partially synced?

is there a way to "read" (check) the playlist on the USB on my computer?

MikeO3

Playlists are just text files so you should be able to open with a text editor like Notepad on Windows. Depending on how you configured your export they will most likely be under a folder called "\Playlists" on your USB.

Egonvdv

sorry dely; I was holiday.
can't find the playlists anywhere on the USB. there are some files created by the software but unreadable.
thanks any case .

JDPEClassUK

Is it possible that some of your music is from downloadable streaming or Apple Music etc? If so, although they appear to transfer on USB / SD they will not play.

I have about half my music from purchased CD’s or songs from iTunes Store and half from downloaded streaming service. Only the first half will play in playlist.

Egonvdv

i now synced only 1 specific playlist & this works, so i really can't figure out what the problem is when i sync everything .
before it worked like a charm.
i even reinstalled the software (ie deleted all traces, before reinstalling, but to no avail)

DFWdude

I started a thread on this topic on the W212 forum a few months ago. I've learned how to create playlists very easily using Windows Media Player... simply drag and drop tunes to create list, then save to an SD or USB stick. No need for manual editing of text files in Notepad.

See post #5 in this thread... https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w...a-notepad.html

Also, I've learned that when using voice recognition to request a "Search for Playlist" the system will default search the SD drive first. So I copy all my playlists to the SD card

Egonvdv

I am now using Isyncer to sync music & playlists to the USB
it works great, but also with this software the car does not read all playlist properly

For instance; one list has 1500 song & the car only shows 400.

I checked the playlist on my pc & it works fine, so somehow the problem is on the cars end.

anyone know what could cause this and/or how to fix?

JDPEClassUK

I had a similar problem and found that car will only play those songs that are not from streamed/downloaded. Ie if they originate from CD’s or bought songs on the store then they should be fine. But, if they are from a streaming service (ie on loan to you) they will only play on your online devices like Pc or phone but not the car.

Egonvdv

Thanks, this is definitely not the case for me, as it does play downloaded songs
And it USED to properly read the playlists, so don't understand what has changed.