I would like to really know why the stupid mp3 player does not support playlist playback?

Also it seems to me, that there probably is a way to upgrade the firmware with additional features to correct this, but I don't expect Honda to do it anytime in my lifetime.

Here is another bug...did you ever notice that "random" does not really mean "random"? Oh sure, it looks like it is random, but it does the same "random" playback all the time. In other words, the playback does not randomize after every music file...it will randomize the same file order everytime.

sucks.

 

Whomever thought of sorting by modify date should be sacked. What an awful, awful, awful decision.

 

Did you start that thread? I would definitely like to join. It's bad enough that my cheapo USB drive does that, without the car stereo doing the same thing.

 

I'm not sure what you mean. The radio on my Fit recognizes the playlists on my iPod Touch. Does yours not recognize the playlists on your mp3 player?

 

Yah, no playlists. I don't use an iPod, just a USB thumbdrive. The player will not recognize .m3u files.

 

FYI I don't believe M3U is a recognized standard. It is used by many apps, but not a standard... Would be nice, but it's a bit niche.

 

That's interesting.

So what playlist format does the Fit stereo recognize?

 

iPod.

if you don't have an iPod hooked up, you are not going to be able to use playlists.

~SB

 

I just encountered this problem too.

ipod touch works fine with playlists, artist, album, and song sorting.
USB drive only shows album and song. total pain in the... I really liked the idea of leaving a thumb drive in the car, something I don't want to do with the touch.

What about a "cheap" ipod like the shuffle- would that give me sortable playlists and artists?

what a downer- to have such a great radio system fail with this last little tiny detail. It's like running a marathon, and stopping at the last 10 feet for some water.

 

I just got a cheap 3rd generation ipod nano that i leave in the car.
just go on craigslist or ebay and buy one super cheap.

 

OK folks, here is the best solution I have found to help automate the process of copying files to a USB drive and have them displayed on the Honda player in a reasonable fashion, and in order.

It involved two steps: First you use Mp3tag tool to rename the folders and files automatically. It's a ONE CLICK process, assuming your MP3 files have proper ID3 tags. Second, you use a FAT sorter tool such as DriveSort to have the entire ThumbDrive (USB drive) internal structure sorted alphabetically, so it properly displays in order on the Honda player.

Steps:
1) Download Mp3tag from here: Mp3tag - der universelle Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)
2) DO NOT OPERATE ON YOUR ORIGINAL MP3 FILES EVER! THIS PROCESS WILL RENAME ALL YOUR FILES!!!
So: Create a folder called "HONDA" for example, on your PC, and make a copy of all the MP3 files you want in your player. It doesn't matter if you copy several folders within folder etc. BUT DO NOT OPERATE ON YOUR ORIGINAL FILES!
3) Drag the HONDA folder onto the Mp3tag window. It will list all the files.
4) Select all files in the list by hitting ctrl-A. It should highlite all files in the list.
4) Select "Convert-> Tag-Filename" from the menu (hit Alt-1)
5) Now use this conversion string (copy/paste):
\CONVERTED\$ansi($trim($left($regexp(%artist%,^The ,),6))-$left(%album%,6)\$num(%track%,2)-%title%)
6) Just grab resulting files from C:\Converted, and copy to your thumbdrive.
7) Use Anerty's Lair - DriveSort to force file structure to sort alphabetically.

Hope this helps.

 

justin- so what you are doing is renaming the album name to the artist instead?

 

Not quite.

I'm building a folder structure such that there is ONE folder for each album at the root level.

The folder name will be:
Artist name + Album name

However there is a character length limit, so I am truncating 6 chars for artist, adding a hyphen, and then the rest for album name.

The track name are changed to have track number preceding... this will make it show up on the player with track number repeated twice. One is added by the player, the other is in the filename. I had to add the track in the name so it could be sorted properly by DriveSort.

 

thanks Justin!

so now, how do I convince my wife all of this easy?

 

See: https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/gene...questions.html

 

ok...well i got a 250gig drive to work. i also figured out drive sort. was reading through this thread and i thought i understood that if it had a blank mp3 in the folder that the display would list the folder.

so...if i was trying to keep everything alphabetical...it would look like this.

P
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Portishead - Dummy
Pretenders - Learning to Crawl
Q

and so on and so forth.
so if i wanted to scroll down to the "P" folder...hit select...and have access to the "P" files.

I'm understanding that there is NO way of tricking the head unit to play along?

cheers,
christopher

 

If you do what you described, as soon as you hit Select the first time, you will be presented with the entire hierarchy, including the 'Letters' folders (P,Q..) as well as the "Artist-Album" folders, all in the same list... so you don't win anything by putting those Letter folders at all... you will have to scroll through letters and albums altoegther until you find the album you want.

The "letter" folders will only visually divide the albums.... exactly as you have it on the list below...

 

that's insane...but it's what i figured.

so...let me ask this because i don't have an ipod and i'm not sure how the file selection works on the unit. does it allow you to search by artist or genre or anything else when hooked up to the head unit?

pretty insane and i've never understood from all the previous descriptions but to point out the obvious...the honda head unit has no way of understanding sub-directories and hierarchy. bascially it takes all the folders and sub folders and lists them in alphabetical order (if you've sorted them within drivesort) within the display.

what a waste.

 

With an iPod it is quite different... you get the ability to drill down by artist, genre, etc. I have not tried it, but that's what others have told...

Yes, the USB Flash drive support is absolute crap on the Hondas. They should be ashamed.

 

i'm wondering then if anyone might know of some software or a way of setting up the drive to trick the head unit into thinking the an attached flash or hard drive is actually an ipod?