I have an iPod Touch and it works great on the Fit. But I also have a spare SD card with a USB adapter thingy so I thought, why not just throw in a bunch of songs and podcasts on it and leave it permanently hooked up to the USB jack in in the glove box. That way, whenever I am out driving without the iPod, I can still have a goodly amount of tunes at my disposal. But the radio seems to skip about 40-50% of the files and just says they are unreadable. Why is that? I cannot see any correlation to file type, name, number of characters in file name, etc.

 

digital rights management (DRM). I'm guessing the ones you're having difficulty with are AAC that came through itunes. Apple is funny that way.

 

Exactly. If the file is DRM protected, the Fit's stereo will not read them & skip over. If you are playing thru an iPod, that will not happen.

 

Sorry guys, this is not a DRM issue.

Example 1: I import a CD into iTunes and copy the mp3s to the SD card. Some of these play in the Fit and some don't.

Example 2#: I subscribe to a podcast via iTunes. I copy the episode files to the SD card. Some episodes play in the Fit and some don't.

 

Are you copying your iTunes library from a Mac? Mac OS creates a shadow file for each real file. These filenames begin with a . and are normally hidden from view in Mac OS X. My solution was to mount the USB device on a Linux or Windows machine, where I could view them, and delete them there. Since doing that, I have never seen a "file unreadable" from my flash drive, which has more than a thousand files on it.

 

Ah! The old invisible file bugaboo. I don't think that's it because the radio is actually skipping tracks (i.e., NOT for example, playing track 1, saying the next file is unreadable, and then playing track 2. It's more like, plays track 1, says next file is unreadable, and then goes to track 3.)

But I will check this out more closely and report back when I am 100% sure.

 

Not sure about 'Example 2', but #1 is still an issue with certain CDs/songs/files. I import CDs all of the time and have copied mp3's to various and assorted media... some will play, some will not!

With all due respect, your #1 example is most assuredly the problem. Apple rigged iTunes to read and place restrictions on certain songs if the original CD is encoded a certain way.

I could be wrong, of course... but an Apple rep and an Apple tech. support guy directly in Cupertino, both, told me that was exactly my issue.

I love Apple's products. But their never-ending secrecy, paranoia and control are maddening sometimes.

If you find otherwise, it would be great to know.

 

???

This is the first I've heard that songs imported from CDs come in DRMed.

And besides, why would some of the songs from a CD be DRMed and others from the same CD not?

And to go a step further, why would a podcast (such as Car Talk from NPR, meant to be free for distribution) arrive to my computer with DRM protection? And even then, only some of the episodes DRM protected and others not?

With all due respect right back at ya, I think you are seeing conspiracies where none exist. This is mostly like a simple technical problem--something like Selden describes. I am going to get to look over the invisible file thing he mentioned right now and get back to you all.

 

The prize goes to Mr. Mark Shuttleworth (aka Selden). Kudos to you, sir.

First, I looked at the SD card file structure with FileZila and indeed, just as you say, there is one invisible file per normal file. So I copied MP3s (imported from CD--no DRM) for "The O'Jays Greatest Hits" onto the SD card to conduct a test.

Song #1: Use Ta Be My Girl

Song #2: 992 Arguments

Here is what happens. The radio plays the first "Use Ta Be My Girl" and the display reads track #1. All well so far.

Then, it proceeds to the corresponding invisible file for "Use Ta Be My Girl," identifies it as track #2 and says it's unreadable.

Then it proceed to "992 Arguments" (actually song/track #2) plays it, but here is the catch, it reads it as track #3.

That's where I got tripped up. I was being fooled into thinking that it skipped a track when in fact it just counts the invisible files, so the song/track number correlation gets messed up. But it does play all the "real" files, so no problem. I think I will just leave it that. My main concern is that some files were unplayable but it fact, everything is being played.

Thanks!