File order on external MP3 player

[Nivuahc]

My son and I each have external MP3 players (mine a Creative Labs Zen Stone, his a no-name brand) and the most annoying thing happens when I put files on either one now. The file names, themselves, might be something like

01 - File 1.mp3
02 - File 2.mp3
03 - File 3.mp3
etc...

but, when I listen to them, they play completely out of order.

I've tried transferring the files with Dolphin as well as Konquerer and I get the same kinds of results.

This didn't happen with Fiesty, and it doesn't happen in Windows.

Any idea why this might be happening and what I can do to remedy it? For the time being, I've just used cat to join the files together, in order, to make one large file but that really isn't a viable solution for the long term.

[ashleycrue]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

I have the same thing. I think its because the computer puts the files into alpabetical order.
Have you tried using Amorak to put the files on the players?

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

I have yet to get Amarok to successfully transfer files over. I'll try that again today and let you know how it goes.

And, as far as the alphabetical thing... in my case it's audiobooks that I'm transferring so all of the files are identically named, but for the numbers.

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Good news!

Today is the first time that Amarok successfully recognized and connected to my MP3 player! And I was even able to transfer some tracks over!

Bad news

Same problem, all of the resulting tracks are out of order. Amarok shows them in order, but when I play them, they are all mixed up. Track 1 at the beginning, then track 3, then track 7, track 2, track 5, etc...

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Anyone have any idea what might be causing this or, better still, a suggestion on how to fix it?

[lingenfr]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

You should post some actual file names so we can see. Are you using playlists, m3u pls?

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Okay, here's the files I tried on Sunday:

IAL 01 of 10.mp3
IAL 02 of 10.mp3
IAL 03 of 10.mp3
IAL 04 of 10.mp3
IAL 05 of 10.mp3
IAL 06 of 10.mp3
IAL 07 of 10.mp3
IAL 08 of 10.mp3
IAL 09 of 10.mp3
IAL 10 of 10.mp3

Here's the order that they played in

IAL 01 of 10.mp3
IAL 03 of 10.mp3
IAL 07 of 10.mp3
IAL 04 of 10.mp3
...

No, I'm not using any M3U files, no playlists, no anything other than dragging/dropping the files with either Dolphin or Konquerer or transferring the files with Amarok.

[ashleycrue]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Are they being played in the order that the file files are on the player?
Thats what I'm finding on one of my players. I may try rearranging when I have time.

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

See, that's the thing. They show up in Dolphin, Konquerer and Amarok as being in order... only they don't play that way at all.

[mchuskie]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

This reminds me of a bizarre bug with EVE Online under Wine a few months back; an update to the game caused it to stop working, and it turned out that the game was relying on filesystem ordering to load code modules in the right order.

Can you post the output of "ls -f" in the player directory, and verify that the order there is the same as your player is playing?

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Because I make it a point to right-click on the desktop icon that shows up for the device when it is connected and select "Safely Remove" before I unplug it, I plugged in my MP3 player just now, erased what was on it, loaded up the book again, listed the files on the device in a terminal window, "Safely Removed" my MP3 player, plugged it back in, listed the files on the device again (just to see if "Safely Remove" might be the culprit) and got identical results each time.

"ls -fl" shows them like this:

total 235664
drwxr-xr-x 2 nivuahc root   8192 2008-01-02 09:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 nivuahc root   8192 1969-12-31 19:00 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 26485506 2007-12-16 12:47 IAL 01 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 26008206 2007-12-16 12:44 IAL 02 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 27092810 2007-12-16 13:05 IAL 03 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 27008624 2007-12-16 13:09 IAL 04 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 26389659 2007-12-16 13:03 IAL 05 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 27338395 2007-12-16 13:29 IAL 06 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 26543436 2007-12-16 13:30 IAL 07 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 27325019 2007-12-16 13:41 IAL 08 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root 26883655 2007-12-16 13:36 IAL 09 of 10.mp3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 nivuahc root  185259 2007-12-16 13:36 IAL 10 of 10.mp3

So I checked the files on the device itself in case it was the file names that were going wonky. I played them directly off of the device using VLC media player and they all checked out. I "Safely "Remove"d my device and popped in my earphones. This is the order that they play in (I went through each track on the player and compared it to each track on the computer just to be certain):

01
03
04
06
02
09
07
05
08
10

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

I would be completely willing to chalk this up to "stupid MP3 player" if I weren't getting these same types of results from my sons 2 MP3 players as I get from mine.

[FrozenPenguin]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Could be a case of bad ID3 tagging if it happens with only one set of mp3's.

[Nivuahc]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Unfortunately, it happens to all of the MP3's I've tried, not just this set. And I've gone as far as removing all of the ID3 tags completely, in the past, thinking that they might be the problem... but nope, not a bit of difference.

And, for what it's worth, the MP3 player that I'm using has no display so I can't imagine it uses ID3 tags anyway. One of the players that my son uses has a display but I get these kinds of results on 3 different players, all different makes/models, no matter which Audiobook/CD I put on there.

[raijinsetsu]

Re: File order on external MP3 player

Is your MP3 player set to play in random order?