marcw

Ayup! I had an Alpine CHA-S634 changer fitted in addition to my 9815 HU on Saturday last weekend and I seem to have a problem browsing folders on MP3 discs. The titles are all prefixed '____' and are incomplete yet work fine if the disc is in the HU itself. Also, it takes an age to browse folders, sometimes timing out while trying. Is this normal, is browsing by folder impossible or is it fitted / wired wrong?

Cheers in advance!

Marc.

Paper Lawyer

I've got no such problems with mine Marc, the changer take a few seconds to change between discs, but that's all.

How many folders do you have on the discs? Mind you, the CD changer is presumably just a CD transport (the techie gubbins about reading folders being left to the HU) so there should not be any distinction between folder restrictions on the changer and the HU. Sounds like a buggered changer assuming you've given the connections a recheck.

EDIT: Just looked the changer up on a retailer website - reference is made to the changer decoding Id3 tags and mp3 files so the changer does appear to do the digital decoding work I'd give Alpine UK a call.

marcw

I've got 7 on each CD, it's quite annoying not being able to browse to a folder. I have to skip all the tracks one at a time to get to the next folder more often than not...

I'll have to take it back to the installer next week and see if they can help - they don't seem to be too good at after sales though. How easy is it to get round the back of the HU?

Anyone else had any similar problems with these changers or is it the same browsing folders via your changer as it would be through your HU? I wonder if they've connected it with something other than AI-Net, is that possible with my HU?!?

BigTed

I have a '634 changer and it can't skip folders. You have to skip track by track. Annoying, I know, as each disc can have 100+ songs easily...

steve_the_greek

I don't have any such problems either.
Since the discs work in the HU, perhaps the older CD mech in the 634 are fussier about which discs they read (my 7878 in the S2000 will not read 4x speed CD-Rs, but the 9812 in the Civic will). I would suggest writing a single speed CDR and test with that before taking it back.

EDIT: Also wrt different track titles in HU/634, this may be down to the 634 reading only ID3V1 tags (I seem to recall having to re-encode many of my newer MP3s with ID3V1 and V2 tags when I got mine).

Paper Lawyer

I'm having to use ID3 v1 tags (as I posted earlier this week). Folder browsing is not an issue. Easy to get behing the HU marc - see instructions on Lucid website.

As for disks - I'm using 16x CDRWs without a problem!

BigTed

Just did some digging on the Net as I don't recall the operating manual for the 634 mentioning anything about folder skipping. Now realise it's HU dependent... and I'm SOL as my HU can't handle folders (or MP3 tracks for that matter).

marcw

Could it be a maximum folder name length problem I wonder? How do peeps here organise their folders? With mine each album is just under one folder with a name of 'Artist - Album name'. Maybe I should organise by Artist folder, with a subfolder of album, then the tracks inside that folder? Might try that when I get home (not in the UK right now).

Thanks for the advice so far all.

steve_the_greek

That's exactly how mine are setup. Then the tracks are called TrackNum_Artist_Title. If you add more folders, it just means more skipping folders (the empty artist ones), so I'd stick with what you have. Try a single speed CDR, and make sure you've got ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags on all the MP3s.

AquilaEagle

my folders are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
my files 1.mp3 2.mp3 3.mp3

keeps it in the order i want, and i make sure all the IDv1 tags are complete