Observations on the Entune system with a flash drive

So, I broke this down already in this thread, but I understand it is a pain to search back in long threads, so here it is again.

Note: All of this work is with your MP3 files/folders on your computer's hard drive. And this is all PC (not MAC) based, just FYI.

Also, fair warning: If your MP3 collection is a mess of haphazardly downloaded and ripped files and folders, you aren't going to like what it takes to get it cleaned up, but it isn't as hard as it sounds. If I was you, I would create a new folder, and start small by moving maybe only one or two folders from your existing collection over at a time until you have it all properly named and organized. Then go from there. Also, if you listen to country music, none of this will work, just throw away your vehicle and start over.

Anyway, here is my previous reply from a few years back:

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I have read many of you complain about not being able to see all tracks, or having issues searching for music on a USB drive, etc. My suggestion here, and this is based on two decades of personal experience with portable music files, is that you must have your music collection very organized with a standard naming convention. This is paramount. I have nearly a TB of MP3 files on my PC on a separate hard drive just for my music collection, and everything is organized as such:

\\music\Artist Name\Album Title\Artist Name - Album Title - Track Number Leading 0 - Track Name.mp3.

An example of this would be M:\music\Cure, The\Disintegration\The Cure - Disintegration - 04 - Lovesong.mp3 as below:



A few things to note here. First, the FOLDER name for this band is "Cure, The" and not "The Cure". This eliminates having to scroll through tons of bands that start with "The" and gives you the ability to find the band you want much quicker. ***This only applies to the organization on your computer, in Entune I think the "The" is automatically removed for ease of navigation. I do this in my folder structure on my hard drive, otherwise you will end up with a ton of folders starting with "The" and it's a pain to scroll through all that, if you have a massive collection like I do.

Also note, this file/folder structure can be varied however you want, it's just personal preference. BUT, it is important that ALL of your music is named and organized in the SAME way. This will give your ID3 tagging program a standard file name to use when applying new ID3 tags. I know a lot of you are already shaking your heads because the answer is YES, this does take considerable work to organize and setup. I've been doing it forever, and it just depends on how important it is to you to have your music collection with you while you sit in traffic for 3 hours a day. For me, IT IS.

Now, a quick lesson on ID3 tags. This is the method by which audio playback devices sort, read, and display track info, such as ARTIST NAME, ALBUM NAME, etc. Here's a link explaining ID3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3 Without proper, standardized ID3 tags on EVERY SINGLE FILE your digital music playback devices will have trouble reading the files in any sort of orderly fashion, making the use of said device(s) annoying and frustrating. So you NEED to have your ID3 tags standard too, which is why I suggest starting with standard files names. Once your file names are standard, you can use an ID3 tagging program to remove the old tag, and apply new tags based on your already standardized file names for your whole collection. (this is one of the things I *think* iTunes does for you, however I loathe iTunes and any sort of DRM software, so I avoid it, but if it works for you, cool)

There are many programs out there, but I have always used a program called ID3-TagIT to apply STANDARD ID3 Tags to each track based on my STANDARDIZED file naming convention mentioned above. I do this AFTER first deleting the original ID3 tag information with the software. This is what the properties of your files should look like if you were to set up your music like mine:




Notice the fields for Title, Contributing Artists, Album and # are the only fields complete for my file. This is because my ID3 tags only contain this info. You can however add genre and other tags if it is helpful, but for me, simplicity is key. Also note, this is under the PROPERTIES of the individual MP3, under the DETAILS tab in Windows Explorer. You can directly edit ID3 tags via Windows this way, one file at a time, but I do not recommend that!!!

So, using that method, I have NEVER had issues with Entune organizing my music in a very user friendly, searchable fashion. I think those of you on here who have issues have haphazardly organized collections that fail to have standard file names and possibly missing or broken ID3 tags all together. It is a lot of work to get your collection organized, but it is simple if you start from scratch using a CD collection, for instance. I can give more tips on this if some of you are interested, but the bottom line is, your music collection MUST be organized, standardized and properly tagged or you will have lots of annoying problems with not being able to find tracks, coming up as "unknown artist", etc. The programs I have been using for over a decade now consist of CDex (for ripping CDs to my computer), 1-4a Rename (great program for easy bulk file renaming to a standard format) and ID3-TagIT (super easy, bulk ID3 tagger, which you need to do once your files and folders are organized and standardized). Then, all you do is copy over the files/folders to a big enough USB thumb drive (not exceeding the 9999 file limit, including folders and directories), plug it into your Toyota vehicle, and let Entune do the rest. All of the above programs are FREE.

Additional Note: My personal music collection is now nearly a TB in size. I keep all my music on a separate SATA drive in my PC. For you laptop users out there, you just need a big hard drive or some externals, based on the size of your collection. I then have another hard drive with two folders, one for each USB thumb drive for my 4Runner. I did this because obviously I cannot fit a TB of music on thumb drives, and also because I did not want to mess with the integrity of my main music folder. So I keep my Entune music in separate folders, which helps me not mess anything up. (Yes, you will need additional hard drive space for this, but for me, it is well worth it for serious organization of large collections.)

My Entune folders are simply called "USB1" and "USB2". I then started to break down my music collection into subfolders by genre. So, on USB1, I have a "Indusitrial, EBM, Electro, Noise" folder. I then used a different ID tagger program called MP3tag to add the "GENRE" tag to each of the files in this folder. On USB2, I created several genre folders like "PUNK", "GOTH", and "80s New Wave". I then organized bands into those folders and added the GENRE tag to those files as well.

I did this because my collection is huge, and some days I feel like shuffling through my Punk collection, without hearing stuff from my Industrial collection, for instance. Entune has a selection for GENRE when browsing, so I can now shuffle by genre if I want to, which is a cool additional little way to further enjoy my massive music collection in my Toyota.

So, hopefully that info helps some of you and isn't too technically intimidating. I can elaborate a bit for those of you who are not so tech savvy on any of these points, if needed.

 

Many thanks. I have so many music files of all formats, it should be against the law to have that many. I read a lot here but needed the information laid out in one place. Apparently I overlooked the previous information.

I share your sentiments about forum reading (or lack of). I rebuild and repair a lot of older inboard boats over the internet. It takes time and effort so again, thank you. I'm on it now that I have the single compilation of guidance steps.

I hope I can put in the USB adapter and play in the random selection mode. I know a CD-ROM allows random selecting, not sure about the USB. I see above where you mention the shuffle mode.

A friend asked me for my music. I told him to send ma a 2TB external drive. So when he got it back, he kind of laughed at the mess I had sent him. This will help greatly. This will be a monumental milestone in my music organization efforts.

Fords and MACs are not allowed on my property. The only thing Country genre makes me do is find another selection.

I owe you a Coke.

 

Thought the 9999 song limit was bogus?

 

LOL, I'll take a R/C! No Coke or Pepsi for me! LOL

Anyway, yeah, if your collection is disorganized, it will take a bit of time, but once you get the hang of 14aRename it really becomes pretty straightforward after that. When you get to ID3 tagging, you can literally blow away all the tags on all files and then apply new tags based on the file name in one fell swoop. Depending on the power of your computer and the amount of files, this can take a long time processing wise, but you can just walk away from it and let it go. ID3-TagIt will throw an error if you have files that are not named with the correct format anyway, so you will know you still have work to do. It's a bit tedious but once you have the method down, it becomes easy and straightforward.

I have a CD collection of like 1500 CDs, so when I started the the whole MP3 thing it was probably back in like 2004 or so, when I ripped my entire collection of CDs to my hard drive. It was then that I picked a naming format that made the most sense to me, and I have stuck with it ever since. My collection continues to grow. I have loads of CDs, cassettes and vinyl and I buy and download a lot of MP3s too. Downloaded MP3s are almost NEVER in the same format I use so I have a folder called "Downloads" where everything goes first. Then I painstakingly move folders over and rename and tag them as I go now. I also have triple redundancy with my MP3s files as well, as it would be devastating for me to have it all on a single hard drive that could fail. So I back it up pretty religiously. Something you should do as well if you aren't already. Now I find myself re-ripping CDs at 320 just cause. I originally ripped at 192 back when hard drives weren't as big but now I go 320 always. I never got into the whole FLAC thing...I will just play the CD or spin up the record if I want lossless. My hearing sucks pretty bad anyway so I don't notice! LOL

I got back on here this morning because I wanted to see if there are any hacks for Entune that allow it to recognize more than 2 USB devices. Apparently not. So I guess I will split my music up on three USB thumb drives and just keep two inserted at a time, and swap them as needed in the truck on the fly. First world problems! LOL

PS - I do like Johnny Cash so I guess I like some country music! LOL

 

EDIT: Interesting, I see your photos. I am going to try this and see! Thanks.

 

My 2016 only see 9999 songs....
If I go tot he song tab it shows 9999 and I know there are artists that don't appear on my artist tab.

I'm tempted to try the MP3 player idea and see if that works instead of multiple USB's or a old iPod.
Together with the USB in the center console..
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/plug-n-play-harness-to-relocate-usb-port.510714/

It might be the answer I'm looking for.

 

Yeah, I am going to test this today and see if I can see more than 9999. Maybe it is something that was revised in later versions of Entune. Which begs the question, can Entune be updated?

 

So for the first time since ownership I upgraded my Entunes. I didn't even know I could do this. I downloaded the app on my phone and it was easy. Now I am reformatting my thumb drive and i will attempt to load more than 9999 files and see if they are recognized! Fingers crossed!

 

OK, so I reformatted my 128GB USB drive and copied 12000 files to it. It took longer for Entune to bring everything up for the first time, but it still only shows 9999 files. That said, after a quick browse, I couldn't find anything missing. All folders from A-Z seemed to be present. So maybe it does read past 9999 but it only shows 9999 while the actual number is greater and everything can be browsed? I am copying a whole different folder over now and will give it another test to make sure the newly copied stuff shows up. But as of right now, I am still not sure.

 

Yup, my final test proved for at least 2016 Entune vehicles, 9999 is still the limit. I added more music and it does not index in the 4Runner. Bummer. So I am back to three thumb drives now and I will just keep 2 inserted at a time and swap as needed.

 

Thank you for the update, time, and effort. I am working on reorganizing this mess I have and then will see how the Entune Premium (non JBL) reacts in the near future.

I am not sure how this may or may not have any impact on your Entune system; there is a software (maybe firmware) update for that system. It's here. I did mine a few weeks ago but I have no idea if it did anything that I will ever notice. It did not make it any clearer sounding nor did I gain any MPG.

 

Thanks for that info. I did the software update via my phone but a firmware update would be different. I might try this, although the TSB makes it sound like this update is just to correct problems (not to add newer features) but maybe there's a chance? I would image the 9999 file limit is a software based limitation so I would think, it could be something that an update could fix. That said, maybe older Entune models only have a limited amount of memory space to cache files so they capped it at 9999. But imo, that doesn't make sense since MP3s can be of a variety of sizes so it still seems like a software limitation to me. Either way, it might be worth the extra effort for me to try to get more than 9999 files on one drive.

I find it hard to believe no one has tried this yet and can confirm if the updates work or not. But I am definitely going to give it a shot. It is a pain, especially since copying so many MP3s to a thumb drive takes so long, but it will be worth it if it works.

You getting along with 14aRename yet?

 

The 9999 limit sucks. I guess it made me look at what I never listened to and narrowed it down. Now only if Entune supported FLAC, that would be nice. For now, i reencode to max vbr aac. Won't be able to hear the difference while driving.

 

Yeah it does. That's kinda what I've been doing too, instead of having ALL of KMFDM's ENTIRE discography, I narrowed it down to UAIOE, Naive and Money. Been doing this with most of it, but I have too much new music now so I think I will just split everything onto three USB sticks and swap out as needed, which isn't hard, but is an added annoyance.

 

I couldn't give up KMFDM. I did have to exclude several FLA albums and weeded though other albums where I only liked a song or two.

This is what I have for KMFDM. I have the flash drive synced with my phone. I edited the album tags to include the year since Entune seems to ignore the date tag.

 

Nice, but you're missing Apart. LMK if you want MP3s. IMHO, everything after Angst is ho-hum. There's of course a few good tracks in there but I can live without all their "newer" stuff. That said, I have ALL FLAs stuff on my thumb drive. I don't think I can think of a more consistently good band. And Rhys Fulber's new solo stuff is also really damn good. Industrial/Electro/EBM is easily my favorite genre...

 

I'm curious about that "84-86" you got.

Here's my KMFDM stack:

 

Wonder if this 9999 file limit applies also to bluetooth devices, like iPod or iPhone, when connected to Entune?

I'm nowhere near 9999 songs yet, but still ripping CDs to get there.

 

Yeah, not sure. I would like to know if the firmware update lets you go bigger though...

 

I don't think it applies if using an iPod. I have a couple classic iPods, but they're slow and I hate managing them. I also don't think it applies with bluetooth devices either. In these instances Entune isn't managing the storage, only receiving audio and file info with some basic menu control. I think the amount of menu control is dependant on the supported bluetooth profiles. With my phone (OP6T), i can't change albums through Entune, so it's a dealbreaker for me.