Audio Files Play Out Of Order

Can you verify what order they're playing in? For example, are they playing the songs based on the "date modified", "size" or some other sorting attribute?

All of the files in each folder are created using Audacity's 'File'/'Export Multiple' function so the 'Date Modified's are in the correct ascending sequence. I've checked every other attribute and I can't see any pattern to it at all. As you say though, it must be sorting on something otherwise it couldn't produce the exact same order every time. It's very odd !

Can you check to see if the files are being played by their actual title (as listed in the ID3 tag) vs. the filename. For example:

By title as found in the ID3 tag (notice how it's sorting by 1958, A Second Glance, Casablanca, etc.)

04. A Day To Remember - 1958
03. A Day To Remember - A 2nd Glance
07. A Day To Remember - Casablanca Sucked Anyways
02. A Day To Remember - Heart Less
05. A Day To Remember - If Looks Could Kill
01. A Day To Remember - Intro '05
10. A Day To Remember - Sound The Alarm V.2.0
06. A Day To Remember - U Had Me @ Hello
08. A Day To Remember - U Should Have Killed Me When You Had The Chance
09. A Day To Remember - Your Way With Words Is Through Silence!

By filename (where it's sorting by the actual filename 01.xxx, 02.xxx, etc.)

01. A Day To Remember - Intro '05
02. A Day To Remember - Heart Less
03. A Day To Remember - A 2nd Glance
04. A Day To Remember - 1958
05. A Day To Remember - If Looks Could Kill
06. A Day To Remember - U Had Me @ Hello
07. A Day To Remember - Casablanca Sucked Anyways
08. A Day To Remember - U Should Have Killed Me When You Had The Chance
09. A Day To Remember - Your Way With Words Is Through Silence!
10. A Day To Remember - Sound The Alarm V.2.0

I'm not sure that my WAV's have ID3 tags in fact but I've just tried exporting some files as MP3's and also as OGG's and I get the same result. Both formats seem to have the same text in the Title tag as the file name (01 Track one title etc.) but they still play out of order.

Oddly, the OGG's always pay in the same order but it's different to the order that the MP3's always play in !

Anyone get an answer/resolution to this? Got a similar problem where files/directories are not returned in name order when using dir() in vb.

I eventually gave up trying to find an answer to this and used the Firefly media server with iTunes as the client. This works fine - and it plays in order !

Shame you didn't find a resolution, it's causing me all sorts of problems at the moment :x

Hi,

It has been a while since the last post on this thread, but there are not many posts on this subject, so I attach my comment here.

Did any one get a proper response on this problem? I recently purchased a ReadyNAS Dou so I could play media files on the wireless-enabled radio without having the pc turned on. But this seemingly random sort order issue both for folders and files is really anoying, particularly when I wan to play one of the many books we have ripped (mainly for our family car-trips).

Since the ReadyNAS is running linux and therefore probably uses a variant of the efs2 or later (I could probably check this, but not now), the sort order could be by file system node number or something similar. Why it doesn't use the standard alphabetical sort order (perhaps properly localised) beats me.

It should be fixed, anyway. This could of course also be handled on the receiving end, but there is no option on the radio that I can find to set the sort order. I sent an inquiry to the support department there also, of course.

Alv-Arne

I've still got the issue, and have to write extra code in my applications to put the files in a meaningful order - it's both annoying and frustrating.

I'd be very interested to hear if this gets resolved.

I have also had this problem running a ReadyNas Duo using UPnP.
I had the problem with a Roberts 83i and a Cambridge Audio NP30 player (both British-designed).

After looking carefully at the playing order it was apparent that the 83i was sorting using the 'Title' field in the ID3 tag and the NP30 was sorting by file name. Interestingly both manufacturers of the players told me that the sort order was determined by the uPnP server - clearly not the case.

I fixed the problem by using an ID tag editor to add track numbers to both the Title field and the beginning of the filename of each file. I used a free editor called Mp3Tag to do this. It is not very easy to use unless you are familiar with 'regular expressions' in text editing but it is very powerful in that it can automatically edit many files (including in multi-level subfolders) using a single command (and has full undo capability if you make a mistake).

It is important to use leading zeros in the track numbers (01, 02 etc); I first used the 'autonumber' function in Mp3Tag to put correctly formatted numbers in the 'Track' field and then copied these to the beginning of the Title field and filename using the 'Format Value' function.

If I had known about this issue beforehand I could have added these numbers by specifiying the correct tag and file formats when ripping the CDs and saved myself some trouble.

For some multidisk classical sets I found it useful to use a 3-digit track number where the first number corresponds to the disk number in the set (101, 201 etc); this makes it possible to put all the tracks in one folder while retaining the identification of the disk numbers to tie up with the information booklets supplied with the original CDs.

This solution also worked for FLAC files.