This isn't something I expect a solution for, but it just confuses me. I have all my favorites on a thumbdrive, which is plugged into the car's USB port. Songs are on the drive in alphabetical order by artist name. Yet it doesn't play them back in the order they're on the drive! For example, I'm in the S section at the moment. This morning it was playing Stones, Stevie Nicks, Steely Dan, Stevie Nicks, Stevie Nicks, Stones, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, Steely Dan, Steve Winwood, Stones, Stones, Stones... It doesn't jump radically, say, from the Ss to the Bs - it'll just mix them up within the B section, or within the S section. I mean, what the hell??
Car players really are playing items in the order they were added. When you display files on the drive using your PC they're sorted in the desired order (name, date added, or type). Car players look at the low level index and tend to play files in the order they were added, although deleting files and adding new ones will result in seemingly random order. The radio and USB module in my Honda might be made by Alpine, however Mitsubishi appears on some components. It will present music by folder (album in my case) where the files reside but ignores any higher level folders. The folders are in the order they were added to the drive (more or less). Within each folder the music tends to be played in the correct order but that may just be luck. There are software packages that will reorder files physically on the drive so you can retain order, but I don't know of any offhand. You might try searching the car forum for your car. Here's a Honda thread that might help. Something called Drive Sort might be what you need. Trying to access the domain (Anerty.net) where Drive Sort resides is blocked by my employer's anti-threat software (claims it's high risk for malicious software) so be careful...
That's an answer! Thanks! It's really a "problem" that needs no solution - as long as it's playing all the songs, the order isn't all that important. I've just been wondering if there was an actual technical reason. Although that can't be 100% it, because I only just added the Stevie Nicks files, and it's still mixing them in randomly among the Stones and Steely Dan that were already there. Hm, maybe it's reading the original rip dates from the files, rather than the dates I added them to the stick...
I might've edited after you replied. refresh the thread, there may be a solution. I don't think I'd want Stevie commingling with Mick, but she oughtta play nice with Steely Dan.
I've noticed this too with my iPod, so I just set the playback to shuffle on my roadtrip last year. I do wish it'd still keep multi-movement pieces together in the playback though
