XC40 21 Plate Mild Hybrid - Media Player
 

Hello. I am now the proud owner of a 21 plate XC40 and generally I am very happy with my purchase but...

Has anyone figured out how to make the media player work correctly!

I play a lot of music in my car and to do this I rip CD to mp3 and play via a USB stick. Single artist albums are fine but 'Various Artists' albums will not conform to normal mp3 tagging. For instance let's say my album 'Songs' has 15 separate Artists on it. I rip it normally and the Volvo displays this album as 15 different individual tracks. For years I have used 'Various Artists' as the Album Artist without a problem. I've searched audio forums elsewhere and tried various suggested fixes such as including the 'Compilation' tag set to '1', I've tried putting the albums into a separate 'Various Artists' folder, I've tried alternatives to the Album Artist name all to no avail. I've also tried several different brands of ripping software with no luck.

I did have a small success recently. I discovered that with a playlist m3u tag included the album will be shown normally under the 'Playlist' heading but the list of 15 artists still appears in 'Albums'. This could be problem as I play a lot of VA albums and that list will soon become very cumbersome!

This is not vital - just annoying! Previous cars: Audi, Saab, Ford, Vauxhall have all conformed normally even a friends' Mercedes is OK but not Volvo. Has anyone solved this?

Many thanks for taking the time to read this.

Best wishes, MartVo

Double post.

I did a full write up on how to get them in place. It's Sensus rather than Google but the same thing applies basically.

Short version is renaming by switching artist with album or similar, read it through or you will still be pulling hair out.

https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=326002

Hello SnineT and thanks very much for the post. :regular_smile:

I'm not sure it's going to help me though unfortunately.

I have no problem with single artist albums they have all gone in exactly as expected.

My problem is with multi-artist albums. So the album may have 15 songs by 15 different artists under one Album Name. Normally I give the Album Artist the name Various (or Various Artists) and the Album Name would be whatever it is. The individual tracks then appears normally under the collective Album Name.

<albumartist>/<album>/<track> - <artist> - <title>

This is my normal instruction for the ripper which has given me exactly what I need and I'm not sure what your solution would add. As I say the single artist albums all appear correctly, including compilations.

So far I have tried a 'Various Artists' folder and saved all the albums to there with no success. I have tried m3U tags which as you say have limited use. I have swapped the Album Name with the Album Artist so it would have a single name to assemble under but that didn't work. Quite frankly I'm now at a loss!

At least it's comforting to know others are having the same problem... :regular_smile:

Thanks again.

Dump the artist names and just label it as an album, when they list you'll get one album rather than 3 with a random amount of tracks in each from the same album, iirc once on the stick the song names and maybe the artists as well will show up anyway just all in one folder as I believe you are trying to achieve?

One other thought as well, when you rip a cd and tag it through a database you can also get a load of data junk the tag has collected from uploaders, there is an option to remove all the additional data so it leaves you with simply the Artist/Album/Year/Genre and aligning these essential elements in the left hand pane boxes gives you a clean tag.

Example is you might find....

@rippedbyZogfrog Lame 100000kbps 2002 all hiding away, or a former band member gone solo might list as half the Police or Sting when it's a Sting or a Police number like when he's done a comp album the old tag might show Sting songs as the Police or Police songs as Sting all in the same CD, it really is down to whoever uploaded the CD info in the first place, then we get round to the import versions where track 10 is now track 3 etc and the CD tag lists 18 songs but your CD only has 12 songs in total.

Hello SnineT, yes I used to get all sorts of stuff downloaded with rips in the past. EAC was the worst culprit! Since then I carefully untick all those little things in Prefs that caught me out and now thankfully my rips are extras free.

Anyway back to case in hand. If I delete the artist name how does this get filled in? Will Gracenote connect somehow?

You say 'just label it as an album' I take it that that is the actual album title so I end up with a folder named 'Album Title' and 15 mp3 tracks titled as the song titles but with no artist attached and no Album Artist required. Is this correct?

I have just (briefly) tried an album and my ripper wont allow it without an artist - it just fills it in with 'Unknown Artist'. I have other rippers and editors here so I'll try them.

Onwards and upwards! :regular_smile:

Thanks again.

I actually meant ones you rip yourself from your cd collection which when you tag them you get someone elses tagging unless you do it manually yourself.

Don't use Gracenote use MP3tag on a PC, populate the artist box with the name of the CD not the artist, so any compilation albums give them the "Now that what I call **** Vol 100000453" title in the artist box and album box, rely on the track title to id the song you want to listen to which should be "****song #2658912345" or similar :regular_smile: and then select the album in the player in the car and the whole cd will list in one folder.

Hi SnineT,

I think we may have hit the buffers here!

The mp3tag software is out for me. I'm afraid I don't own a Windows PC and haven't for some years now and secondly, if I'm understanding your post correctly, artists names won't appear. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

I really do need artists names with Various Artists albums! It's how I get suggestions for new album purchases and expand my knowledge of other genres.

Lastly I go through probably three albums a week. I really don't have time to manually edit mp3 tags!

I'll just have to accept that me and my lovely new Volvo aren't musically compatible!

In the meantime I've passed my problem to someone I know who I've been chatting with who has never heard of such a problem before and he's promised to investigate (he's a studio sound engineer) so let's see if he can come up with something!

Thanks for your efforts, best wishes,

MartVo

I also have some compilation albums on my USB stick and therefore have the same issue to contend with. However, I’m pretty sure that the last two Volvos I owned didn’t have the same problem. Also, I don’t see this problem with the same compilation albums on my iPhone. This would suggest that the problem is the Volvo Sensus software used in the XC40.