Has anyone successfully used MP3s in COMAND?

[Busta999]

HI

I am a new Merc driver.

Trying to get the 12.3” Comand to use 2100 mp3/m4a files on an SD Card.

ALL PLAY OK

All have full meta data in them.

The COMAND system reports 1800 of them have no Album and 600 no Artist.

All the files have Artist and Album set.

Has ANYONE Ever Got this to work?

I have tried tags in v3.1, v3.2 and CPE - no joy.

 

[Borris1954]

I have no issues doing this in my late 2006 S211 with COMAND (NTG 1 I believe).

I think you need to carefully look at the differences between the files that play ok and those that don't. For instance are they all the same bit rate. I suspect anything lower than 128 or even 128k may be problematic. How deep is the directory structure you are using as some files may just be too deeply embedded.

Good luck hunting this down.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[Borris1954]

Oops finger trouble. The second 128 was meant to be 192k!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[John]

I have but like Borris, it was on a 54 plate W211 using DVDs.

They needed to be single folder level only (so 1 subfolder under the root with MP3s in it).

Metadata was irrelevant but that could well be because an older system.

In your case, I would try experimenting with just one album of songs before you put loads on.

I'm assuming you mean they ALL PLAY OK as in on a PC or another device and not your COMAND.

The COMAND reporting could just be FYI and not necessarily why they are not playing.

Try a different bitrate as suggested too.

Also, what size of SD card is it - could it be too large to be supported by your car?

Try a smaller one if you can.

 

[Busta999]

Hi

All the mp3’s M4a and flax files all play great.

90% of the songs lose their meta tags

60% lose the album and 30% lose Artist.

It doesn’t appear to be reading any of the meta data tags, 3.1 / 3.2 or CPE, 8 bit or 16 bit.

I think it is reading the folder structure and file names - 1990’s style...

I have tried the following:-

\Dire Straits - Money For Nothing\01 - Sultans of Swing.mp3

Etc etc

Doesn’t work.

File plays fine, album art shows fine....

No artist or album or genre

Not Mercedes’ finest work.

 

[Gbrowncls55]

My old CLS plays them fine via the DVD, but I only get the song title unless I go through and change the title of each to include the artist as well which is a bit time consuming, but easy enough. No help to you I'm afraid. amazed things have not leapt ahead in 12 years. Have you a)asked Mercedes and b) checked the manual (no offence I do it all the time1)

 

[Busta999]

@Gbrowncls55 A. yes I asked Mercedes Support they said 'the fix was to use MP3, mac or WMA files - they don't support anything else.'

Also if I am having problem with the COMAND system I have to take it to the Mercedes Garage and their expert will fix it.

Except they do play flac files too when i tested it. But that has nothing to do with the MP3 Meta Data Tagging, which it appears Mercedes ignore.

B. Have I checked the manual ? - well no, there is no manual - Mercedes don't appear to have documented this at all.

the Mercedes Garage state 'there is very little documentation available to us and less to you'.

So it appear that having removed the CD Player and the DVD player and are hunkering down on MP3/wma/aac (m4a) and Flac they have decided NOT to use any other the developments implemented in digital media since the 80s and are relying purely on the folder/filename.

Wow bad

 

[st13phil]

So it appear that having removed the CD Player and the DVD player and are hunkering down on MP3/wma/aac (m4a) and Flac they have decided NOT to use any other the developments implemented in digital media since the 80s and are relying purely on the folder/filename.

This is illogical as all the previous iterations of COMAND (e.g. NTG 4.5 / 4.7 & 5) all read and use the ID3 tags just fine. What they would do, if the ID3 tags were missing or corrupted, was to use the folder name/filename as a fallback. So, my deduction is that either your COMAND is faulty, or there is some non-obvious issue with the ID3 tagging of your files.

Have all the files been tagged consistently, with the same tag generator, or have they been tagged by different programs? Are you tagging with ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4? Lots of hardware won't play nicely with ID3v2.4. And is there any correlation between examples of the files that do get their ID3 tags read and those that don't, e.g. they are from different sources (perhaps some ID3v2.3 & others ID3v2.4?) or have different (additional) tags populated?

Something else that may be worth a try is doing a system reset on the COMAND system in case it's caching file info and not reading it again.

If you want to make available an example of a file whose tags are read and one whose tags aren't then I'll happily try them out on a COMAND NTG4.7 system.

 

[John]

My old CLS plays them fine via the DVD, but I only get the song title unless I go through and change the title of each to include the artist as well which is a bit time consuming, but easy enough.

Yeah, my E was the same.

I have a lot of songs though and the thought of spending hours renaming songs... yeah right.

I know the artist from the song anyway so left it at that.

 

[Busta999]

@st13phil Thanks

All the MP3s,M4as, flac files are all named and curated. All Tags competed and done.

I have tried, ID3v1, ID3v2 and APE - all together and singularly with no discernible difference in outcome.

Years,Genre,Track Artist,Track Title, Album, Track #, Disc #, Album, Album Artist, Composer, all completed.

Out of 2143 songs which all are fully populated

On the COMAND ONLINE system:-
2143 has Album Art
All play fine
1800 Missing Album
600 Missing Artist

I have tried (with no progress indicated)

change filename to

In Root or in Subdir \Music\"Track# - Artist - Album - Track Title.mp3
\Artist\Album\Track# - Track Title.mp3
\Artist - Album \Track# - Track Title.mp3

Odd thing is that one mp3/m4a in an album will be fully populated the remaining 13 missing album or artist.

When playing a song it has lost album and or Artist shows with the path and filename on the Command Online screen.

ALL MP3s/M4as when loaded into iTunes or Metadatics or any other tool have all the meta data intact.

Not entirely sure what GraceNote is trying to do to the mp3s - but suspect that may be part of the problem.

No correlation detected so far between those that work and those that do not.

How do you do a COMAND reset?

I'll reduce my test to 5 albums and see if I can understand why some work and others don't and if it is consistent.

If still a problem would like to take you up on your offer.

 

[st13phil]

Odd thing is that one mp3/m4a in an album will be fully populated the remaining 13 missing album or artist.

That is weird!

How do you do a COMAND reset?

Not sure on your version, but on earlier ones it's an option from the Vehicle/System Settings menu. Be aware that it will set everything to do with COMAND back to as it was delivered from the factory, so you will lose station presets, phone sync, previous & saved destinations, etc.

If still a problem would like to take you up on your offer.

OK, let me know how you get on.

 

[Busta999]

Not sure yet....

But I think it may be a Mac/Windows thing..

Just tested 5 albums.

On my Mac the meta data is all fine.

On a PC the files Comand recognises the PC also reads ok, WMP cannot find the meta data in the other files...

I’m digging around as to why.

I know iTunes on Mac uses Id tags 2.4, but I am running through Metadatics to keep them to 2.3.

I’ll keep googling - but this must affect EVERY Mac user.

 

[st13phil]

ID3v2.4 is not widely supported, so my suspicion is that this is the root of the problem. Maybe Metadatics isn't giving a completely "clean" translation to ID3v2.3?

Personally, and although I have a number of Apple iDevices that I like, my experience is that iTunes is the work of the devil.

 

[Busta999]

@st13phil

You nailed it! Thank you!

The issue was ID3v2.4 and standard from 2000, so over 18 years old, so not cutting edge.

I use Plex for my music library and rarely use iTunes these days.

The inconsistency I was encountering was a problem between keyboard and screen, I had misread Read tags with write tags, so some were ok some were in the newer format.

But it does raise a disturbing issue , if you use iTunes to rip or edit tags on Mac or Windows, you will encounter problems using a Mercedes system.

Ironically, no issues with the Skoda Superb I just got rid of.

So for anyone reading this. I fixed it on a Mac using Metadatics in the App Store for £9.99 -I already had it. Goto Preferences set WRITE tags to ID3 2.3, disable 3.1 and CPE.

Then import all the mp3s you want to put on a usb stick, select them all - write something in the comments field or another’s field not in use by any of the mp3s and the press save and it will rewrite all of the mp3s.

They will then be good to go.

There will be PC software that can do it also. Just not familiar with it.

Thanks everyone

 

[Rollo Tomasi]

You could try Tag & Rename on a PC, used it for years, does exactly what it say's on the tin.

 

[st13phil]

@st13phil

You nailed it! Thank you!

Glad to have been of help

The issue was ID3v2.4 and standard from 2000, so over 18 years old, so not cutting edge.

The problem is that while ID3 is the defacto standard for metadata in mp3 (and other) files, no organisation or standardisation body was involved in its creation or approval so different implementations can - and do - introduce their own frame types which may or may not be successfully read by other implementations. Apple are a serial offender in this respect, not only with ID3 tags but also with more regulated standards such as Bluetooth that they regularly used to break because they wanted to keep their closed environment.

ID3v2.4 is indeed best part of 20 years old but it has never been widely adopted due to a mixture of disagreements about some of the revisions and the plethora of hardware (and software) that's already out there that would be rendered incompatible.

 

[Busta999]

I don't disagree with you.

A couple of things.

1. VAG don't seem to have any issues with this - my Skoda just worked with the mp3s (although it depends when Apple switched across to 2.4)
2. I suspect there are more iTunes users than Mercedes cars, this is going to become a common issue and Mercedes have to be more transparent on the issue and the resolution or run the risk of the wraith of iTunes users who buy Mercedes. Mercedes reputation will be damaged by the majority of users just declaring the COMAND unit as useless for mp3s when it is not Mercedes fault.

Just saying - it would be in Mercedes interest to either support 2.4 out of the box or have some way to let users know what they will have to do to make it work.

Apple have caused the problem, but Mercedes will be suffering from it because I suspect most drivers will not have the patience or tools to get around this problem.

It is unfair on Mercedes, but they now own this problem for all their drivers.

 

[st13phil]

Just saying - it would be in Mercedes interest to either support 2.4 out of the box or have some way to let users know what they will have to do to make it work.

I agree that Mercedes really ought to at the very least publish spec information for things like this so that end users have at least a sporting chance of working out why their files don't work as they expect.

What I don't think we've got to the bottom of is whether or not the current COMAND system will actually read ID3v2.4 tags that were not written by by a particular version of iTunes (a quick bit of research has shown that particular versions of iTunes breached the accepted "standard" for that version of the tags which then couldn't be read by many other implementations).

I suspect that many who have Apple products will actually connect their device to COMAND either through the media interface or via Bluetooth for music streaming, rather than copying the raw files to other media that they then connect to COMAND, and will therefore never see the issue.

 

[noneoftheabove]

Thanks a lot for all your research, this thread is veeeeery useful! Unfortunately though, my (now revised to) v2.3 tags don't seem to play well with the new MBUX - I'm still getting the Burmester blue square for each and every file. Any suggestions on what to do next? Happy to test on behalf of anyone interested if it helps

 

[noneoftheabove]

Anyone? Or perhaps best if I just open a new thread?