How to transfer music from albums to a SD card

wgriswold wrote:
I have found that the solution I described above is faulty. Some of the albums are not completely copied to the SD card using either of the two techniques described. The problem seems to be that tracks on an album ripped with iTunes that have more than one artist are stored in a different place, named compilations, than the rest of the tracks.

That's because iTunes stores the music by "performer". Since compilations have multiple performers, they get broken up into different directories.
I try as hard as I can to avoid letting iTunes apply the "compilation" label to my ripped cd's.

I have found that the solution I described above is faulty. Some of the albums are not completely copied to the SD card using either of the two techniques described. The problem seems to be that tracks on an album ripped with iTunes that have more than one artist are stored in a different place, named compilations, than the rest of the tracks. If the album is played in iTunes the albums play correctly but when the album is copied to an SD card or imported with Windows Media Player, the compilation stored tracks are missing. There may be a way to fix this, but I give up.

I am going to rip the albums that iTunes screws up with Windows Media Player and then synch to the Sd card.

I have the same type setup in my 2015 2500 Ram. Here's what I did:

Create a folder for each cd/record on the SD card.

Use Playlist Creator to create a playlist for each album and place these lists in the root directory of the SD card. You can download the program from http://playlist-creator.en.softonic.com/.

After building the playlists, all you have to do is hit the "browse" button and it will bring up all of the albums on the SD card in alphabetical order.

Hope this helps!

Bill J., Lexington, KY

I think I have solved the problems I was having with transferring music from CD's to a SD card. I suspect, but am not sure, that most of it was caused by initially burning my CD's with iTunes and then trying to use iTunes to copy the music to the SD card. I was able to transfer the tracks but the order was usually alphabetical and not the original order. I think this problem was a consequence of the war between Apple and Microsoft causing the two systems to not play well together. I have been told that if I had an iPod or an iPhone the transfer would be seamless. I don't have these devices and didn't want to spent the money to get them.

What I am doing now is using Microsoft Media Player (MMP) to display the albums I have used iTunes to burn. Simply opening MMP causes it to look for the albums burned with iTunes and display them. On the left of the screen is an Explorer like list that includes the SD card. I drag the album to that icon and it adds it to a list to by synched to the SD card on the right of the screen. After as many albums as I want to do are in the synch list I click on the synch button and they are copied to a folder named music on the SD card. The Ram 8.4N radio displays the albums after I choose the music folder and I can choose which one to play. Once I start the first track on an album it then proceeds through the album as one would expect.

Alternatively, I have used Explorer to find the iTunes burned albums and dragged them directly to the music folder on the SD card and that seems to work as well.

My only remaining problem is that neither MMP or I can find all the albums burned by iTunes. They must be stored in several places or something. I am going to figure out how to burn the missing albums with MMP which should solve that problem. If you are just starting this I think that using MMP from the start as your music organizing program would be best.

I wish my grandchildren were closer. I am reminded of a time when three of us were trying to synch two brands of personal radios and the 9 year old rolled his eyes, took the radios from us and rapidly did something and handed them back perfectly linked. I am convinced we live in different worlds.

Thanks to all of you who helped me with this.

I loaded my CD's onto my PC using Windows Media Player then drag and dropped what I wanted onto my SD card or thumb drive. I have used both methods. My Ram has a USB port but no SD slots and my Audi has two SD slots but no USB ports. Haven't tried it with iTunes but that should work to.

FrankShore wrote:
USB thumb drives are not all large and cumbersome. This one is literally the size of a man's thumbnail. The Metadata may behave differently on a USB drive as opposed to a SD Card.

NanoUsb works really well. Doesn't stick out. I have never used ITunes. I have ripped my CD's to mp3. Recommend a minimum 192k compression.

IMHO don't bother trying to use Itunes to TRANSFER stuff to a sd card, it really doesn't work well for what you want to do.

What to to do, well here is what I did and it works very very well.
1) rip the CD's into Itunes, this works good
2) open microsoft media player
3) it will automatically go in and load all your itunes stuff, along with any other albums you have
4) in media player drag whatever you want to listen to to the "save list"
5) select synce and select what drive you want it burned to
6) insert into your truck

I did this on our silverado. about 50GB of music, something over 10000 albums (CD's to you young guys!)

if you want playlists, create playlists in media player, and drag the playlists to the save list and it will sync it as playlists

I've done this with SD cards, or usb drive. both behave the same in my truck

sch911 wrote:

FrankShore wrote:
The Metadata may behave differently on a USB drive as opposed to a SD Card.

And why would that be?

Works exactly the same.

FrankShore wrote:
The Metadata may behave differently on a USB drive as opposed to a SD Card.

And why would that be?

USB thumb drives are not all large and cumbersome. This one is literally the size of a man's thumbnail. The Metadata may behave differently on a USB drive as opposed to a SD Card.