npaladin2000
Member
I ended up doing a lot of trial and error work with a couple of people on another forum, and figure I should share the results here as well. This will be updated as necessary, and is current as of 10/11/13 with the latest system firmware as of that date. Mods can we please sticky this?
For the Mazda system to play MP3s successfully, I recommend the following:
Regarding folders: You can use them, but Mazda seems to grab onto a semi random folder when you start the car, and stays in there until you browse your way to all songs manually, even if you were randomly playing the whole USB stick the last time the car was on. Generally it's easier to toss everything into root, as the system can sort by artist and album internally anyway, no need to divide it into folders.
For the Mazda system to play MP3s successfully, I recommend the following:
- Use MediaMonkey or another LAME-based MP3 encoder
- Use a Constant Bit Rate, ideally one of the standard ones (128, 160, 192, 256, 320)
- Make sure to check "Strict ISO Compliance." The system is very picky about ISO compliance
Regarding folders: You can use them, but Mazda seems to grab onto a semi random folder when you start the car, and stays in there until you browse your way to all songs manually, even if you were randomly playing the whole USB stick the last time the car was on. Generally it's easier to toss everything into root, as the system can sort by artist and album internally anyway, no need to divide it into folders.
