09 C6 with Nav CD player .. MP3 capable?
 

Will a MP3 CD work in the NAV single CD player .
All the info I could find says it will playback MP3.

I burned a MP3 CD but it wouldn't work. It locked up the whole system until I shut off the car and got out and back in.
But, the same CD works in my EXT so I know it's not a problem with the CD itself.

Was it scanning the MP3 disk and I just didn't wait long enough? :leaving:

While it is capable of playing MP3 cd's it is very finiky about how the cd is created and the type of cd it is. Unfortunately just because it works in another car is not a perfect indicator that it will work in the Corvette nav unit. The nav is getting long in the tooth from a technology standpoint and it requires a little bit of finesse to make it work. I've had great luck creating mp3 cd's using iTunes and others here have had good luck with other software. It may just come down to a little trial and error on your part to get it going.

This thread contains some good tips on making a CD that works.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c6-c...m-for-the.html

as does this one:

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c6-c...ml?forum_id=74

The manual has this section on what are the requirements for an mp3 cd to be read by the unit:

Using an MP3
MP3 Format
When creating an MP3 disc, the following is a list of
guidelines. If the customer does not follow these
guidelines when recording a CD-R(W), the CD may
not play.
• ID3 tag information is displayed by the radio if it is
available. The radio supports ID3 tag information
v1.0 or v1.1. The radio will display a filename, song
name, artist name, album name, and directory name.
• Maximum 32 characters, including spaces, in a file or
folder name.
• Maximum number of folders is 500 with 500 files
with a maximum hierarchy of eight folders. It is
recommended to keep the depth of folders to a
minimum in order to keep down the complexity and
confusion in trying to locate a particular folder during
playback.
• Create a folder structure that makes it easy to find
songs while driving. Organize songs by albums using
one folder for each album. Each folder or album
should contain 18 songs or less.
• The files can be recorded on a CD-R or CD-RW with
a maximum capacity of 700MB.
• DVD with MP3 are not playable on this system.
• The radio will not play a mixed mode CD-R/RW,
a disc recorded with both *.cda and *.mp3 files.
• The player will support a disc with multiple sessions,
but it is not required that the disc be finalized. It is
recommended to record the disc all at once.
• Recording format mode 2 or mode 2XA with Romeo
or Joliet file system is not supported with this player.
• All applicable Mode 1 recording formats are
supported.
• MPEG 2.5 is not supported with this player. File
formats MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 with all bit rates
(including variable) except less than 16kbps are
supported with this player.
• Long files or folder names or a combination of a
large number of files and folders may cause the
player to be unable to play up to the maximum
number of files or folders or affect the reading speed
and time to play.

It does take a while to scan an MP3 disc if it has a lot of files or a lot of folders.

The MP3 discs for the nav need to follow a few special rules or they won't work. These rules are more restrictive than some other MP3 players and they are more restrictive than the manual indicates. The most common problems are:

• They must be "MP3 discs" created with software that creates the correct directory structure for an MP3 disc and not just a disc with MP3 files. Nero works and there are others. Windows Media Player doesn't though it says it does.
• Variable Bit Rate files play but with issues that make them unreliable.
• The filename limit is 25 characters + ".mp3" and not 32 as the manual states.
• The tags must be ID3 version 1.x and not the newer 2.x which most programs create.

Make sure to remove any non-alphabetic from the filenames before burning the CD. Leaving characters like commas, dashes, quotes, etc. in the file names will cause the track list to get out of sync.

I can make MP3's for my system, but the player in the car is still very flakey. For instance... I'll make an MP3 CD using either iTunes or Nero. Dosen't matter whether the songs are stored in seperate folders based on the groups name, or if I dump all the songs into one folder, strange playback behavior always seems to ensue... Like the same song playing two or three times back to back, yet the disc only has the song on it one time? Each time the song is played the track number changes too!?!? For instance... I may be listening to song "X" as track 34. I hit the steering wheel control to skip forward to track 35. Well guess what song track 35 is according to the screen? Yup, song "X" again! Take the MP3 CD out and look at it's directory structure and contents on a PC and there's no duplicates to be found on it!?

Another strange behavior... When the disc contains multiple folders which contain multiple tracks... if I scroll through the list of folders finding the one which contains the song I want to listen to and touch the screen to indicate I want to listen to the tracks in that folder, the system ignores me. The folder highlights on the display, but the current song keeps playing and it never changes to the folder I selected. Also when looking through the list of songs on the display I can select song "X" to listen to, but what plays is song "Y"!? It's like the unit does not know the correct track on the disc which corresponds with the title currently displayed on the screen!?

U.M.

Many Thanks everyone for the replies :cheers:
Pretty much answers my question and I was burning the CD with Windows Media Player. :crazy:

Both of those problems are caused by long file and/or folder names.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14...l/Misc/bow.gif :cheers:

al is correct :thumbs:

I've been following Al's excellent instructions for over a year and I have had O problems. I enjoy the MP3 CD's so much that I eleminated XM.

Yes, I had similar problems...got great info from FortMorganAl and all is well...he is the guru of the MP3 for C6. Like BeZ06 is to TPMS...:thumbs:

I'll go shave down some file names and burn a new disc.

Thanks for the tip!

U.M.

Uncle, why don't you return my calls.. I'm your nephew, for pete's sake!

:D



I just burned an mp3 the other day and forgot to reduce file names.. that same thing happened where the same song was playing several times in a row, etc... re-did it and everything works well now. Really, once you know what not do to, it's easy. It's just more of a hassle than it should be.

:iagree:This drives me NUTS!!!!:willy:

MP3 disc breakthru! No more renaming files to shorten filenames or to remove odd characters, and then saving these or adding them to your media library; changing ID3 Tags, etc.

There is a great program out called MediaMonkey. I've had this downloaded for a while now but had not really messed with it since iTunes would burn mp3 disks just fine for my '06 RAV4. Not for the '09 'vette, though. I tried all of the methods posted on the forum and elsewhere, and had a little success, but what a pain in the backside to go through all this file rename stuff.

This weekend I decided to check out MediaMonkey (MM). Loaded my mp3 library as is - no shortened files, etc. and burned a couple of songs, changing just one parameter at a time - starting with filename length and then folder name. I found out that the only thing the mp3 player in the vette cares about is the length of the folder names and filenames. It read any special characters just fine if the filename length was right.

In MM, there were two settings to adjust in burning parameters - <Album> - which is the folder name, and <filename>. I set Album to 30 <Album:30> and filename to 22 <filename:22>, burned a disk, stuck it in the vette, and boom! Read every song just fine. MM even builds an m3u table with the ID3 Tag info - which the vette seems to read. I was really surprised at how easy this way. And MediaMonkey standard version is free! Finally...mp3 goodness in the new vette. Made my weekend! :thumbs:

Has anybody been able to burn a MP3 disc with just a large assortment of songs (mixed disc)? I was hoping not to have to use seperate files. I've been playing around with different ways to get this to work.

1st I tried to burn about 100 songs and could only play about 1/2 of them.

I knocked it down to 49 songs and had some songs showing up 3 & 4 times in a row. I lost some others

Stepped down to 22 songs using Nero and the about 1/2 the songs show the wrong title when playing.

I already have over 200gigs of songs in MP3 format..I thought burning a disc would be as easy as "drag & burn".

Anybody???

Never mind, I did get a mixed disc to work.

thanks

how?

Excellent!!! Thanks man!! I'll give it a try.

I can get Media Monkey to work on Win 7 PC