[Kiats]

Thanks, but I've already tried this multiple times and it doesn't seem to fix it.

Ah... Sorry I couldn't help, Matthew. But I'm sure the community will have other helpful suggestions or pitch in with their experiences. Sorry I couldn't help.

 

[vkalia]

  I'm sorry to disagree with you but the vast majority of issues like Matthew's are user related, commonly poor tagging and folder structures or lack of familiarity with the device. Mind you some decent manuals would be useful. And instead of being discouraged, quite often, including Matthew's, someone comes on with helpful advice in an effort to find a solution. When the DX50 was released there were definitely issues with how it scanned and displayed files, but these were reasonably quickly addressed by iBasso and most importantly this community helped resolve many issues including some I was having.
 
Frankly, it appears you either jumped straight in with your disparaging comment without reading Kiats's posts of assistance or chose to ignore them. That seems a bit unfair and unwarranted.

 
My comment does not in any way disparate the assistance provided either by other posters here or by iBasso - sorry if it came across that way, as that was not my intent.   
 
However, there is nothing unfair or unwarranted about pointing out that none of the audiophile-oriented players are getting their UI anywhere  close to right - cos they are not.   
 
There is no reason for someone to have to go through and prune their ID3 tags to get a DAP to read it.   I can put my music into an entry-level Android phone and it will catalog it properly, show me the thumbnails of the album covers, etc.   No fuss.     Yet that basic functionality is something that *none* of these guys can get right - instead, we have to resort to workarounds.    That shouldnt be the case.   Reading music files isnt exactly some little-known side function of a DAP - it is pretty much one of the 2 major functions (the other is to provide a clean output).   
 
It took iBasso ages before they could provide that - and even today, I had to reset my device b/c 2 new albums i uploaded were not being read properly.  10' of my time wasted.   FiiO still struggles with this as well.  AK100 becomes horrendously slow when you put 2 loaded SD cards in there.    These are not minor inconveniences.   Some people may not care, fine - but it is insulting when the opinions of those of us who do care get shouted down as ranting or whatever (not saying you are doing that, btw - I am sort of in rant mode now, so letting it flow  ).
 
The only way the manufacturers will know this matters is if those of us who care about it get to say our piece.    The whole point of bringing it up over and over in these discussions is so that the manufacturers KNOW what is missing and have some critical feedback - there is a big difference between saying "Wow, your product is great - the UI is a little off but the overall product is absolutely awesome" and saying "you have a very good product but you need to improve the UI before I will consider buying it".
 
That message gets lost if we are shouted down or banned from the thread or whatever.     And the reason I get worked up is that this whole *****footing around reduces my chances of getting a stable DAP which can take music without requiring me to geek out over the files.
 
Anyway, I'll made this point before and I am afraid I tend to go into rant-mode where this is concerned, so I'll leave it at this.   I am sure other people feel differently, and that is fine.

 

[Solude]

I would think that if I wanted a manufacturer to hear something you'd have better luck telling them directly than trying to reach them from here... just saying.

 

[Levanter]

@Solude
Ohh that won't work with AK... they are quite deaf even with direct approach

 

[Solude]

Maybe but telling me about it certainly won't get back to them either

 

[Healeyman]

Hello, I had brought up similar issues in my first post....card slot issues were one of them.  Here are my findings to date and A&K after 2 weeks has finally made contact with me well sorta. The tunes you put in the 'Music' folder and SD1 card slot will always show up fine.  You can plug the device in via USB and see the drives on your puter where you can add or remove and then unmount the drives.  When unmounted the AK100 will do a scan and all is good.  Now the problem (and it is a problem which A&K has admitted to).  If you have a second card in your device as in slot SD2 and plug the device into your puter load up up the card or any of the other 'drives' when you eject it the SD2 card gets corrupted and will not show any music on it....period!  At this time, if you want to use slot 2 (SD2) you MUST remove the card prior to plugging your device in via USB or it will be corrupted.  What I am saying is....if you want to use slot two you must load music on the card while not plugged into the AK100 (do it out side of it).  Do it in a card shuttle and then put the card in the the AK100 when it is powered down.  Power it up and it may or may not scan the card. In some cases it takes two power downs for it to recognize the card.  If you want to add music to the Music folder or SD1 card power the device down remove the SD2 card then power it up again and attach it to the puter the normal USB way.  When you are finished unmount it power it down and plug the SD2 card back in etc.  On a side note...when the card gets corrupted it must be reformatted FAT32 to work again.  Also you do not even have to access the card for it to be corrupted. If it's in the AK100 and gets plugged in via USB and unmounted it's done...period.  Works that way every time folks and A&K has admitted to it....well the fact that they are having issues with the SD2 slot.  Well these are the issues and I can replicate them every time.  It's been 5 months since the last update hopefully another will come sooner than later to address these issues 

 

[Healeyman]

"The only way the manufacturers will know this matters is if those of us who care about it get to say our piece.    The whole point of bringing it up over and over in these discussions is so that the manufacturers KNOW what is missing and have some critical feedback - there is a big difference between saying "Wow, your product is great - the UI is a little off but the overall product is absolutely awesome" and saying "you have a very good product but you need to improve the UI before I will consider buying it".
 
That message gets lost if we are shouted down or banned from the thread or whatever.     And the reason I get worked up is that this whole *****footing around reduces my chances of getting a stable DAP which can take music without requiring me to geek out over the files."
 
Here Here, well put.  I returned a Fiio and would have my AK100 Mk2 as well if I hadn't joined this forum.  Loading tunes should be much easier with less hassle.  If you hadn't read this forum you most likely just returned it thinking there was something wrong with it....which there is.

 

[Healeyman]

  Matt, I wrote you in November with this post... http://www.head-fi.org/t/630288/the-new-iriver-ak100-a-high-end-dap/7470#post_9948801 in which I outlined what you need to do and In my above post, I confirmed that the only tags you need are:
 
Title
Album (Name)
Artist
Album Artist
Track #
Genre
 
And filenames should be in the format 01 Your First Song Title, 02 Your Second Song Title and so on....
 
It is also preferable to save your songs is the following folder format: Music\Album Artist\Album Name\01 Your First Song Title 
 
Using a program like MP3Tag you can and should REMOVE all other tags than those above. Do you really need Composer and encoder type and so on??? Minimalism is the go here.
 
Artwork should be no more than 500x500 pixels and can be jpeg or png but I use jpeg as not all DAPs will recognise pngs. I use 300x300 for safety's sake.
 
For use of MP3Tag, there are plenty of on-line help files for that.
 
Good luck mate...

 
Regarding this post:  This info is perfect, it would have been interesting to see it in the user manual, if it was there I missed it.  Again this forum is great for sharing this kind of info, without it you would be lost, it would be difficult to justify paying close to 1K for a player that doesn't display artwork like other 'mainstream' players do without a hitch.  For someone that purchased a player and didn't know about this forum for support they would most likely return it and reasonably so.  What I have asked of A&K was information that goes deeper than above.  I have had tunes that no matter what I have done to them they still are screwy, especially artwork.  I have used VLC and xAct to alter the ID tag info and neither of them made a difference.  There was a fellow back many hundreds of pages that mentioned the app 'Tag' for the Mac which I tried and works very well for 99% plus of my tunes (thank you whomever you are). So what is it doing differently that xACT and VLC don't?  What I am saying is.....it would be nice to have something written in stone in the manual that these devices are looking for, like is it a particular version of ID3 tag that they want to see? They must be mimicking something when they write the firmware. Perhaps the PC version of the software does it all like 'Tag' but I use a Mac and they haven't written software for it to date.  If this has been gone over countless times I missed it and apologize, I have done searches and this has eluded me until now.  Cheers.

 

[matthewh133]

  Matt, I wrote you in November with this post... http://www.head-fi.org/t/630288/the-new-iriver-ak100-a-high-end-dap/7470#post_9948801 in which I outlined what you need to do and In my above post, I confirmed that the only tags you need are:
 
Title
Album (Name)
Artist
Album Artist
Track #
Genre
 
And filenames should be in the format 01 Your First Song Title, 02 Your Second Song Title and so on....
 
It is also preferable to save your songs is the following folder format: Music\Album Artist\Album Name\01 Your First Song Title 
 
Using a program like MP3Tag you can and should REMOVE all other tags than those above. Do you really need Composer and encoder type and so on??? Minimalism is the go here.
 
Artwork should be no more than 500x500 pixels and can be jpeg or png but I use jpeg as not all DAPs will recognise pngs. I use 300x300 for safety's sake.
 
For use of MP3Tag, there are plenty of on-line help files for that.
 
Good luck mate...

 
Thanks again. I have a terrible memory, couldn't remember any of this. Cheers!

 

[Jpfe8851]

  Matt, I wrote you in November with this post... http://www.head-fi.org/t/630288/the-new-iriver-ak100-a-high-end-dap/7470#post_9948801 in which I outlined what you need to do and In my above post, I confirmed that the only tags you need are:
 
Title
Album (Name)
Artist
Album Artist
Track #
Genre
 
And filenames should be in the format 01 Your First Song Title, 02 Your Second Song Title and so on....
 
It is also preferable to save your songs is the following folder format: Music\Album Artist\Album Name\01 Your First Song Title 
 
Using a program like MP3Tag you can and should REMOVE all other tags than those above. Do you really need Composer and encoder type and so on??? Minimalism is the go here.
 
Artwork should be no more than 500x500 pixels and can be jpeg or png but I use jpeg as not all DAPs will recognise pngs. I use 300x300 for safety's sake.
 
For use of MP3Tag, there are plenty of on-line help files for that.
 
Good luck mate...

I should add, that the above is not the only way to go... simply, that this method works in all my iDevices, Androids and DAPs without issues. I'm sure there are other variations that work equally consistently.

 

[matthewh133]

  I should add, that the above is not the only way to go... simply, that this method works in all my iDevices, Androids and DAPs without issues. I'm sure there are other variations that work equally consistently.

 
Would adding the album release year in the tag ruin anything?

 

[Jpfe8851]

   
Would adding the album release year in the tag ruin anything?

Not at all. I still have year in some files. But I avoid date formats. 4 digit years seem fine. What I have focussed on cleaning are non-standard tags inserted by ripping software. 

 

[Jpfe8851]

I just want to add my perspective to the recent posts about frustrations with tagging and DAPs not functioning like we expect...
 
Many of the issues noted and blamed on the DAP developers are in my view a little unfair. For an app to work on an Apple device for example, the app must conform to a defined set of standards managed by Apple. This means they work on all Apple devices. So far so good. Apple (or its subcontractors) makes Apple devices and this ensures compatibility. Windows and Android is use on many different manufacturers' products and this introduces compatibility issues which is why there are so many updates that constantly intrude on our days. However that also means many more open source apps and opportunities to innovate. It also means sometimes there are unexpected results. With the complexity and options these devices now offer, I think it is a little unrealistic to:
 
a) Expect no issues at all,
b) That every device works any way I might want,
c) That I should not have to make any compromises to my preferred method of formatting, archiving, tagging, and so on.
d) And then rant about it especially when countless others make a few adjustments and enjoy their experience rather than get all hot about it.
 
I've had my share of frustrations but I've also been around computers and technology so long I remember the days when compromising was far more frequent than today. I think we all need to remember that code is all based on maths and maths and physics are consistent. 2+2 will always equal 4. It will never equal anything else, but that won't stop people trying to make it equal something else...
 
Feel free to differ, but I'm unlikely to have a different view because I'm serene with this now. Life's too short to lose my cool over a DAP. 

 

[Healeyman]

   
Would adding the album release year in the tag ruin anything?

That has made no difference in mine.  Below has worked fine for me.....did I need that much info can't say but in iTunes I fill in all the blanks which allows me a great deal of flexibility with a large database.
 

 

[Fatalethal]

Being?

 
Jitter.. scary amounts of jitter.