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Android Auto / Samsung Music Formatting?

A

ab165239

Newbie
Hi,
anyone know of an actual manual for Samsung Music in conjunction with Android Auto?
What I want to know is how to arrange the directory structure, what music file formats are supported
and what playlist type to use. I have both .wav and .flac files on my computer that I want to copy to my
phone. I have copied a flac directory and a few wav directories. The flac seems to get recognized when I use voice to ask for the artist, but the wav's do not. I'm wondering if Samsung Music or Android Auto doesn't recognize .cue files? It seems to recognize .m3u files.
Anyway, I had hoped to have this folder arrangement
ARTIST1
ALBUM1
ALBUM2
ARTIST2
ALBUM1
ARTIST3
ALBUM1
ALBUM2
ALBUM3

I was hoping to use voice command to have Samsung Music go to a specific album, but thus
far it only works with the one .flac file folder with .m3u playlist. Can playlists be created manually
in notepad or other ascii editor?
 
Wow, so it's not just me. 74 views and nobody has any idea what I'm asking. Wrong forum? I put in automotive since it's android auto I'm discussing. Maybe that's wrong.
I have found that flac works better than wav presumably due to tags that can be used with flac, but not wav. So I'm hoping to convert my wav files to flac and re-create a m3u file. At least I think that's what I need to do l. I can convert wav to flav using EAC, but it seems I need to create a playlist which I assume is the same as creating a m3u or pls file, but I'm guessing at this point. Interesting how the phone and Samsung Music want flac, but my computer does not. It is astounding to me that media player does not play or support flac. I've found the flac page and added on the code that makes it compatible, but I'm dumbfounded (more than usual :-) at the industry incompatibility. Any suggestions ?
 
ab165239 said:
Wow, so it's not just me. 74 views and nobody has any idea what I'm asking. Wrong forum? I put in automotive since it's android auto I'm discussing. Maybe that's wrong.
Click to expand...

I know what you're asking, but on the other hand I don't use Samsung Music and Android Auto(I don't have a car), so can't help you. But hopefully someone reading this thread has experience, and can help.

I use Foobar2000 for my music, and that does recognise .CUE and M3U playlists, and plays .WAV and .FLAC, but have no ideas about how it works with Android Auto.

Good luck!
 
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In my opinion, and I've tried many different ways to play music off my phone using Android Auto, is it's a piece of crap.
I have much better results using Bluetooth than Android Auto...
In tandem with Google Assistant being always on mode.
Keep in mind flac and wav files are going to take up a lot of space, and I understand your quality concerns, but mp3s at 320 sound just as good.
Good luck brother...
 
Dannydet said:
In my opinion, and I've tried many different ways to play music off my phone using Android Auto, is it's a piece of crap.
I have much better results using Bluetooth than Android Auto...
In tandem with Google Assistant being always on mode.
Keep in mind flac and wav files are going to take up a lot of space, and I understand your quality concerns, but mp3s at 320 sound just as good.
Good luck brother...
Click to expand...

Thanks guys. My vehicle has only one usb/media port, so it's either the phone or the 250Gb usb that
has my music on it. I didn't know that my phone could have up to 200GB microUSB added, so I just ordered that. That answers your question about space. You're right as my wav files currently take up about 120Gb.
For the edification of others who might run into this problem, I'll list the fix here. First, let me restate the question so it's easier to understand.
Question - How to convert my library of .wav files to flac format including metadata. The problem with the various converters I ran into, is that they will indeed convert a .wav file to .flac. But when I try to use those flac file albums in Samsung Music, the album cover jpg and other data are not there. So, I can't use voice commands to ask for an album that has no name, for example. So to fix this problem without having to rescan every cd, I did the following... And, this has been a real learning experience that I didn't want, but I suppose this is good stuff to know in the long run.
First, I used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to convert the .wav files to .flac. That's the freeware that I normally use to convert my cd's to flac or wav. To convert the .wavs to flac is easy; just go to TOOLS / Compress WAVs... and select all your .wav files for a particular album and then when prompted, give it a destination directory to write the resulting flac files to. I wish there were a way to use the wav files as the source in EAC just as though it were scanning a cd. Then I could use the metadata search feature of EAC just like I were doing this from scratch with a CD. Maybe there's a way to do that, but I couldn't find it.
Second, you have to add the album cover and metadata back in. So, for that I used "Tag&Rename" 30 day trial. I might actually buy a license though as I really like how that program works. I'm not going to give every keystroke, but basically on the left hand screen is the folder view of your hard drive. Browse to the folder that has your newly converted flac files and click on that folder. On the right-hand pane, select all the flac files together, then click TOOLS/Load Album Titles. The default website didn't work as it also didn't on EAC. The musicbrainz site is permanently gone, so you have to choose another. So, I used Amazon, then chose diskogs.com and created an account there. You select all your flac files together, then go get the album and metadata, then once you find it, it fills everything in for you...the album cover, and all the metadata. It was really fantastic. Then you save the tag data to all your selected files. Then while all the flac files are still selected, you go to PLAYLIST, then "Save select files to playlist" and that creates your .m3u playlist file. Then you're done. So, while I don't have to rescan the cd, it's still some work to do.
Regarding how Samsung Music and Android Auto work...I agree it's not that user friendly, but neither is the interface to the usb drive. It's possible that other music programs might have better navigation features, but for now I'll start with Samsung Music.
Thanks for replying. I sincerely hope this helps other folks who may be trying to do the same or similar thing.
 
You're welcome. I'm not receiving email notifications when there are updates to this thread.
I went into my profile and checked a few boxes. Maybe that will fix it, but it seems backward that more than a few forums don't default to receiving notifications. What's the point of posting if you don't want a reply. I have a new question, so I'll start a different thread. thx
 
Adding that I'm trying other android compatible music players. Thus far I like Blackplayer the best. I like that it not only shuffles, but it allows me to manually click to the next album and random title in the shuffle list. That is a mandatory feature for me. I don't know yet if it offers a folder or directory view of my music like I presented in my original question, but I have edited all of the metadata on all my albums to include the artist's name prepended to the album name. That way when I browse to the album list, I won't have ten or more albums called only "Greatest Hits", not knowing who's greatest hits. I think this android auto interface is going to be better than the car's multimedia interface. I'm pleased to see that car makers are finally starting to get it in regard to making the android interface native to the vehicle instead of wasting time creating their own oddball music, phone and gps interface. I have an 2020 Acura RDX and they barely added android auto to the system. It came with carplay and they added android auto as a system update recently. Now I'm wondering if I can have two cell phones with the same phone number? I'd just as soon leave this addon permanently connected, if I could. Anyone know? Surely the new built in android interfaces in cars will require that capability.
 
A major drawback...
I've been testing my audio files in the garage in my parked vehicle.
Today I was driving and went to get a list of albums in android auto and I got
the AA menu warning stating that it won't display the rest of the list because I'm driving.
Oh man, this is a show stopper for me.
Hey, in the 70's I survived driving a 280Z stick with a bottle of beer between
my legs, smoking a cigarette. Surely I can browse a menu without racking up the vehicle.
I'm not condoning that behavior by the way, and I don't even drink any more. But this
nanny restraint is overkill and a show stopper for me. I see maybe a "xposed" work around, but that
seems hokey too. What a drag.
 
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