USB Music.

[Stanno]

I don't think correctly tagging a set of album tracks is either expensive or time-consuming. I have been using a free program called MP3Tag (www.mp3tag.de) for years and it takes less than a minute to check and, if necessary, update the tags on a single CD.
I agree with Mike that using voice control works well to play a single album.
Stanno

[Mikeg1]

I use MP3Tag to create playlists and they appear fine in Sensus. A text list under the Playlist tab, but with artwork within. I find it more intuitive at Playlists than my paid for MediaMonkey, which is fine for tags and art.

But again, it misses the point. Adding artwork, and tagging so the album appears graphically and as one within the Volvo system, is all well and good. In the days when WMP did it with ripping the album with cover art and track names were created fine as part of the rip process. Even so, if I ripped a CD in WMP now for my old Karoq the folder I saved it to, named as I wanted, would appear as a folder in the carousel. No tagging or artwork actually required. They were a bonus.

I'm sure Sensus is more sophisticated, and certainly searching by voice is a boon. But the need to buy and learn new software simply to display our own tunes to their best within Sensus warrants a thumbs down from me. It seems an afterthought - with the expectation that "everyone" would stream these days

And yet with an input for an Apple drive, no longer sold. Eh?

It's like saying the car will drive fine. But you have to be a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists to be able to drive it.

YMMV.

[Sherwood]

I can't say I've experienced much of an issue with the Sensus system and music. The only thing mentioned above which resonates is that multi-disc albums do appear on my system as Disc1, Disc2, etc (essentially separate albums), but that's because I've found a way of ripping stuff that plays nicely with all three vehicles, and with my home streaming system(s) via the NAS, that has that result. Manipulating tags differently would likely provide a single album occurrence with all discs in it.

I ensure that all my albums are ripped each to a folder named "Artist - Album", (No overarching "Artist" folder) with tracks in files named "01 Track Name", "02 Track Name", etc. The content is fully ID3 tagged with the appropriate values for "Artist" "Album Name" "Track Number" "Track Name". etc.

None of that is onerous, and Windows Media Player should (still) be quite capable of automating that process, and also embedding album art.

Sensus will happily play with such output (though I've had the odd issue where tagging/naming started out of alignment - easily fixed by renaming/retagging).

I don't particularly like the way WMP tries to take everything over, so in fact I rip to lossless .flac using Exact Audio Copy (which will populate all naming via look-up, and tag as you wish via a tagging profile you define and can re-use). The .flac files are used on my home system, but (being lossless) provide a basis for conversion to (smaller) MP3s for the vehicles. (USB stick and SD card). I use Foobar2000 to batch convert as many .flac albums to .mp3 equivalents as I need. Tagging and folder/file naming is carried over in line with a profile you can define and save for future use.

Both Exact Audio Copy and Foobar2000 can be used to rip to MP3 (I use EAC for .flac because of additional advantages) and both are free.

If any tagging requires subsequent adjustment due to minor errors during reference lookup, etc (spelling and capitalisation are good examples) I use Tagscanner to edit any offending values. This also is free.

Patently, there are many other bits of software out there that can/could be used, but they work easily for me, and a single end-to-end process provides entirely usable .flac and .mp3 for all my systems.

[Mikeg1]

1. My WMP no longer tags, gets artwork, or names tracks. It used to. There are many Google entries on this change.
2. Telling how all the owners who say how easy all this is are the techy ones using NAS storage etc. The rest of us just want to listen to our tunes in a way not requiring advanced computer qualifications. VAG don't require it.
3. I grew up in an era where the dog's bollox was a compilation on a TDK AR90 tape.
4. Not sure why the format the rip is saved in is relevant. But everyone of the techie types likes to tell us they save in a lossless format, usually .flac. It's very impressive. I'm very impressed.
5. I use the free MP3TAG for playlists and the £24 MediaMonkey for ripping, tagging, and cover art. I'm not doing any more. I'll stream my music service for anything else.

[Felindre]

If you ripped to the PC, what format did you choose? Media Player defaults to WMA (Windows Media Audio) rather than MP3/4... You can get a freeware converter... I did this so long ago I can't remember the details

Lot of chat on this today, just getting back to this question, I changed the default ripping format to FLAC. So there's no need for second processing.

Oh, and no I've not needed to tag any files even ripping with the media player in Windows 10, it labels it all just fine.

[Alexandrovich]

I got around this by buying a cheap ipod and loading my music onto that, and use bluetooth to play the albums. Works really well and gives the album art as well.

[ropetko]

I got around this by buying a cheap ipod and loading my music onto that, and use bluetooth to play the albums. Works really well and gives the album art as well.

Bluetooth is a lousy way to listen to music, especially if you have Harman Kardon speakers in your XC40. You'd better plug your iPod directly and you should hear an audible difference in the sound quality. That is if your MP3s are not 128-192 kbps but better.