A New MP3 Trigger Filename Proposal

by robertsonics

I’m considering changing the filenaming conventions for the MP3 Trigger. Currently, the triggers require very restrictive 8.3 filenames in the form of “TRACKnnn.MP3″. The navigation switch and serial protocol will play all of the MP3 files on the card, regardless of names or namelengths, using simple directory offset index – the nth MP3 file in the directory.

Without getting into the FAT32 vs FAT16 issue, there are two major complaints about this arrangement: First, the trigger track names don’t allow any flexibility whatsoever. Second, the order in which the nav switch plays the tracks is by directory entry order, not by name, and you don’t have any control over this unless you format the flash card and copy the tracks in the order you want them played when you click “foward” or “reverse”.

I’m proposing the following change: All tracks that you want to play on the MP3 Trigger must start with a 3-digit number “nnn…”, such as “001horns.mp3″ or even “023 Train Whistle.mp3″. The triggers would map to the tracks starting with “001…” through “018…” (and up to “255…” over the serial control port). The navigation switch would play the tracks in numerical order, even if they weren’t consecutive”, but would not play or even recognize any file that did not start with a 3-digit number.

This method would support long filenames, since I would only be looking at the first 3 characters, but keep in mind that long filenames use multiple directory entries and reduce the total number of files that can fit on a FAT16 flash card.

The biggest downside to this idea is that if an unaware user copied a random mp3 file to the flash card without putting numbers in front of the filename, nothing would happen. The way it is now, the nav switch will play any mp3 file, but not in any controllable order.

Also, please keep in mind that features like full alphabetizing would add lots of overhead and make it much longer to start a track. This proposal is an attempt to strike a balance between ease of use and speed.

By the way, I also just recently added a feature whereby Trigger 18 starts a random track – basically a shuffle trigger. If you jumper it, then it shuffles continuously through all the files on the card. I’d be interested to hear if people think this is a worthwhile tradeoff for losing one dedicated trigger input. I think so.

I welcome feedback.