MP3 problems with Escape

srsellers · 01-18-2008, 07:14 AM

I purchased an '06 Escape recently with the audiophile MP3 6 disc changer. I created my first MP3 disc using Magix MP3 Maker software. The first disc works great, but I've burned several discs since then and none are working. The software is forcing me to use a UDF (Universal Disc Format), but my first CD burned using a Joliet format. Does Ford require the Joliet format for their players? This question was way over the dealers head

. Any help is appreciated.

BFC500 · 02-13-2008, 03:15 AM

I'm having the same problem also. Any help would be appreciated.

srsellers · 02-13-2008, 06:42 AM

I forgot to ask, is that a picture of your Escape? I have the same color, love that blue.

srsellers · 02-13-2008, 06:40 AM

Hi:

I finally got my MP3 to work, but it took some trial and error. I found there were a couple of different file formats available and I suspected that the Ford was particular about the format. I'm not an audio expert, but I did some research. The Ford players look for a file and subfiles that contain artist, album name, and song name. They have to have the files and subfiles available to play. The two formats I had available were the UDF (Universal Disc Format) and the Joliet format. UDF will not play in a Ford MP3 player in my experience. Joliet will have too long of a name so you have to shorten the file names. My program will do that for me, but I had to choose an ISO arrangement in my advanced options. I know it sounds kind of complex, but just remember that a UDF format doesn't work and start experimenting from there. I've got most of my music library in MP3 now and at 196 bps it sounds great. I love the subwoofer kick. I'm an old fart so I like CCR and other music of that era. Good luck with it. I'm using Magix MP3 maker deluxe 12 edition. About $30.00 from Best Buy

BFC500 · 02-13-2008, 06:59 PM

Thanks for the reply. That is my escape, I just got it last week picked it up in an online auction only 11k miles on it. Thanks again

deimos · 03-06-2008, 12:13 PM

I would return the software and get itunes for free from apple and select from the preferences menu to burn cd's in MP3 format and you should have no problems.Hope that helps.

BFC500 · 03-09-2008, 06:49 PM

deimos, Thanks, itunes worked great. Finally got it to work. Just make sure you burn it at 192 bit rate.

mdilworth · 11-01-2009, 01:20 PM

Thank you all for figuring this one out. Let me add my story.

So I just got a 2007 Escape, 6cd mp3 changer. First CD I put in it was a mp3 CD I burnt back in 1999, worked perfectly. I was all jazzed up so I burnt a stack of MP3 cd's, all of which would not work. It just said "reading" for about 2 minutes, disc error, and then when you went to eject it it would not eject. After trial and error I figured out that the only way to eject the CD's at this point is to turn the car off and start the engine again, to cycle power to the deck. Then if I was quick I could eject before it tried to read again. Awesome.

My old CD that worked was an old 74 minute 650MB one so I bought a stack of them which also didn't work. Tried no folders and short names, no go.

I hunted online for about 3 hours for ANY information about this stupid deck and it's specs. It's like they created a bunch of them and burnt the information and went out of business, that info just doesn't exist.

So I found this post finally and what did the trick was burning in Joliet format. This is not the default for most burners. I am using the freeware program CDburnerXP and once I changed this option all was good. File names/structure/bitrate(I used 128 bit rate) was not a problem for me. I even burnt some album art jpg's by accident and it still read no problem.

Thank you VERY much for this hint. I was almost ready to buy a new deck!
Have a good one,
-Matt

*edit* I also found that with my mp3 player you can put album art, lyrics and other stuff directly in the mp3. For a lot of my mp3s I actually went out of my way to add that. Unfortunately this causes problem with the mp3 player as well. There are 2 types of mp3 tags out there. ID3v1 and ID3v2. ID3v2 has all the fancy stuff in it so with another freeware program I found, Zortam MP3 Media Studio 9.4 I was able to strip out all the ID3v2 tags, just leaving the ID3v1 tags. As soon as I did this the remaining 25% of my mp3's that didn't work suddenly were fine.