Perfectwave SACD Transport - USB Stick Playback

Audio Components Transports
1

Starting a new topic as I could not find anything related.

Having trouble with playback order. Linda Ronstadt - Silk Purse. Skips the even tracks, then plays them later.

Other sticks play in order just fine.

Details: AIFF.
All files on the root directory.
New SanDisk Cruzer Blade 8G - formatted MS-DOS (FAT 32).
Tried several file/filename edits: took out spaces; took out jpg and pdf files.
Have not tried copying just the music files to the stick, excluding the jpg, which seems to backfill the thumbnails.

Would love to see this thread turn into all of the experience that people have with USB playback.

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2

This stick works fine, so I tried changing the file extension to aif. No dice. Both sticks music files are type AIFF audio.

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3

I wish PSA would have a software update to add sub folders. It would make so much better to attach you USB stick and pick any album or file.

4

I would try this first. It’s cumbersome to have to keep changing the files but with only music on the drive my experience has been fine.

If that fails, any way to convert the AIFF to a FLAC?

5

Thanks,

I have sticks that are AIFF, with thumbnails, plus a jpg and a pdf that work fine. No diff in sample rate either, not even the seller of the file, so scratching my head.

6

Same issue using a USB stick with the PST.

7

It has been observed during the PST Beta testing, PST USB play back order is based on file create time, not the filename. I.e. FIFO (first in / first out) first copy in file will be played first.
When select a group of files, copy into USB, the file create time will be random, since computer will copy several files the same time. So, copy file one by one to have file create time in order, will fix the problem.

8

Ho. ly. Crap.

And thanks very much.

9

I still wish PSA would have a software update to add sub folders. It would make so much better to attach you USB stick and pick any album or file.

How about it @Paul! :innocent:

10

I’ve occasionally struggled with playback order of files on car audio systems, which seemed to have a mind of their own, totally disregarding how I manipulate file names to suggest a correct playing sequence. That led me to learn about metadata, and how the file name we see in our folders isn’t necessarily the most important tag. To discover now that time of file creation can affect playback order, too, is disconcerting. There go any plans for batch copying. Vacation prep time has just increased exponentially! :wink:

11

I have same USB play back problem on my RAV4. It is for French lessons, but my RAV4 just plays it with its own mind, jumping around lessons, so, sometimes I get an easy lesson, sometimes I get advanced one. Fun way to learn a language this way. :slight_smile:

12

Would someone @psaudio please explain the rules for USB stick reads? What determines the track play order?

Went back at this today, this time armed with an app for changing file dates called Touch - Modify Date and Time for Mac/OSX. All changes made to the album and parameters posted at the top of the thread.

I’m wasting a LOT of time getting no clear pattern here. One thing is for sure: the file name affects play order, not just Create/Modified date/time.

Putting a different created and modified date for each track almost worked, but having an apostrophe in the filename made the first track played be the one with the apostrophe.

So, I put all dates and times to the same to see what would happen and took out all spaces and special characters from the file names. Started on the third track. Hmmm

Then, set each successive track to Created and Modified of next day and next minute to sequence the date and the time. No change.

Put a space in the file name after the track number that’s there for each. No change. Starts on 3rd track of the album.

Replaced those spaces with underscore character as are commonly used to avoid spaces. Now starts on the 4th track.

…

13

This is a three-year old thread, but here I am in June 2026 and also struggling with the play order of files on my Perfectwave SACD Transport when using a USB stick. I just can’t figure it out. I expect the tracks to play in alphabetical order of the file names, but it also seems to be dependent on the actual physical order of the files on the stick, or perhaps the time stamp of each file, or the order the files were previously played, or a combination of things. Has anyone come up with a solution?

Possibly related (but probably not related) my PST came with firmware version 2.4.5 – the PS Audio download website does not list that one --only up to 2.4.4. Anyone know if I would be better off going backwards to 2.4.4? What changes were made between 2.4.4 and 2.4.5?

14

Did you see/try this note posted much earlier?

15

Hi scotte1, I did read that note and it prompted me to try doing exactly what you suggested. But I was a bit unsure of the results --it did seem to follow the file creation dates for the most part but one time it seemed it did not. But it is easy to get confused because the track numbers displayed by the PST can be off as well, and I may have set up the test incorrectly, etc. Anyway, the posting in this forum is from about 5 years ago so the reason for my posting was to see it there was any updated information about this problem.

This seems like a fixable problem via firmware. The play order should be alphanumerically by filename. Why wasn’t this done?

Also… what about the USB gap problem? It seems that was never fixed nor explained, either.

And… what is the story of firmware version 2.4.5? Is it not on the firmware updates website because there is a bug in it so it was withdrawn? Should I be using 2.4.4? Or did PS Audio just forget to post it there?