Damn, where does the time go? Can’t believe it’s been over 12 months since the last entry. I really did intend to make this a regular thing this time. Oh well. Shit happens.

Anyway, while I’m here I might as well add something worth reading. So I recently bought a new 2nd hand vehicle; a 2015 AWD, diesel, Ford Territory Titanium to be precise. Now this sucker has all the bells and whistles for a 10 year old Aussie-made Ford—which isn’t necessarily saying much because Ford always seemed to be behind Holden and others in this regard, but I digress—and one of those is the console Media Centre. This bastard is run by Ford Sync™2 which is fine but fuck the information for it is sadly lacking in actual details. So here’s what I’ve learnt about using this 10+ year old software to play your tunes:

  1. Do not bother trying to use a USB stick (aka USB drive aka thumb drive aka flash drive) larger than 32Gb because it can only read fat32. Elsewhere I read that it could read exfat so you could use a larger stick but when I tried it didn’t recognise the device. Correction: Okay, I was mistaken about this because it can recognise the exfat file system so it can read greater than 32GB—the mistake stemmed from me trying to play music on a 64GB USB stick that was still encoded at 96kHz. But wait, it gets even better! Not only does it recognise bigger USB sticks, it can actually recognise microSD cards when they’re used via a USB adapter, which is then plugged into one of the USB slots in the vehicle. I’m currently running a 256GB card.
  2. It does not recognise FLAC but it does recognise lossless WMA, so use that if you want the best possible sound. The size difference between FLAC & WMA isn’t that great, and the sound quality is the same. Remember, only losers use MP3:DAddendum: the literature says it can also recognise the M4A format but this is problematic because this format does appear to depend on the bitrate. I have some albums encoded in this format that play fine but they have a max. bitrate of just 512 kbit/s. Now, while trying to figure out the issue with the cover art (see entry 5) I ripped an album as Apple Lossless (.m4a) using a different encoder which put the bitrate at varying sizes far higher than 512, and the Sync2 software couldn’t recognise them.
  3. The bitrate doesn’t seem to matter if using WMA but do not try to use a file with a sample rate higher than 48kHz. I had a number of albums ripped at 96kHz but it couldn’t recognise them and it took ages before it finally dawned on me that the sample rate was the issue. The encoder software I was using (dbPowerAmp) switched the file format to WMA but didn’t touch the sample rate. I switched to a different encoder (Xrecode 3) and it downgraded to 44KHz and all was well with the world again.
  4. Good luck trying to find out any real information on the Ford AU website; one of the least-user-friendly websites on the internet.
  5. It has taken me even longer to figure this one out but I finally got it! If you want to see the album cover art you’ve embedded in the WMA file instead of the generic images that come with the software, ensure that the image dimensions are no greater than 500×500 pixels. The size of the actual .jpg file doesn’t seem to matter, just the dimensions of the image. Anything larger and it defaults to the generic images. The program I use to view image files is XnView MP. I’ve been using it since around 2014 and it has only gotten better and better over the years. It has always had the ability to resize images but nowadays can do a whole lot more, so is highly recommended. It is also free but I’ve donated a couple of times because it is worth the money.

While I’m “here” and “talking” about this stuff, I might as well give a shoutout to my man, Florian Heidenreich, creator of Mp3tag, one of the most useful tools on my computer. I forget when I first discovered this program but it must be at least 20 years ago now, and I’ve never stopped using it. Like XnView, Mp3tag is also free but has been so useful over the years that I’ve sent 4 donations so far.

Edited January 30, 2026.