Hi all. As a response to the quote above, my guess is you work for T.G.I. Friday's. That's how our CD player works. It loads it to the drive. I ran into this thread after looking for what a AUD file was. I dragged it from the cd onto my computer, changed the extension to mp3 and used windows media player to play the file. It worked! It's on 4 hour track. The wierd thing is that the file is still 158 megs even as an mp3. I guess the play network found out people were making their own disc' and they made it harder to make. The player itself now has settings that the disc must comply to to even download onto the system. Always tryin to spiol our fun. hmph!

HAHA!

Guilty as charged my friend.

You guys are all my heros...you are all the wind beneath my wings. The music at work is absolute garbage. You'd think a place like starbucks would have good-decent music...unfortunatly thats not true...antigone rising should burn in the streets. I appreciate all your guys hardwork on this and plan on bustin out w/ a playdisk of my own. thanks again all!
sincerely the anti-barista

The playdisc is in mono, allowing for more content to be stored on the disc.
These discs are created for a retail environment or 'background music'. This is how most comercial retail environments work as stero would be of no benefit unless you can make all of the customers stand in specific areas. This is what makes it possible to compress to such an extent. this is taken steps further with ethernet connections with large retailers who have their own gateway and submasking addresses where content can be left in pac files that are automatically picked up in small quanities to supliment exsisting playlists and configurations such as dayparting or stimulus progression

Well then, we've done it before, let's do it again and make our own discs. The old process that worked on the old player does not work with the COMBO hard disc player. So let's figure this out like we have in our previous anarchy against Antigone Rising, and the Christmas songs soon to come. Let's use mp3 merger (http://mp3merge.netfirms.com/) to combine all the mono mp2's into a single track, and then rename the file to playdisc.aud, and then use the previous method for "data.txt", keeping track of the starting and stopping byte points for each song. It's not that hard. We just take the size of the playdisc file (wherever it may be in the process of adding songs), and use that plus 1 byte as the starting point for the song you are about to add, then that size plus the size of the new song as the ending point in bytes. hopefully, I'm not being too confusing. I'm not the best with explaining my thoughts. I'll test it out and report back here.

Ok sorry guys I have been following this forum for a while now and am unable to make a cd or to take a cd from the store and get the songs any further then winamp. Well i guess i should state thati work for eddie bauer and our playdisc player does not use a .text file when opening the disc it simply shows

playdisc.aud
playdisc.ace
and some playdisc command script

i have downloaded and ran mp3split to convert the playdisc.aud file but cannot get it to work with the current directions and as far as making my own disc from my own mp3s i can not find all od the programs listed to due so if anyone can walk me through this please do email aclark25@utk.edu thankyou

Hi folks,

I've been using the program listed by Phx for a couple months, and it's worked beautifully for that entire time, until just recently. The last few cds I've made have not played on the system. It'll do "reading playdisc" and then after a few moments, tell me I need to insert a playnetwork disc. Why would it all of a sudden not work anymore? Is it the system? I manage the store I work at so I know that no one is messing with the playnetwork system, so I'm stumped at how to fix it. Only one cd works now!

Hi all. I recently started working at Sbux and have been a long time customer. I love Sbux but hate the music. You would think a company that owns it's own music company could creat some good stuff instead they spend all there time making it harder for us to make playdiscs. anyway I am just starting on the progect and I appreciate all fo ya'lls work on it. I am going to get a disc at work today so if anyone needs the files off of one I will be happy to sent themn. also it seems to me that ya'll are making things hard on yourself. whynot just leave you songs together as one big ass file. and not worrying about splitting it up in the txt file. the less wrighting in that file that we can get away with the less room there is for error. anyway just a suggestion.

well I got a disc and I am not sure if they have different players in different stores or what but mine doesn't have a .txt file. it had the aud file a batch file that looks like it has the commands for copying the files to the dard drive player but doesnt have the infor for every track. then there is a compressed file entitled sw_update_c400.tar.gz and then there is a .auc file that I cant figure out what it is. anyone got any ideas.

here is the batch file commands on my disc:


[START]
Version=5.0

TITLE=#84 Stones Rarities - Novermber 2005

ID=782859
CONDITION=NEW

Start Date=2005/11/01
End Date=2006/10/12

[UPDATE SOFTWARE]
PRODUCT=C400
COMPONENT=ALL
BUILD=20050316
SOURCE FILENAME=sw_update_c400.tar.gz
SOURCE FILETYPE=TAR.GZ
CONDITION=GREATER

[ALTER DEVICE]
SET OPTION ACTIVE ZONES=1
SET OPTION PERSIST PLAYLIST CHANGES=1


[LOAD DISC]
Zone=1
PlayList=776021

[ALTER ZONE]
ID=1

ALLOW SONG ADVANCE=1
ALLOW PROGRAM ADVANCE=1

SET DEFAULT PLAYLIST=776021
CONDITION=GREATER

[ZONE SET PLAYBACK TYPE]
Zone=1
Format=MP2
Bit Rate=80

i am thinking the compressed file on my disc is a software update for the dard drive player which is probably the reason that Controlled Denieds cd's stopped working. starbucks isnt a stupid company and they have got to know what we are doing and always trying to keep one step ahead for us.

Well, it is probably because your disc's expiration date has become invalid or past. You can fix this by either changing the date on your Playnetwork system, or by burning a new disc with a further expiration date or one that will never be reached. Some people have tried to put the year 2500 and things like that, but the player knows this is invalid. Try something reasonable, or do what I did:

For example, in the header of your DATA.TXT can look like this:

[Playlist]
Version 3.1
ID=419
Title=The Blah Disc
Programs=1 <-- the total number of artists or sections
Songs=1 <-- the total number of songs on the disc
ProgramAdvance=1
SongAdvance=1
Expiration=0 <-- if you set it to zero, it doesn't expire

\\\\\\\

Have fun.

I think we finally gave up on making our own discs and just started hooking up mp3 players to the amplifier, skipping the harddrive altogether. Welcome to Club Starbucks, although you might want to make sure Afroman isn't playing when you have a potential secret shopper coming through the drive-through.

At least, I assume. Nate hasn't brought in any new cds lately, but he might start trying again since he's transferring out of my store. Traitor.

I don't know if anyone would take there time to help me out on this, but I would Greatly appreciate it. I know you have some file text here for the starbucks cd. But I don't know how to put it together. I just started working for starbucks like 2 months ago, and I was certain there was a way to make a cd that would be able to play on that stupid machine. But I don't know how to put the cd together. :/ Help will be greatly BEYOND appreciated. You have no idea. I'm not that good into computer stuff [Only computer graphics], but If you give me directions, I can follow them well. If you want post them here so others can see them, or E-mail them to me at DxOxRxKxUxLxA@Yahoo.com.

Thanks alot.

OK, so... I used that clever prog that PHX did.. Got everything working fine, named the cd SBUX level 1 mode 2 etc.... stuck it in the machine at work and 'invalid format, disk has expired' WTF????? ok, so.. i changed the date format, im in UK so i changed it to dd/mm/yyyy didnt work so i also tried just plain and simple '0', to na avail.

im almost there and the cd's r loading... please can someone help me, 3 days to get this far and i still havent made a successfull CD!

your quick response would be recieved with great thanks!

Matt

Hey Skivey, check the text file on one of your store CD's and see exactly what format the date is in, then use that format when setting your disc's experation.

Sounds simply I know, but it might have passed you. Make sure you post back to let us know if the UK discs are in a different format. I know I curious to know.

Ok, so i got as far as getting winamp, and downloading the mp3split. Although i really dont know how to install it! And where the guy was talking about:
I became lost. Also, i cant figure out how to convert the aud to mp3. Any ideas?

Feel free to im me at computergeek3728

Has anyone discovered a way to play the songs in a certain order as opposed to playing it randomly. We all know that there are different albums that you can play from the original disc, but when it comes to creating your own disc has anyone been able to mimic this feature?

Playing the tracks in order is pretty much impossible as it would appear with these machines, but I've come up with a technique that allows you to play your tracks in order, but doesn't allow you to skip them.

What you do is use a sound editing program (my personal favorite is GOLDWAVE, currently v5.14 as of June.08.2006, check it out at http://www.goldwave.com/ , also is not that hard to find a serial code for)

Open an mp3, then open another mp3, and cut and paste one mp3 onto the end of the other mp3, and continue to do this until you virtually have a single file with a ton of mp3s in it...Just keep the file under 700mb, as CD-Rs are still skimpy nowadays.

I've used this method to create mixes, join together songs of an original album (i.e. Jimmy Eat World's futures) to a single file, so I can jump to a mix or a different album with the playnetwork machine.

so basically in a nutshell, you make separate mp3 mixes, and when you're ready, you use maker.exe and join them all together like separate songs. So when it skips randomly, at least you'll be jumping to a joined album or mp3 mix!

Convenient, eh?

email me at RaverBoy810@hotmail.com if you have any questions.

-J

Greetings All, phx here. I'm still getting a fair amount of hits/emails about the prog i wrote to automate making playdiscs. I had turned my site over to a buddy of mine because he had some code updates, but he's done nothing with it (except change the password so i can't get on). I'd like to still provide info when I possibly can, so I moved the project to my new site to put all of my projects in one place. http://phx.ifastnet.com/hearmusic.php .

I put a simple form at the bottom to allow posting of comments and I went through my email and posted all of the questions I've gotten about the project as comments. I don't have access to a player or CD's now, but I can still write VB.

cheers!
-phx
phxxxx@gmail.com

I've been using the utility PHX wrote. I managed to tweak the soruce just a tad so song titles display without the local computer path, man was that annoying, lol. On top of that, I manually edit my data.txt files afterwards for two reasons. The first is because i like to have more than just one giant program. I usually just make a disc containting several normal CDs, and i split it up into programs, one for each CD. It's annoying to do sure, but i feel it's worth it.

Second, and probably the better one, is i found a way to make the songs play in order, WITHOUT splicing the music as such.

[Program1]
ID=10000
Title=10,000 Days
ProgramPlay=Next
MaxPlayTime=0
SongPlay=Sequential
Songs=11
Commercials=0

The key line here is SongPlay=Sequential. the utility PHX wrote writes data.txt with SongPlay=Next, which for some reason makes the songs shuffle, but it will be the same shuffle order each time. with Sequential, the songs will play in the order listed in the data.txt file. As i said, i make discs with multiple programs, and it will advance to the next song and program in order without any problems.

Props for PHX for making that tool, it still works great.

You are my HERO!

How did you figure that out?

-J

Here's one for you guys. I work for MAC cosmetics and they recently implemented the Playnetworks system. I got a hold of one of the CDs and checked it on my computer. The files contained are as follows:
Playdisc (the nt command file)
Playdisc.auc
Playdisc.aud
sw_update_c300_2_3_1_RC4.tar
sw_update_c400_2_3_1_RC4.tar

when decompressed the two .tar files contain a lot of different files but none of them is a data.txt file...

Our system, you put the disc in it copies the music and updates the playlist and then you throw that disc away.

anyone have any thoughts?

The starbucks AUC file its very similar to the TXT file. It has all the start and stop times as well as the song title and atrist. The player in MAC cosmetics probably dosent need the TXT file to play at all.
The thing that interests me is that you throw away the CD? I'll guess that your player probably has a 1gb flash card imbedded in the machine or sticking out the back.
If you use the excellent maker program that PHX created, the data elements from the txt file will help you create the auc file.

That type of machine will make things hard for you because you'll need to reinstall the official songs from the throw away CD every time your finished playing your tunes. If you forget and LED Zeppelin is playing in the morning, you'll be in big trouble.

I actually do have some thoughts on that. First, it's not a flash card, but an internal hard drive. Second, i would not mess with this system at all. Newer Starbucks stores use this same machine. It probable uses the .auc file as an index, like data.txt is on mine. At the heart of this system, as you mentioned, the disc is copied onto the hard drive inside of the machine. If you were to make your own disc, and have it successfully run, your music would be on the machine, and remain on the machine. I am assuming that the music is deleted upon disc expiration. What you are doing in this case is leaving evidence that you are attempting to play your own music, and not music from PlayNetwork. I don't know about MAC, but at Starbucks, that violates a contract and i would have my ass fired. I would not hack this system and leave evidence if i were you. as for the *.tar files, they are firmware updates for the machine. note the filenames. c300 and c400 are model numbers. the numbers after that is the firmware version it will update the machine to upon first running that disc.

And rebirthUC, i figured it out by going through some old legit discs at my store. eventually found one that had that line in it, tried it and it worked.

I hope i have been able to help in some way.