I have noticed something interesting before, but never really thought about it. However, today - i really noticed that some tracks - no matter what the track number on te ID or file name is- order themselves correctly as the CD they were orriginally taken from. For example. My friend gave me a few coltrane CDs in MP3 format. He has the file names correct, but they have track numbers that are strange.. One 5 song CD has the track numbers 1, 3, 5, 6, 9. Totally wrong. However, when i bring up sort by artist, album, the songs come up in the correct order as noted by the album\'s liner notes. I.e.: the first song\'s ID shows track number 6, and its name even reflects the track number 6, but it displays as the first song on the album when listing via artist/album as it should from the album\'s liner notes..

What causes this?

most media data happens to have meta data included. For mp3, they are called ID3 tags.

I know.. but if you notice in my post I mention that the track number in the Id can say 10, but if the ACTUAL order number of the CD should be 1, it seems to order the proper way instead of by the id tag. maybe it was just coincidence.