USB for music maniacs

[Terryp]

Hi all

I’m waiting for my new xstar but a question on the music system please. I’ve always used discs, soon I’ll have to rely on phone or USB.

Can anyone advise that if using a USB that the screen shows every album on the USB sort of like Itunes would or does it just play from track 1 on the USB whenever the car is turned off. Many thanks.

[njf16154]

It depends on how you have your music organised on your USB stick. I have one that I just call 'Mixtape' and that will play all of the tracks in order, or they can be shuffled if I want some variety. On the other, I have a number of albums by different artists. Each artist has a separate folder and then each album has a subfolder. After I plug in the USB stick I then 'Browse' the contents and then select an artist folder and then an album subfolder to play whatever I want to listen to. Each album can be shuffled as well.

Hope that helps.

[Kremmen]

You need a USB 3 stick formatted to FAT32.

FAT32 is FIFO so you need to load the tracks/albums in the order you want them to play. When you turn the power off the head unit remembers where it was and picks up from the same point. I just use Windows Send-to option and that picks up the albums and tracks in the order they are on the PC, but just do one Windows folder at a time.

I think you can select random or select specific albums/tracks but I've never done either, I just let mine play in the order loaded.

I've also gone a bit overboard and I use Adobe Audition to normalize the whole stick so every track is the same volume.

[Lord Voltermore]

I have limited knowledge.   I just copied the music straight off my computer  onto a usb stick.  The car lists them by album, artist and track . Some how.   .But i do kind of have to play them   in order or select an album or track manually.
I have not yet been able to transfer playlists onto the usb  . There may be a  way   but I gave up early.   If all else fails I may  create psuedo  playlists by copying the tracks and making them into new albums.
 I have plenty of space for that on my  32 gb stick . Its best to get a compact one as full sized ones can easily get knocked.    I use one of these


https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-SDCZ430-032G-G46-Ultra-Flash-Drive/dp/B077VXV323/ref=sr_1_14?crid=3LNH6LQ3QS1UZ&keywords=micro%2Busb%2Bstick&qid=1673800994&sprefix=micro%2Busb%2Bstick%2Caps%2C216&sr=8-14&th=1 

[njf16154]

You need a USB 3 stick formatted to FAT32.

Pretty sure mine are all USB 2

[Kremmen]

My older USB2 sticks refused to play or played for a few minutes then stopped.

These were 2 sticks I'd been using in my 2013 Civic without issue.

I got the same low profile ones as the link above and they have never failed.

[njf16154]

Interesting - just checked and mine are definitely USB 2 and have never had any problems with them (I probably will now!!). Low profile Sandisk, but only 4GB or 8GB (I'd get lost with anything bigger!). With the low profile sticks you don't even notice that they're there.

[NoelM]

Just don’t use Amazon Music through carplay it’s absolutely crap. It plays all sorts of random rubbish halfway through playlists and purchased downloaded albums.
The shuffle feature now plays downloaded tracks in alphabetical order only.

[Nicksey]

I use a USB stick with all my music downloaded from a Brennan JB7. It gives artist and track info on the infotainment display. I always have it on shuffle. There is about 600 tracks on the stick I use in the car, all of which are selections from my CD collection. I have never used any of the streaming services, and never will.

[airon11]

I alsu use a USB stick with mo3...but I noticed that playing music from USB stick kills satnav voice as a bug...until infotainment is forced to reboot..if it is rebooted and I unplug USB stick satnav voice works...when I plug it back and play music  after a couple of directions i loose satnav voice ..

[Kremmen]

No such problem for me.

USB plays OK then when a navigation command is issued it mutes the USB, issues the command, then returns the USB.

[shufty]

... Same here.

[Nicksey]

No such problem for me.

USB plays OK then when a navigation command is issued it mutes the USB, issues the command, then returns the USB.

Ditto

[nowster]

The port itself is only USB 2.

And the USB stick is probably best with a capacity of 32GB or less, and formatted with a DOS partition table with one partition of FAT32.

It's unlikely that that old a version of Android will be able to cope with ExFAT. I've not tried ext2, but that might be a possibility too, depending on what's been compiled into it.

[Kremmen]

AFAIK the port only likes FAT32 formatted using the 'default allocation' option.

When I got my Jazz I brought over my previous USB2 sticks from my Civic and neither worked reliably so I got 2 low profile USB 3.1 sticks that have never failed.

I also seem to remember a post here where an incompatible file format had been used that was causing issues. All my USB tracks are .MP3