Playing music from thumb drives, memory sticks, etc in car?

Not very happy with performance of this feature in my new car (Fiat 500 L)

How long does it take in your car for the music stick in the USB port to get recognized and start playing?

It often takes 30 seconds (I've timed it) for the music to start in this vehicle.

Is that typical, or do I seem to have a defective design or player.

 

Mine can take that long (Dodge Dart). Depends on how full the drive is tho'.

 

A lot of the new systems build indexes every time a stick is loaded for search functions. The more metadata the longer it takes....same with rive size too. One thing for sure, to avoid frying sticks do not leave them in when starting the card. hard lessons learned!

 

I have an iPod attached that cues up in about 5-6 seconds after starting the car (2011 E350).

 

I've kind of wondered what's going on - so far all I can get in the way of performance is that the unit plays all tracks, no matter what folders they are in on the memory stick, in alpha order. And if I change sticks, it plays the next one starting at the same point in the alphabet. Truly weird logic...

I've had no frying, though I have restarted the car many times with a stick in place. Maybe you were unlucky? .

 

It will happen eventually...I even cooked an IPOD. Does you car have it's own drive? Mine does and I usually copy some stuff on it for when the radio pisses me off.

 

seems 'strange' that a stick would get 'cooked' just in starting the car, after all, there's a flash card in the navigation system that stays there all the time. Nothing in manual(s) I have seen talks about it. Maybe some cars/sticks are more sensitive to this?

I leave mine in all the time except when adding/adjusting songs. Mine (2013 Hyundai Elantra) plays things in alphabetical order starting with the first folder (alphabetically) then songs within that folder alphabetically. I don't have any loose songs outside folders. I have a 4GB stick that was almost full, seemed to take much less than 30 secs. to begin playing. If I add songs using my iMac there's "ghost" files that the player 'flips' thru first before playing songs (Mac-centric files that I can't see nor get rid of on the iMac, but can on a PC). That only takes a second or 2 for all of these files (10ish files in a folder) to flip thru though.

I know my stick has only up to 192kbps mp3s on it - there is I think some 'warning' (or maybe just discussion) about playing higher bitrate files. I think it 'balks' or takes longer to play those above that, maybe worth checking out.

I guess if you have 500 songs all not in folders, and use a Mac to load them on the stick, and also use 320kbps bitrate mp3s, that might (all) be the issue.

FWIW, HTH ...

 

I've got a 2012 VW GTI and can use SD cards. I don't buy fancy ones that have faster RAM or anything. Mine are populated with 384kbps MP3's. They sound marvelous in this environment.

I have 3 or so, with different types of music on each. Access is instantaneous, though I've had to replace a few files that have had strange playback issues. I always put my music in folders, organized by music genre/band/album.

If I had to guess, you might have all of your music in one folder, and it's taking that long to create a directory? The whole arrangement is more than satisfactory.

 

I use an aftermarket Panasonic MP3/CD deck in my truck - ~2 gig only takes seconds to boot up and play. The (mini) 4gig drive stays installed 24/7.

 

You've got a defective design. I had one of these and it took easily 45 seconds to load up.

Go with a Pioneer model and it takes about 5 seconds for a 16 or 32 gig.

What model is the head unit?

Also, there is no danger (or shouldn't be) of leaving the flash drive in the car when starting up. I've used at least 5 different models of these flash drive based units and never had any issue.

I use a mix of 256 AAC and 320 mp3 usually.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions.

It does sound as though some do take a significant amount of time to 'load' but I'm going to take it back to the dealer and get some answers about what's going on. There are other issues.

I'm really annoyed that so many new vehicles are coming without cd players. At least I knew how to work those.

 

I've had the same flash drive plugged in to my car for over a year without removing it. I've never had an issue and it's still going strong.

 

Best results is when I use cheaper 8g sticks and use MP3 instead of WMA for most, although it doesn't seem to matter. I use Linux at home, so MP3 is much easier....

 

I haven't tried MP3 in the car, just WMA. I think I will try some MP3 programs, see how they behave.

 

Don't format the sticks in NTFS.... Should be in FAT16.... the small ones.

Sometimes the smaller sticks can initiate faster.....

 

I use 4th generation iPod Touches playing 16 bit/44.1k .wav files in my car stereo. While not a stick, the problems are the same. Now my system is overly complicated but still, it takes a good 20 seconds for everything to sync and settle down after I first put in the key. Seems to be the nature of the beast.

 

Sorry to cut up your post but I have a 2013 Sonata.....I could have sworn I read it in my manual when I was looking up the capacity stick that can be used....however, this is my second Sonata....my 2012 was lemon law'd out due to defective electronics....5 radios and 3 cruise control modules. It may have been in the 2012 manual.

I think since USB requires some power the notion a surge might happen during ignition is the issue they try to avoid.

 

Try a free program called DRIVESORT. You can arrange the music files the way you want them to play, save it that way and they play in that order no matter what machine you use. DRIVESORT. Free. Google it.

 

That may be an issue. Just use 256 AAC or 320 AAC if you're worried about the sound quality. You won't be able to tell the difference in the car.

 

Whoops! My bad ... I have only a PDF of the 2012 manual and there ARE many cautions about having the USB stick in place when starting the car. What a PITA though, I'm just gonna leave mine in there, after all it was only a couple dollars, and I have all my files/folders on my backup HD.

Actually also, the navigation flash drive I was talking about is in my wife's Altima. Maybe they aren't affected the way USB drives can be ...

 

There's a little tiny dumb operating system in the car player -- typically a variation of Linux -- that accesses the USB drive. They don't put a lot of money into making the thing work fast, because it's kind of like a toaster. And don't laugh... there are toasters out there with Linux in them.

The dedicated players out there, like iPods, have been optimized to run a lot faster because they get rid of a lot of the clutter and deliberately engineer the software for speed. As a result, you generally hear the music within 5 seconds of pushing Play, even from a dead stop.

If the player can damage a USB drive just when you start the car, I'd say this is a very, very bad design.

 

I'm a newbie at all this stuff. (I've only just recently learned how to use Windows Media Player to take music from my cds and make WMAs or MP3s to put them on a stick for the car.)

The car also has a jack for "auxiliary" devices and I bought a mini-cd player that works from that, but battery life is not great and sound was noticeably poorer, plus the device has to be set somewhere, with a wire running to the outlet.

Would an MP3 player (I've never had one) have the same issues?

 

I've got an aftermarket head unit in my car with USB and 3.5mm jack connections. Not an expensive unit: £120 or so. Have tried various USB sticks with both MP3 and WAV files (as well as connecting the phone via the jack lead) and it picks them up pretty much instantly and have had no issues at all. I've nothing to offer other than that as an experience, and sorry yours is taking so frustatingly long!...

 

My WAV files start playing immediately from 256GB flash drives in my BMW 3 Series. One caveat is that I've saved my live albums as continuous files, as the car can't play gapless from external media. Every now and then (one in fifty times), playing starts from the beginnings of the live tracks instead of from the point that I previously left off. As the FF function works at about 4x, moving ahead to the 40th minute point can be a major pain, as I have to hold the FF button down for the entire time. Other than that, no complaints at all.

 

I have a Pioneer DEH-33HD (around $90 when it was new) and it starts playing immediately, but the largest I have is an 8GB so I'm not sure if a larger thumb drive would take longer. The only downside is having to scroll through album titles alphabetically, but considering the amount of music crammed on the flash drives it's worth it.