Playback problems from USB stick

[thomaspf]

I wonder whether anyone else also experiences this issue.

I put some music on a 2GB USB stick and there are a couple of problems that look like software bugs in the DIS to me. I am still waiting to receive my 120GB drive but some of the problems make me wonder whether this is actaully a good idea.

Once in a while the head unit can not find the USB key. If I unplug and re-plug it everything works fine. This a a bit annoying but most of the time things work fine.

Switching bwtween tracks is not handled well. Unless there is sufficient silence this can sound quite odd. For tracks that are continuous without silence there is clearly no gapless handover but some cut either at the end or the beginning. This is rather bad for live recordings that are single continuous performances.

While playing back the tracks on the USB stick the software player sometimes get stuck in a loop where it does not progress anymore but repeats a very short segment from the end of the song it was playing over and over. This is rather annoying and needs to get fixed

btw. I experimented with mp3 and WMA files in various bit rates and ended up with 325kb WMA. Sounds indistinguishable from the CD to my ears.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[BaywayRic]

Is your USB drive formatted as a FAT32 disk??

 

[thomaspf]

Yes. This does not seem to be a problem with the USB drive but the playback software.

It works okay most of the time and a disk error would not result in an endless loop.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[jake the snake]

I have a 8gig stick that works flawlesly

Never had a problem

 

[Wordman]

I use a 32GB stick with no problems. I had to rearrange the files, though, as it seems to take a longer to "page down" the more folders there are.

 

[blasterguam]

I also have a 32GB thumb drive that works just fine. Sounds like there may be some software already installed that might be the problem.

 

[thomaspf]

My USB stick only contains music and the problem is very much there with either MP3 or WMA compressed tracks.

Which program do you guys/gals use to compress the music? I am using JRiver Media Center which uses Lame for MP3 and the system libraries from Windows XP for WMA. What bit rates do you compress with? I have the problem at 320Kbit/s. Maybe the software is just buggy at high bit rates.

I am still waiting to get my 120GB drive delivered and will see how that works when it arrives. And yes the speed to navigate between the folders is very slow.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[Wordman]

I'm using iTunes set to import my CDs as 192kbit/s MP3 files. I then copy the files from the My Music folder to my stick. Some fixing of titles, and reorganizing of folders is required. But no problems so far. Sounds good in the car!

 

[Richard Ft. Lauderdale]

I have a similar problem with a USB stick. Sometimes when a song starts or ends there are a few notes that are played and then repeated. Also, it won't always move foreward to the next song. I assumed I was just too old for this new fangeled technology. I have already forgotten how many gigs the stick is. I think it is 8 gigs. I haven't a clue how it was recorded (how many bits etc.). I had to have my partner make the recording for me. He's much younger than me. When I tried it didn't work at all.
I remember when a car only had an AM radio and the clock never worked after the first month.
I am amazed by this car.

 

[Wordman]

Remember 8 tracks? LOL...

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[Richard Ft. Lauderdale]

Remember 8 tracks? LOL...

Those didn't come along until much later. I'm not sure why I never had one. I was probably still trying to figure out the AM radio and how to get that friggin clock to work again.
The real truth is the 8 track was probably far too expensive an option for me at the time.

 

[thomaspf]

I have a similar problem with a USB stick. Sometimes when a song starts or ends there are a few notes that are played and then repeated. Also, it won't always move foreward to the next song.

That is exactly the behavior that I am seeing. I wonder whether this has something to do with what program is used for the conversion. All my files have tags and even include album art but I believe that is also true if you use Itunes.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[Wordman]

That is exactly the behavior that I am seeing. I wonder whether this has something to do with what program is used for the conversion. All my files have tags and even include album art but I believe that is also true if you use Itunes.

Cheers

Thomas

Thomas - I use iTunes, all my MP3 files have tags, many have the album art thumbs, and I haven't had any problems. That suggests the file format isn't the issue. Have you tried a different stick? Mine is a 32GB generic from Microcenter, so nothing special.

 

[Richard Ft. Lauderdale]

I think the problem with the USB stick not playing properly may be related to leaving the stick plugged into the car. I believe for an iPod the manual says that you should not turn the engine on or off with an iPod plugged into the car. I think the same thing applies to a USB stick. Twice today when I started the car with the USB stick plugged in I had a problem with it not moving on to the next song. When I unplugged the stick and plugged it in again while the engine was running it worked fine. I believe it probably does not initialize properly when the car is started with the stick plugged in.

 

[Wordman]

I think the problem with the USB stick not playing properly may be related to leaving the stick plugged into the car. I believe for an iPod the manual says that you should not turn the engine on or off with an iPod plugged into the car. I think the same thing applies to a USB stick. Twice today when I started the car with the USB stick plugged in I had a problem with it not moving on to the next song. When I unplugged the stick and plugged it in again while the engine was running it worked fine. I believe it probably does not initialize properly when the car is started with the stick plugged in.

Richard. I have my stick plugged in all the time, and can start or stop the car without issue.

Dick

 

[Richard Ft. Lauderdale]

Richard. I have my stick plugged in all the time, and can start or stop the car without issue.

Dick

Hmmm? Maybe others can relate how they do it.

 

[thomaspf]

I do see some initialization issues once in a while. They go away by unplugging the key and putting in back in.

Again Hyundai probably needs to tune that code a bit more.


I finally received my 120Gb hard drive yesterday and have been loading music on it. My 4.6 is in the shop rigth now to get a RIM replaced. I will ge tit back on Saturday and I will post the details on how the new drive works.

I am still wondering whether the hange are realted to the format I am using. I encode with WMA VBR high quality which comes out to be 325Kbit/s stream rate.

I would be interested to know what MP3 encoding Itune uses. Is that VBR or CBR and at what bitrate?

Cheers

Thomas

 

[loch rob]

I am using a 32Gb stick with MP3 files ripped at 256Kbit/s. Orginally I had all the albums in the root directory which took way to long to scan through. Since this time, I have restructure into more subdirectories, which makes surfing for the right album easier. The scan time when switching to the USB is only a few seconds. I have only had an issue with reading the drive one time. I unplugged and replugged, fixing the issue. I have the stick formated with FAT32. 31.6Gb on the stick is filled. As a result, I am not sure I will carry many CDs in the car. Talk about flexibility.....

 

[Wordman]

Robbie

I have the same setup, except my MP3s are a mix of 128kbit/s and 192kbit/s - sound good enough for me, so I won't be re-ripping my CDs anytime soon.

I do have some CDs in my car - someone gave me a stack of DTS-encoded classical CDs (which can't be ripped to MP3), and the surround sound is really good!

Dick

 

[thomaspf]

It took me a couple of days to transfer s subset of my CD collection but I am happy to report that the 120Gb hard drive work fine in the Genesis.

Here are the components I used.

120 Gb Toshiba MK-1214GAH hard drive which I
bought here

plus an external USB enclosure for 1.8" which I bought here

The total solution runs about $140 including shipping. Mounting the drive inside the enclosure takes a bit of patience but is a traightforward operation. If the drive comes unformatted (mine was) you will need a format utility that allows you to format FAT32 drives > 32GB. I used this one. Windows XP or Vista limit formatting FAT32 file systems to 32GB but will work fine once you have the drive formatted with an external utility.

I have 881 CDs loaded to the drive in high VBR quality WMA files which comes to around 350Kbit/s. The quality is excellent and indistinguishable from a CD. The quality is a lot better than the analog output from an Ipod.

For faster navigation support I have organized the albums by Genre, alphabetic grouping of Artists, and tracks. Initial read of the drive takes a while ...

Cheers

Thomas