Questions about playing music from USB

[Dragster]

Hey everyone! I have never owned a car that was capable of playing music from USB or an SD card (though my car will have nav, so that's irrelevant), so I had a couple questions.

1) Will any flash drive work, or do I need a special kind? Does USB 2.0 matter versus 3.0? Are some faster than others? I have heard that it needs to be formatted a special way--is that true, and if so, how do I do that (on a windows based computer)?

2) What is the best way to put music files on the flash drive? I would like to get the best quality possible.

3) Does the album art and track information show up on the screen?

4) Is there any difference in quality or ease of use between playing music from an iPhone versus a flash drive? I assume I can have my iPhone connected by Bluetooth and still listen to files on a flash drive, correct?

Sorry for my tech ignorance, and thanks in advance for the help!

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[Patrick S]

to answer the question about the album art, if it is saved on the drive and assicoated with the MP3 file, then yes, it will show. I listen to music from my phone through Bluetooth, and use the USB only for charging.

ease of use? the entertainment system will just play what you have connected without any intervention. The exception to that is when i want to play pandora, i have to start the app on my phone, and that is it, it will pick up and just play it. so, its all very easy to use.

If you have your music on your phone, i do not see any benefit to saving it all to a USB to play in your car.

 

[geokots]

I bought this http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/cruzer-fit/
It's insanely small so practically no chance of braking it. It has 2 USB ports so you can use that and still charge your phone in the other. You can also get an adapter to plug into the power outlet that has 1 or 2 USB ports just for charging. In total doing it this way I have 4 USB ports, 2 for data and 2 for charging. That still leaves one power port if you need it.

USB 2 or 3 doesn't matter. The port is USB 2 but if you have a USB 3 drive it'll be backward compatible.

It needs to be formatted as FAT32. Some are by default when you buy them. If not it's just like formatting any drive in Windows. (I'm anti Apple so don't know how it works there).

As for the music on your phone comment above ^. You will get better quality sound by ripping with as little or no compression as possible and with a direct connection. You lose some sound quality using Bluetooth. There's also the freedom of having up to 64GB of music always connected without using up the space on your phone.

My entire music library is on that little flash drive but I probably have 200 songs on my phone.

 

[Ericc B]

If you have your music on your phone, i do not see any benefit to saving it all to a USB to play in your car.

There is a definite benefit: sound quality

The regular bluetooth music streaming protocol uses the SBC codec, which is one of the most destructive audio compression algorithms ever devised by man. By using the USB port the car's audio system can read the files directly and without this additional compression/decompression, resulting in a seriosuly better sound quality.

Things would be different if both your phone and the Mustang's car stereo would support the much more advanced Bluetooth Apt-X codec. Unfortunately no OEM car stereo system supports Apt-X so far. Apt-X compatible phones are mostly found at Samsung and HTC and can be found here:

http://www.aptx.com/category/phones

 

[Dragster]

As for the music on your phone comment above ^. You will get better quality sound by ripping with as little or no compression as possible and with a direct connection. You lose some sound quality using Bluetooth.

What is the best way of ripping with little or no compression? Pardon my ignorance, but I've never ripped to a flash drive before. Also, how should it all be organized? Folders by artist, with sub folders for album? Again, pardon my ignorance...

 

[rduk]

I use iTunes and then put it on a flash drive. I take flash drive and put it into the USB port in the center arm rest, it sounds a lot better than going through the phone

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[rduk]

Just buy a good quality flash drive

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[Keyser_Soze]

What is the best way of ripping with little or no compression? Pardon my ignorance, but I've never ripped to a flash drive before. Also, how should it all be organized? Folders by artist, with sub folders for album? Again, pardon my ignorance...

Rip albums to a minimum of 256 kbps VBR (variable bit rate) or 320 kbps CBR (constant) in MP3 format using Winamp/Windows Media/Foobar2000/whatever. Put them on the stick.

 

[Grintch]

Just drop all the songs into the root directory? Or into artist/album subdirectories?

Can you shuffle play them or do you need to specify a playlist, artist, or song?

 

[Boff]

Thread revival!

^ just dragged and dropped from iTunes into an open window for my USB drive. When you looks at the drive content, the tracks are not in folders. Despite this, Sync indexes them all properly into albums/artists/genres etc. I can call up all these using voice commands, and shuffle works properly in all cases. The problem I am having is album art...only about half of them show up...most other just give a generic genre pic and some only a treble clef (no art and no genre presumably). I got my music from a variety of sources (CD rips, vinyl LP rips, iTunes, other legitimate download sources, torrents) and there does not seem to necessarily be a discernible pattern as to whether the art shows up. I had to ask iTunes to "Get Album Art" in many cases, and in some cases had to find jpegs and associate them with the albums in iTunes.

I would be willing to go through all the albums and drop a jpeg into each one, but as I say the mp3's are not organized into folders.

May just have to live with the inconsistent album art...but any advice is welcome.

 

[Boff]

BTW gracenote doesn't seem to be doing anything in my car, but I will continue to experiment.

 

[Boff]

Update...after my first long roadtrip, I am sad to report that Sync does not play albums correctly. It sometimes correctly identifies the first track, but then plays the rest in alphabetical order. I suppose I could go in an number all the tracks...but it is 3200 songs. I normally just shuffle all tracks so it is not a dealbreaker for me...but still aggravating.

Might have to pick up an iPod classic...

 

[HalfMoon]

Update...after my first long roadtrip, I am sad to report that Sync does not play albums correctly. It sometimes correctly identifies the first track, but then plays the rest in alphabetical order. I suppose I could go in an number all the tracks...but it is 3200 songs. I normally just shuffle all tracks so it is not a dealbreaker for me...but still aggravating.

Might have to pick up an iPod classic...

Proper tagging of the files will make them work in the correct order, if you view them as "Music" and not "Files". In "File" mode you would need names and directories setup, but that is a pain and not a good way to listen to multiple albums.

I sort mine on the USB in this directory structure: /Music/Artist/Album/Disc x/Files.

Disc X is optional and I only use it for albums with multiple discs. But all the tags indicate the name, artist, album artist, track, disc number and the album art is embedded in each file.

 

[Stam616]

Would getting an iPod be good to use through the USB? Will it go through playlists and not just play songs in order? I've never played music through a USB in a car so I would be willing I get a iPod nano or something if I know it will work the way I need it to

 

[Boff]

Proper tagging of the files will make them work in the correct order, if you view them as "Music" and not "Files". In "File" mode you would need names and directories setup, but that is a pain and not a good way to listen to multiple albums.

I sort mine on the USB in this directory structure: /Music/Artist/Album/Disc x/Files.

Disc X is optional and I only use it for albums with multiple discs. But all the tags indicate the name, artist, album artist, track, disc number and the album art is embedded in each file.

Hmmm I thought iTunes would take care of that...obviously not! (I dragged and dropped from iTunes into the USB window).

I Googled some mp3 file-tagging programs...is that what you used?

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