Playing Music via USB in Prius C

Hi everyone,

A few quick questions regarding using a USB stick on a Prius C. As my latest iPod has died, I decided to focus on using a USB stick.

a) Why do some album covers show up and some don't. I play the MP3 on my iTunes, Windows Media Player or VLC Player and I see the album cover, but some won't show on the stock radio (2015 Prius C).

b) What audio file formats have you been able to play via USB?

c) Has anyone found ways to have non-English text display for playback? I listen to a lot of Japanese, Korean and Chinese pop music, so it kind of sucks of having to rename nearly every artist/band name, track title and album title as it becomes quite tedious for each track.

D) Currently, I am using a 4GB stick and it takes a little while each time the playlist has to refresh, each time I start my car. But I would like to move up to a 32GB or 64GB USB stick. But I was wondering how long the wait time is for the playlist refresh? If it's too much, then I'll probably use a 8GB or 16GB. And any speed differences on a Prius USB if it was USB 2.0 or 3.0?

Thanks in advance!!!

 

An Update:

a) Why do some album covers show up and some don't. I play the MP3 on my iTunes, Windows Media Player or VLC Player and I see the album cover, but some won't show on the stock radio (2015 Prius C).
==
I fixed the cover issue, making sure that iTunes or via VLC shows the correct album covers.

b) What audio file formats have you been able to play via USB?
==
I haven't tried many but notice that .mp3, .m4a didn't, didn't try .wav, .aiff or flac


c) Has anyone found ways to have non-English text display for playback? I listen to a lot of Japanese, Korean and Chinese pop music, so it kind of sucks of having to rename nearly every artist/band name, track title and album title as it becomes quite tedious for each track.
==
There's no way, so I ended up romanizing titles and names. It's tedious but easier for me to do a straight title and album track on iTunes all at once. For this, I gave artists or bands with multiple albums the same name as I would rather have one playlist of that artist or band rather it being separated by albums.

D) Currently, I am using a 4GB stick and it takes a little while each time the playlist has to refresh, each time I start my car. But I would like to move up to a 32GB or 64GB USB stick. But I was wondering how long the wait time is for the playlist refresh? If it's too much, then I'll probably use a 8GB or 16GB. And any speed differences on a Prius USB if it was USB 2.0 or 3.0?
==
I only used 2.0 USB, not 3.0...

4GB - 1 Minute Wait for song list to show up
8GB - 2.5 Minute Wait for song list to show up
16GB - 4 Minute (almost 5 minutes) for the song list to show up

Your Mileage will vary of how much different bands/artists, etc. you put on there, I put a whole variety to fill up each stick to see how long things would take.

While I barely could tolerate the 4-5 minute wait time for the song list to show up for the 16GB, it's what I will be using primarily for my music and 8GB and 4GB for my audiobooks/podcasts, definitely don't want to use a 32GB or 64GB or else I would be waiting forever.

 

For the 16GB, I have possibly several thousand on there. But I believe its YMMV because some MP3 files sizes are larger than others (ie. podcasts, audio books, 2 hour straight play remixes, etc.) Also, I don't know if there are differences of 3.0/2.0 USB drive and if certain brands show differences in read speed.

It's important to note that for the 4GB I used Sansdisk, for 8GB I used PNY and for 16GB I used Verbatim. All cheap versions...nothing significant.

The long load times is for the artist/song lists to be generated when it's first initialized when the USB is plugged in. It takes awhile to load. If you remove the USB and plug it in, for me, I have to wait around 4 minutes.

It will play a song right when you start (I'm guessing the first song that was saved on the USB) but you can't select an artist or a song until the list is fully generated.

Ideally, you want to leave your USB plugged in and so it remembers the first song you played and such and the wait time for loading artists/albums lists are decreased to around a minute.

 

Cool! So, your stereo allows for voice command to select artists and songs?

 

That's cool and convenient. Do the Prius C3's and the C4's have the better Entune stereos with voice recognition (is it the nav based stereos)?

 

Before I bought the cheap ones, I bought a 3.0 memory stick but it was a 64GB (Before I learned about the lag). I'll probably get an 8GB or 16GB 3.0 stick to test.

 

We used Sandisk Cruzers for work. I don't use them anymore because I have seen the plastic part come off completely leaving the metal in the USB port and it was a pain removing. But I wanted something I can easily pull out.

Right now my small OCD has me going through the motions of having to fix things on the MP3's (I dislike not seeing the album covers on tracks, found myself wanting to make the album tracks all the same, romanizing text for foreign tracks that are not displaying, etc.)

 

[what's going on with the forum and double posts...ahhh!]