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USB music?

Discussion in 'Prime Audio, Electronics, and Infotainment' started by eddd, Dec 31, 2016.

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  1. eddd

    eddd New Member

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    I just bought a new USB drive (SanDisk Ultra Fit 128 GB USB 3.0) for my Prime Advanced and loaded a bunch of music onto it; however, my car seems to just play random tracks, and the browse button is greyed out. My drive is set up to be within the specs listed in the manual: FAT 32, <3000 folders, <9999 files, <255 files/folder. Though, I did load 9000+ mp3s on it. I didn't have any issues using another USB drive with only ~100 tracks on it.

    I'm guessing the car just needs time to process all the data on my USB drive for the browse function to work, but I was wondering: does it try to do this every time I start the car, or does it only re-check whenever the USB drive is actually unplugged and plugged back in? Any ideas?
     
    #1 eddd, Dec 31, 2016
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  2. ttait

    ttait Active Member

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    Mine had to prepare the 1st time I used it, but now it's very fast. MUCH faster than my 2010 was. I haven't removed and re-inserted the drive so I don't know if it indexes every time, or just the first time then writes a small index file. And the alpha search function works very well, something that I often cursed on my previous Prius.
     
    #2 ttait, Dec 31, 2016
    MikeDee and eddd like this.
  3. eddd

    eddd New Member

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    about how long did it take to index your USB drive? and about how many songs did you have on it? thanks.
     
    #3 eddd, Dec 31, 2016
  4. ttait

    ttait Active Member

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    Maybe a minute or less. Thousands of songs. It's a 16GB drive mostly full of MP3s. I did a time calc once and it's about 3 weeks of music.
     
    #4 ttait, Dec 31, 2016
  5. eddd

    eddd New Member

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    Just a little update.

    After downsizing the number of files on my USB drive significantly (from 9000+ to only ~500 now), it loads up pretty quickly (within 30 seconds of being plugged in). When I had 9000+ songs, my browse button remained greyed out even after I had the car running for about an hour. I presume the Prime Advanced just isn't great at indexing thousands of files and hundreds of folders.

    I also discovered that the Browse function is not what I was hoping for. I like to listen to albums from start to finish... or at least have the songs sequenced in album order; however, the Prime lists the tracks alphabetically by song name if you browse by Artist or Album. My workaround is to browse by Folder, which sequences the tracks alphabetically by filename (and my filenames are such that they preserve the album sequencing).

    I was also hoping that browsing by Folder would preserve the different levels of folders/subfolders; however, it only lists the actual folders containing mp3's regardless of if they're nested or not.

    Also, it's unfortunate that you're only allowed to use the scroll bar when browsing by Folder, which is unlike browsing by Artist, Album, Song, etc. where there's buttons that let you quickly jump around the alphabet.

    In the end, I just made a handful of folders with a bunch of different songs that I'll play in shuffle mode. And I also added another handful of folders by album. I didn't want to add too many folders; otherwise, scrolling down the "Browse by Folder" list would be too much. I suppose I'll just need to rely on my phone when I want to listen to an album that's not already loaded on my USB drive. First world problems, I suppose.
     
    #5 eddd, Jan 4, 2017
  6. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Thanks for the update on the USB function.

    I wonder if you can use the voice command? Maybe that's why it takes time to index the files/folders.
     
    #6 Tideland Prius, Jan 4, 2017
  7. bingee3

    bingee3 Active Member

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    Make folders on your USB stick , name them , then put 40 or so songs in each folder , works great
     
    #7 bingee3, Jan 4, 2017
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  8. Metalmanstan

    Metalmanstan Junior Member

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    Sorry to bring this thread back to life, but is the Prime only allowed a max of 500 songs? Or is there someway to get more?

    I have over 1000 songs on the usb and it only comes up with 500. Thanks!!

    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
    #8 Metalmanstan, Mar 29, 2017
  9. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    According to the owner's manual, maximum:

    Files per folder: 255
    Files per device: 9999
    Folders in the device: 3000
     
    #9 Tideland Prius, Mar 29, 2017
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  10. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    In addition to the limits listed by Tideland, are all those songs in file formats that the car can play? My Gen3 plays the MP3s and WMAs, but doesn't recognize some material in other formats and simply doesn't show them.
     
    #10 fuzzy1, Mar 29, 2017
  11. Metalmanstan

    Metalmanstan Junior Member

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    Every song is in mp3 format. I make sure to format all my music that I download or that is on my computer to mp3 so it can play on almost anywhere. I'll go home and do the folder changes and see what happens!!

    Noe, if I seperate them into folders, will it only play the music in that folder or will it still play all of my music on that usb. Sorry for all the questiona, I'm at work!!

    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
    #11 Metalmanstan, Mar 29, 2017
  12. MikeDee

    MikeDee Senior Member

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    No need to worry about sorting since the songs are read into a database like an iPod.


    iPhone ? Pro
     
    #12 MikeDee, Mar 29, 2017
  13. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    It can do either, depending on how you select a playback mode.

    (Note: I can't speak for Gen4, only for Gen3 and my other brand vehicle. I'll just cross my fingers that Gen4 did not take a leap backwards.)
     
    #13 fuzzy1, Mar 29, 2017
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  14. Metalmanstan

    Metalmanstan Junior Member

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    It all worked guys. I threw 250 songs into separate folders and it now reads all of the songs. Thanks once again!!

    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
    #14 Metalmanstan, Mar 29, 2017
  15. mdhare

    mdhare Member

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    I had a thread on this a bit back with my experiences:
    yet another entune thread (usb browse not selectable?) | PriusChat

    After weeks of a USB stick with ~5000 files on it working [ie, BROWSE available within 60s of cold start], I added ~4 files and BROWSE didn't come back after 15 minutes. Long story short, it took somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes on a long-ish trip to re-index my ~5000 file stick. Several cold starts after that and I'm back to expected cold start performance.

    So, I don't know what the trigger is for reindex yet, but it can be long and painful. It seems like a sure fire way to see if re-indexing is going on (or, at least the car thinks it is) is to ask for "play artist" via voice commands, it tells you the index is being rebuilt and to try again later.

    I personally work around the album track sorting order by using Foobar2000 to retag the ID3 track title as "%tracknumber% - %title%". This unfortunately means the track tab is useless (all tracks begin with 01 - 99, etc). So this forces me to keep another copy of my files around.

    -Michael
     
    #15 mdhare, Mar 30, 2017
  16. MikeDee

    MikeDee Senior Member

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    Hmmm... Maybe a better strategy is to use smaller, multiple, usb thumb drives.
     
    #16 MikeDee, Apr 5, 2017
  17. bingee3

    bingee3 Active Member

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    Yes ... Smaller is better
     
    #17 bingee3, Apr 6, 2017
  18. bresna

    bresna Active Member

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    Has anyone gotten the artwork to display using mp3 files? I tried several different tagging options and I just can't seem to get the artwork to display. This is the first Toyota I've had where it couldn't display my mp3 artwork.
     
    #18 bresna, Apr 7, 2017
  19. MikeDee

    MikeDee Senior Member

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    Is the artwork on your thumb drive? There is a Gracenote database built in, but I can't remember if it's accessed when playing mp3s.
     
    #19 MikeDee, Apr 7, 2017
  20. bresna

    bresna Active Member

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    Artwork is on the thumb drive. According to the car's audio artwork settings, Gracenote is only accessed for iPods.
     
    #20 bresna, Apr 7, 2017
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