Modern Technology Questions / Radio & Computer Stuff (1 Viewer)

[Elbert]

So the question of "modern" is relative. Here is my question that is related.

I have a GM pickup with a OEM radio that accepts input from a USB device. I'm not sure but I think there is a capacity limitation as to what size of USB drive the radio will interact with with respect to capacity or data on the USB device.

So my question is ...What is the format of the data you place on the USB thumb drive for the radio to see and play the music properly. I assume there is more than just dumping *.mp3 or mp4 files on the usb stick or is it that simple. Do you have to format the data with different folders? I would like the radio to be able to determine the artist and song and obviously play through more than one song sequentially. I realize there may be limitations as to what different radios can do. But would be nice to load a bunch of my cdrom muisc on a thumb drive and be able to play albums by artist...etc. I of course prefer simplicity where possible.

in my case I'm dealing with a GM 2016 pickup with OEM radio that support USB thumb drive. I'm not sure there is a common universal approach to this as radios may deal with this differently, but seeking input. I'm talking about a USB thumb drive, not a ipod or phone or other electronic device (for this specific question.

Post up tips or even web site links. The GM owners manual does not go into any detail that I saw regarding the way to setup the usb thumb drive. I want to say there is some limitation on capacity of the thumb drive that the radio can deal with....so for example I may not be able to load 5 gigs of data on a 10 gig thumb drive if the radio will only see or can use / access 4 gig. I follow that, the formating and correct loading of the data on the thumb drive is the question. I've got a CDROM ripper, one is Itunes and the other is another tool I bought, but which Ive not used yet. I did search around on the web but never found a good site or info about the correct way to load music data on a USB thumb drive for playing on a car radio.

 

[mct75]

90% of head units will want a "FAT32" formatted flash drive loaded with .mp3 or .wma files. The folder structure typically does not matter. Most FAT32 volumes are limited to 32 GB, which means that limit shows up in a lot of other places.

I use this one and it works well in my Pioneer aftermarket head unit: Amazon.com: SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 16GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive- SDCZ33-016G-B35: Electronics

 

[FJCRAWLER]

WOW!
That went so far over my head.
I thought I had a problem deciding what station to listen too. But this is a whole new level.

 

[Elbert]

follow the FAT 32 format....I'm already there with that, follow the limitation on data size. I'll load up some mp3 files on one of my thumb drives and see what happens. I was reading on some forum that for the radio to recognize the artist name ...and other data that potentially a different folder structure had to be setup on the thumb drive. Can you simply dump *.mp3 or *.wma files over into the thumb drive and be "good to go"?

I'll try that (I'll load two or three albums worth of muisc as a test)....intially I had loaded too much data on a large thumb drive I had and I realized that would not work, and so I've not been back to confirming what does work.

Since I initally tried the thumb drive I went back and bought a couple of smaller Gig in size thumb drives to organize my muisc into some smaller size stuff.

 

[mct75]

Folder structure should not matter for play-ability. Some units let you select a folder to play from, others lump it all together.

As far as artist name etc. there is a data field inside an MP3 called the ID3 tag. You'd have to use a special program to edit those if you want. It's not the file name.

 

[Elbert]

I'll test things out over this weekend.

 

[Elbert]

ok success for a novice at "ripping music". Notes for someone else who may be challenged. This applies to the radio in my gm pickup based on my experience. Music has to be in one of the following formats *.mp3, *.aac, or *.wma and it supports some other files from apple related to playlist but I'm not sure how that works. So I bought two or three 32gig USB thumb drives, I deleted the files that came on the thumb drive and left the thumb drive formatted at fat32. Took a few of my cdrom music discs and "ripped" them to my hardrive in *.mp3 format. Then I simply copied the folder structure over to the thumb drive (USB). For the radio to see the music the radio in my truck has to be turned on, you then insert the thumb drive into the USB port and the radio will automatically recognize the source and play the music and you can navigate between songs etc. I've verified on my vehicle that 2.0 and 3.0 USB thumb drives work (I'm using scan-disk brand name versions)...just what I could get at walmart. I'm also using USB sticks that are 32 gig in size (i'm not sure as I write this if there is file limitation but I've read on some web sites that 32gig is the max size).

A couple of issues I ran into being a novice...I initially tried to insert the USB thumb drive in the USB port before I turned the radio on....when you do this the radio will not "see' the thumb drive or its data. The initial 2nd screw up was the first data I ripped were in *.flac format which is of good quality but the GM radio does not recognize that format.

The reason to do this if you don't know if that you can load up a "crap load" of your music on a 32gig hardrive and listen to what you want to listen too regarding music or whatever you put on the thumb drive. The USB thumb drive is about the size of the average person's thumb and so you get the idea...a lot of music that you can load on a small device that is very portable.

The only real minor negative is that it take a while to rip data from your cd and over to you hardrive....so if you have a large collection of music on cdrom it might take you a while ....rainy day project.

I would be "careful" in swapping thumb-drives with people...... your mileage may vary but DOD shut down USB thumb drives due to virus migration. Its not that the drive itself is a bad idea but the entire idea that makes the USB drive such a easy tool to use also makes it a great target for the idiots who deal in bad-apple software. Just like you can load music, you can load video, pictures, and software..... FYI in case your not aware.

So here is my contribution.... different brand of cars may do different things and different aftermarket radio head units may also perform in various ways that are similar but may have some improvements. In my case I have the basic radio in my truck.....gm calls their system my-link, but that spans across I believe their entire product line. In the gm pickup trucks I think there are 3-5 or maybe more different radios and I have the most basic version (this radio does not have a cdrom player). The "cool" radios come on the more expensive trim model vehicles. So something I learned too.....the actual radio is behind the a/c control head in a "module" that looks like the old ECM's and the display is a simple small touch screen. Even at the basic radio level the touch screen can display jpg pictures and I think it may even be able to play certain video files.

Anyway just throwing it out there for others...I think a lot of the aftermarket radio head units play a lot of the common music file formats. I have windows 10 and it will rip cdrom music disks, but I also bought a software tool called dbpoweramp (you can find it online...its not too expensive but it has some additional tools built in). Likely your windows built in software will work fine and I'm sure there are some free things out there depending on what computer you run (Itunes comes to mind) and other things too, even in Linux I think also.

Some radios will interface with your phone and Ipod devices to play music off of those, how well they interface is likely dependent on the radio and device in question. So I wanted to get my music over into an all inclusive "one-stop-shop" electronic location.... its going to take some time but if I'm bored there is something to do ...