[ChristInBen]

Hey guys,

What's everyone's experience with using a USB flash drive for audio? I was thinking of getting a 32GB (or larger) USB drive to play music in my Civic Si.

How's the audio quality as opposed to using an iPod or bluetooth?

 

[1681]

i haven't actually tried a usb drive for that but I would imagine the quality would be as good as an iPod plugged into the usb port. the stock stereo isn't really much to brag about anyway (on the lower-end models, at least)

 

[ChristInBen]

Oh okay cool, thanks.

 

[rockndood]

I use a 16Gb stick. Quality is pretty good, but occasionally a particular note/tone sounds a bit harsh, like a high-pitched buzz that goes by quickly. It's consistent; each time that passage comes around, the same behavior. But that's waaaay less than 1% of the time. Haven't tried an iPod. I tried a couple different stick brands, and the behavior was identical.

 

[HomerJ]

I use a 16Gb stick. Quality is pretty good, but occasionally a particular note/tone sounds a bit harsh, like a high-pitched buzz that goes by quickly. It's consistent; each time that passage comes around, the same behavior. But that's waaaay less than 1% of the time. Haven't tried an iPod. I tried a couple different stick brands, and the behavior was identical.

The USB stick only behaves as the container for the music, the music is decoded on the radio itself. If you hear anything odd, it is likely a defect in your MP3 files (or in the way the radio decodes that MP3) and not caused by the fact you are using a USB stick. Especially if it's always in the same place.

And to the OP, I too use a 32GB stick and have had no problems with it. Other than it's a bit annoying to scroll through a long list of folders when you want to listen to something at the very end of the list!

 

[rockndood]

The USB stick only behaves as the container for the music, the music is decoded on the radio itself. If you hear anything odd, it is likely a defect in your MP3 files (or in the way the radio decodes that MP3) and not caused by the fact you are using a USB stick. Especially if it's always in the same place.

And to the OP, I too use a 32GB stick and have had no problems with it. Other than it's a bit annoying to scroll through a long list of folders when you want to listen to something at the very end of the list!

I didn't conclude that is was the stick or the radio, just sharing what I encountered. Having only the one radio and the one set of files kinda limits the experimentation.

 

[HomerJ]

I didn't conclude that is was the stick or the radio, just sharing what I encountered. Having only the one radio and the one set of files kinda limits the experimentation.

I didn't conclude you concluded ;-)

Have you tried the files on a pc? Might give you a hint where things go wrong. I have had files that sounded weird as well, sometime you don't notice it unless you pay real good attention, but they usually behave the same regardless where I play them.

 

[ChristInBen]

Thanks again for all your help guys!

 

[Chris Shawn]

I know this is an old thread but when I play music from my usb I have some songs that reads can not play? Anyone know why

 

[rockerx]

Chris Shawn, what format are the songs that won't play?

 

[cadillackid]

I use USB sticks all the time and they work great... I find that CBR MP3 files at 192k or higher are best(I use 256k).. . sometimes I get some wierd sounds when using VBR files.... my guess is that the CODEC hardware may be more sensitive to the low bitrate part of songs when they are VBR.. storage is so cheap these days I encode everything at 256k CBR....

-Christopher

 

[Fanatic]

Variable Bit Rate can reduce space used for a file, yes; but it's also more likely to introduce sound artifacts, as mentioned. Best to just skip that and re-encode at 256 without VBR if you run into problems on a track.


Sent from my Autoguide iPhone app

 

[Rachmaninoff]

As said, sound quality has nothing do to with USB x bluetooth, but rather with the encoding of the music file. Also, you should never re-encode an MP3 file, since the loss of quality grows exponentially. You should only encode to MP3 from lossless formats, like WAV, FLAC or the source CD. If you're interested in a deeper discussion, take a look at the LAME MP3 encoding settings.

 

[Chris Shawn]

Chris Shawn, what format are the songs that won't play?

They are all mp3 files from iTunes

 

[Fuma419]

I have found glaring flaws in every single way of hooking up audio sources. Honda has really disappointed me on this. The iMid has so much potential but the software is just sooooo flawed.

BT audio- loses too much quality for my taste. songs are flat, plus there is a major delay when changing songs. You also do not get album art.

USB stick- sounds great but you can't organize the music folders at all, makes finding the music you want to play a nightmare when driving down the road (esp in traffic and esp with a decent sized library)

USB to iphone- the iPhone does not allow to control/select the music from the iPhone itself so you have to scroll through a laggy and sometimes unresponsive, iMid control. It also randomly disconnects and reconnects regularly. You also have to wait until AFTER bluetooth connection is made on startup before connecting the iPhone, which is only a couple seconds of waiting but i just don't have the patience. (the only saving grace to this method I have found is that pandora works pretty well and sounds good esp with pandoraOne sub, it will even display album art, just don't try and use steering wheel controls)

Aux jack to iphone- this method works really well, its kinda hard to mess it up as there isn't any real software interaction between the car and device. There are still trade offs though, artwork/track info does not display, and you will have to hook up to a power source if you want to charge while listening.

 

[Rachmaninoff]

USB stick- sounds great but you can't organize the music folders at all, makes finding the music you want to play a nightmare when driving down the road

I use a USB stick all the time, with dozens of folders, and it's a breeze to find exactly the song I'm looking for. It's a feature I'm pretty satisfied with, actually. What problem are you having?

 

[Silver Bullet]

I have a weird annoying problem that I cannot seem to figure out... Maybe someone else has had the same issue?

I have an MP3 player that I use to play straight through the USB connection, but whenever I add a new folder of music to it, the car will not recognize that any new music has been added to the library. It's very frustrating... I have already tried disconnecting and reconnecting several times and even connecting a different audio source to the USB, thinking that maybe the car would somehow be forced to rescan whats on the MP3 player and find the new music folder that I recently added... No luck. Any advice?

 

[siegester]

I have a weird annoying problem that I cannot seem to figure out... Maybe someone else has had the same issue?

I have an MP3 player that I use to play straight through the USB connection, but whenever I add a new folder of music to it, the car will not recognize that any new music has been added to the library. It's very frustrating... I have already tried disconnecting and reconnecting several times and even connecting a different audio source to the USB, thinking that maybe the car would somehow be forced to rescan whats on the MP3 player and find the new music folder that I recently added... No luck. Any advice?

The iMID doesnt display the track/folder list in any kind of expected order as it has no built in sorting algorithm which is a bit obnoxious but chances are all these new songs you added that you are unable to find are all just sitting at the very bottom of the list and you just never got there expecting them to be in alphabetical order. The iMID displays all the songs in the order that they appear on the disk and thats it, there is a program called DriveSort out there that will let you re-organize the way the files are on the disk so that you can get them to be displayed in alphabetical order. But again, anytime you add new songs or whatever DriveSort will need to be run again to keep everything in order otherwise all the new stuff will just sit at the bottom.

 

[buetow63]

I use a 32GB Cruzer Fit .... works fine - just wish there was a way to "Search"...

also, , the order of the playlists doesn't remain stable... When initially plugging in, the lists are in alphabetical order, as I put them on, , , but once you start scrolling, it gets all jumbled up... again, frustrating when trying to find something particular -
Anyone have thoughts on that??

 

[steverino]

USB Organizing

I am a week into (new) Civic ownership, and this USB connection is one of the features that has most absorbed my interest. I initially bought a PNY 32Gb thumbdrive at Best Buy (big sale) and immediately discovered that everyone was correct: it didn't work. Returned for a SanDisk 32Gb; I call it a "thumbnail" drive because it is tiny, and still only about $55.

I loaded all my music on it: organized in main folders as "Classical", "Jazz", and "Rock", and sub-folders beneath them by artist, and then by album. I then used DriveSort (thanks to reading this forum) to order the folders. I discovered that a) the radio software made all the folders as one flat structure (IOW no sub-folders; they were all one long list of folders), and b) within a folder the software could only "see" the first 255 files.

Start over. I used a utility to bulk-rename the MP3 files as "Artist - Album - Track - SongTitle" and put them in folders holding about 200 songs each (leaving room for additions). "Jazz1" and "Jazz2", for example. I have mostly rock, so the rock folders I labeled as "Rock.A", "Rock.E", and so forth. "Springsteen1" and "Springsteen2", and "The Beatles", get their own folders. Using DriveSort again to make sure they are in order, I can now find an artist/album and select the first song to play the album in sequence.

I still have lots of room on my drive. I created a temp folder and loaded it with 510 of my favorite songs by copying them (NOT moving them-- right-click, drag-n-drop, and select "copy") from their respective folders, and then divided that folder alternately into "Playlist1" and "Playlist2" (for example, for the four AC/DC songs in my temp folder, two go to playlist1 and two to playlist2). Then I can select either playlist folder and "play random within folder" for a shuffle experience.

Lastly, I ran all the rock MP3s through a volume normalizer, after I got tired of adjusting the volume all the time. This utility does not affect the quality; I'm not a real audiophile anyway, and it *is* in the car.

Now I am a happy camper. When I add any music, I just have to stick it in the appropriate folder and run the DriveSort again.