JimmyxB

Just got my xB. Love it. I'm fifty years old and have owned a lot of cars. Traded a 92 Laredo on the Cash for Clunkers deal. This xB makes me want to lay out of work and cruise. Got the premium audio (w/o navi). I have an old Creative MuVo TX mp3 player (essentially a USB flash drive). It works great in the USB port but it is only 1GB. I ordered a 4GB Zen to use in the xB but the Alpine H/U doesn't recognize it at all. I don't want to use the line in because I like having the track info on the screen and being able to control the device from the wheel. What mp3 players (other than IPODS) will work? I'm just not an IPod fan. I thought about just getting an 8GB jump drive (San Disk Cruzer). Office Depot has them for 20.00. Incidently, the Alpine unit does recognize the SD card in my Blackberry. The Zen has a slot for an SD card. I wonder if I could put an SD card in the Zen and just duplicate my music files on the Zen and the card?

surfactant

Was your Alpine a dealership or factory (ordered) install? I was wondering because I ordered a 2010 in June the wait is killing me! If it does not come soon (other dealers have 5 sp xb's though i did want stingray silver)
I was going to check another dealer if the dealer can install it. I have an old muvo that can only play wma (windows media center files) I would try a newer flash drive with mp3's on it. Mark

JimmyxB

Factory (or distributor) ordered install. The Scion dealer here is part of Southeast Toyota distributors. The only way they ship is with the Alpine system. The upgraded audio uncludes the navi chip, which I didn't get. I really just wanted the base audio but this is how I got it (according to the dealer, it is the only way they get them). I didn"t have to pay for the upgrade (or the floor mats-they only ship with those as well). My MuVo plays mp3s and wma. I think the reason it works is because it is essentially a jump drive. If I understand it correctly, the unit must be FAT32 (possibly FAT16) format in order for the Alpine to recognize it. I am not a fan of the IPod but it looks like I'm going to have to get one to take advantage of the features of the interface (or use an aux audio cable, which I don't want to do). I'm going to pick up an 8 GB jump drive in the meantime. It took the dealer two weeks to get mine in and I got the Stingray Metallic as well. I preferred the Hynotic Teal but it wasn't available. Now, I really like the Stingray better. Good luck with it and enjoy!

SanchezHacker

Yeah, I think it only reads USB sticks, USB stick type mp3 players, and iPods. My sis has a Creative Zen and I thought I remembered seeing a "act like USB drive" mode some where in the menu of the player, check for that and see if it works.

If my guess is right, scion programed the new alpine unit with some kind of Apple iTunes SDK. So any device that can fake an iPod ID and connect to iTunes on a computer should in theory be able to connect to the new alpine unit as well. This means the new Palm Pre should work and all the other devices on this list: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2172

surfactant

Is your Stingray silver car a 5 speed? Im not trying to hyjack the thread but i ordered in June and I am wondering if I need to go to a bigger dealer. Is Maryland in the southeast dealership area? My dealer wants to charge me for mats and I do feel comfortable with them but they are a smaller dealership.
I have been waiting almost 60 days and I really like that color but the wait is killing me. I understand about the ipod but i do think they have the best interface, you can sort by artist genre or make a custom playlistor shuffle the songs. The demo on the scion web site looks like ths interface would be on the screen as well.
On the apple store web page if you scroll down on the left there is a listing for refurbs and the prices are lower. I think ipod using flash memory would be a good fit for that audio system and that is one of the reasons I'm trying to get a 2010 with the upgrade alpine unit. Thanks in adance for any feedback. Mark

juicius

I have a 1 gig Sansa that was not recognized by the Alpine HU. But I changed the USB mode to MSC and it's working now. A lot of these off-brand mp3 players are set as MTP in order to work well with Microsoft's media player syncing. You know that the player is set to MSC if the player shows up as a removable drive and you can simply drag and drop files to it.

JediBaja

When I still had the stock Pioneer head unit on my 2010 xB, my Creative Zen Microphoto was not recognized either via a USB-to-USB mini cable. There is an option on the mp3 in which you partition a portion of the hard drive for portable storage. For my player it is under Settings->Extras->Removable Disk. I imagine that is something similar to what you would do on your player as SanchezHacker has previously stated. I would test it out but now I'm stuck with SNS that doesn't work...