Ok, I don't care for having to disconnect/hide my Ipod when I get out of the car.......my usb flash drive (1gb) worked.....so I ordered a 64gb size to hold all my music.

Should I just copy all the music on it (single directory) or keep folders organized?

Once I get the flash drive I'll report back.

SO the idea is to it plugged in and the cord tucked away up under the console. (clean). I'll probably cut/shape a black cord so it doesn't stick straight up but does a 90 deg towards the drivers side.....then I can perhaps tuck the chord a little cleaner.

 

Folders, I think 64GB may be a bit much to manage, I just use a cheap 2GB. Also I am not sure if the car can read NTFS so format the USB key to FAT32.

 

i think a 16 gb would have sufficed, how much did that 64gb cost you?

as m0ej0e said, the car doesn't read NTFS (found out yesterday) so I had to re-reformat my flash drive to FAT32.

 

definitely organize in folders

 

I got a 16gb USB stick. Works fine but you definitely need to organize your folders. Been running the USB for months now.. and I'm almost satisfied but not completely.

Here is how I organize my folders:
Artist -> Album -> songs. So 1 artist can have many albums. The headunit displays all mp3 info fine once the song plays. I was considering modifying that because of the limitations of the Scion headunit. I was thinking of going Artist -> songs (soas to be able to shuffle songs better).

Problem is Scion head unit recognized only the folder containing songs.. so:
songs -> Album (Artist folder disappears in listing).

If you hit LIST, you will be given a list of all ALBUM folders only, not artists. Browsing is annoying in that sense. You can't make the radio list artists, so you have to browse by album folder to find what you want.

Second problem: shuffle. It will only shuffle within the album folder, not between artist's albums or between all songs held onto the USB.

I plugged that same USB stick in a Mercedes headunit, and the Benz automatically listed everything properly, i.e. artists, albums. Shuffle was fine, whether through artist or whole USB. So browsing for music was essentially just like browsing through an ipod or a computer, which the Benz head unit nearly is.

Other than that, the USB stick is very practical in terms of size and risk of theft.

 

The 64gb drive was $97. But as you will see in my post.....I had a 4gb with 700 songs on it.....but the stereo said "100-1" and only showed that many songs. If I skipped....1, 2, 3, 4....100.....it restarted the at 1 with the same song. So...where are the other 600 songs? So folders can't contain more than 100 songs.....and as previously mentioned...shuffle only works for that individual folder! UGH....so.....perhaps I can't get away from getting another Ipod! And be able to keep the same functionality. I need my full 50gb shuffle capability! I have a large music collection.

 

When I press the "list" button on a flash drive, and scroll through all of the songs, it takes FOREVER to load the list as I am scrolling at times. Especially if you are scrolling fast to find a particular song in a folder that has 100+ songs.

Does this issue occur on the premium head unit? Or only the base head unit?

Thanks.

 

Hard to quantify "forever" but yes, it does load song info kinda slow on the Alpine HU

 

if you have 100+ songs in 1 folder on the alpine HU, it only loads the first 100, is that the case with the pioneer HU or does it load all songs in a folder even if its more than 100 songs?

 

It loads maybe 10 songs, and then often times takes a second per song to load as you are scrolling through the list. There are only 3 songs displayed at one time on the screen, so its a major headache when searching for a song in particular.

This is on the base radio, by the way. I know nothing about the premium.