Has anyone had any issues with the playing audio via USB and the music freezing? I have noticed that every day at least once my music through my USB drive will just freeze up. Then I have to unplug the USB stick and plug it back in to get it playing again. I bought a new USB stick because I thought my old one was bad and it does the same thing. I tried looking through the forums but don't see any other posts regarding this case. One thing that I think could be the culprit is that the power to the USB looks like it stays on constantly when the car is on OR off, and maybe this isn't good for the drive? Overheating the drive maybe?

 

I keep a USB drive plugged in all of the tie with my music library. I split usage between it and the internal "changer." I haven't had any freeze issues with either.

What size / file format are you using? Any files with very high bit rates? (For the car, I keep everything with 256k - there is a max, but I'd expect it to not play vs freeze.)

 

I haven't used the changer because I don't really have CD's anymore. The first USB stick I tried was an 8gb one I had laying around. Thought it was going bad due to the freezing, so I bought a brand new 32gb one. Really dont know about the bitrates, but I have had the files on my computer for a while (years) and I know they have worked on every other device they have been played on. Its very strange. May take it to Jag if it gets worse, otherwise it will be one of those, take it in for service and it never happens in person problems...

 

Mine has done the same thing. I think its either a bad stick or file on the stick because it happens on the same song every time. If I pull out the stick and plug it back in it works fine. BTW its a 32gig stick. I have another 32 gig stick and have no issues with it.

My USB issue is when I connect an iPod through the USB port. Sound volume is very low and music skips and stutters. Same iPod works in all my other cars. If I connect the iPod via bluetooth the sound is fine.

 

It's worth checking the bit rates on your drive. From memory, I believe that any bit rate above 256kb causes problems. Also, some have reported issues with variable bit rates. I just used a bulk editor to make everything fixed 256kb and haven't had any issues.

A couple of side notes:
- The system doesn't organize the songs after they're written on the USB drive. So, I recommend loading it as you want to see it listed. A pain, but not something you have to do but once (or until your library changes).
- The "CD's" in my changer are my own "best of" collections of 10 different artists. Unfortunately, you can only burn them as full wave files, so you're limited to 80 minutes per disc.
- As an alternative, you can create artist folders on the USB and select the folder of choice for Play.

 

@uncheel: What software did you use to do the edit as a batch? Mine doesn't seem to freeze on a specific song, so I don't know what the deal is. I will check the bitrates today.

 

Never mind, I found a software to convert it easily. I will report back if it helped/solved the issue. I did have a lot of files that were 320kbps.

 

I used Musicmatch which is ancient, but it's on my server and handles this sort of thing well. Ironically, the "latest" version (still 10+ years old) doesn't run on W10 Pro 64-bit, but the downlevel version 7.5 does.

A couple of more current options are:

MP3 Quality Modifier Download

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bon...e=typ_redirect

You may need to have Lame installed for the encoding process:

RareWares

 

Mine only freeze on this one folder and on this one track in that folder. What's weird is, when I switch between Meridian, DTS and Dolby, it seems to unfreeze that USB drive....

 

*Update* Since I have downsampled the music bitrate to 256kbps and below everything has worked fine. Its very strange the system is that picky with todays technology, but alas, it is working and I am happy. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!