So, I just bought my 2011 XF SC last Friday (10/10/14). I'm director of software development at my company so of course I'm a bit of a geek. I've spent the last few days getting all of the gadgets configured, bluetooth, nav, sat radio, garage door opener etc...

My dealer is going to enable voice command for me when I go pick up my plates. The last thing to figure out is what the best portable audio option is going to be.

From my reading people have tons of problems with the USB, whether it be formatting, folder structure, file/format recognition, loading speed etc...

I also see that people complain about the iPod not turning off and draining the battery etc...

Really, the perfect option would be a 256gb SSD with USB and wifi. I have near 500gb of music and would love to be able to fit the most important 50% of it onto a drive and have it sync over wifi when the car is in my garage. Has anyone actually got a 256gb USB drive or stick to work? If not I may be looking at just getting a 160gb iPod classic if the USB is just too much of a pain.

Any other techies out there with large music collections in their Jags?

 

If your going to use a USB to carry your music files, it has to be formatted using FAT32. I believe the largest size it can format is 32 GB. I have tried using a NTFS formatted USB, but the Jaguar XF wouldn't read it. Also it has problems reading folders so I just dumped all my music files on there without any organization.

 

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I've researched this and 32gb is a limitation imposed by Windows for FAT32. You can format 256gb as FAT32. Below is a free tool that will do it.

http://www.pendriveapps.com/format-f...ger-than-32gb/

I would have to have some folders especially with 256gb but I haven't found any details as to why some people can get folders to work while others can't. One thing I've seen mentioned is requiring a root folder UNDER the root folder to get folders to work. For example: Root->Music->Rock->The White Stripes etc...

I think I may mess around with a smaller thumbstick before I go and invest in a 256gb SSD usb/wifi.

I guess my other question is does the car have to index the device each time it starts up or is it a 1 time thing? If it has to do it each time then an SSD will be required, if not a 256gb thumb stick could work. I can't seem to find any SSD USB/WIFI drives larger than 128gb.

 

I use a 32gb stick formatted to FAT32 along with all of my music seperated into folders and subfolders and I've had zero problems. I tried to go larger once I filled up the 32gbb stick and went with a FAT32 formatted 64gb stick. It would play fine, but the only problem was that everytime you turn the car off and started back up, the 64gb stick would have to re-dock, which was a nuisance, so I'm staying with the 32 that works flawlessly. Honestly, I can't think of anywhere on the planet that I'm going to drive where I will listen to more than 32gb of music anyway. So the rest is overkill anyway (in my opinion).

As for the ipod draining the battery, I haven't had that problem at all. I keep mine plugged up and never turn it off and I also go for weeks without driving my car and there's never been an issue with it draining the battery. It is an early generation Nano so maybe that could be the reason that it doesn't drain the battery.

 

I have a 160GB IPod Classic and I can leave it plugged in for months without it draining the battery. It's not a bad compromise. I do have a thumb drive that I've been thinking about using instead though, but haven't got around to configuring yet.

 

If you're really up-to-date on tech, the way to go is to stream music with Spotify on your smart phone.

The idea of buying and storing music is completely outdated and ridiculous to me now. Kinda like the days that you would sit by the radio and rush to press play and record on your radio/dual cassette player when your favorite song was played. Of course the DJ would take the opportunity to yap through the first 30 seconds of the song and ruin it for you.

Spotify has way more music than you could ever carry around with you and your music is on every device you use. If you have to travel disconnected, it can sync songs to that device.

Plus the radio option is great as it build playlists based on your existing playlists.

 

I use a 32gb thumb drive and it works on car startup maybe 50% of the time. Sometimes I have to pull it out and plug it in again. Not sure why, but sometimes it just doesn't read it...it could just be the kind I bought. It seemed to start to work better when I created sub folders for my mp3s.

 

I would love to do this but my cellphone is provided through work and I only get 5gb per month. Streaming music every day would put me over that for sure.

 

This is good to know, I may go the iPod route then as it seems getting the full functionality out of the USB is a giant headache.

 

What am I missing here - I have a standard cheap USB stick that I transfer "mp3" files from my computer (itunes) and organize them with folders.

 

USB is a pain to get more than 32gb, and requires constant updating if you want to put new music on it.

I've decided to go with the Tune2Air + Spotify route. It should be delivered today, I will post a review after I get it all setup.

 

With Spotify you can build your playlists and download all the songs via wifi. The default option is set to download via wifi anyway. You can also flip the app to offline mode if you were really worried about data usage to prevent Spotify from using any data (plays downloaded playlists only). You shouldn't have any problems with data usage.

 

Thanks everyone for the spotify recommendations. I bought a tune2air and I'm in love. Tune2Air + Spotify is the perfect solution for having media at your fingertips in the Jaguar XF.

 

Question for you - I also use Tube2Air and Spotify in my 2010 XF SC. However when I come back to the car and restart the engine it defaults to playing the internal music library on the iPhone. I have to then unlock the phone, find spotify and click on the right playlist again for it to go back to that. In my previous car with a Parrot bluetooth system it would just stop when I parked and resume again from where it left off when I restart the engine. Do you have the same issue, or have you found a way for it to pause and resume when you stop the car?

 

I'm not sure why yours is doing this. When I stop the car and then get back in later it starts playing from where it stopped last. It could be that I don't have any music on my phone?