Playback from USB stick is intermittent.

[Nerdio]

I have copied a large number of songs onto a Kingston USB Memory Stick and plugged this into the USB socket on my car (2018 C-Class - standard audio). I can play tracks from the memory stick just fine, and they shuffle just fine. Then randomly as it switches from one track to the next it stops. the screen says 'Reading USB Device...' and playback resumes from the first track. Shuffle has been cancelled.

When I had my iPod plugged in before this always worked just fine.

Any thoughts as to why this might happen?

 

[Larkone]

Maybe too many tracks - try fewer and see how it goes.

 

[Mike Smith]

Are all the tracks in the root or seperate folders?

 

[AnthonyUK]

How fast is your USB stick? The cheapy ones are notoriously slow compared to even mid-tier ones.

 

[Nerdio]

Three replies - thanks

1) I will reduce the number of tracks and see how it goes.

2) Tracks are in folders by Artist then sub folder for the Album

3) USB stick speed is a good thought. I have a Kingston device so good quality. Not sure if it is very fast though. Will check.

 

[ZZZZ]

I sometimes get the head unit starting from the first track, after a particularly cold night (as in below zero, so not too often) - apparently, that's how its power saving feature kicks in ... by unmounting stuff.

All tracks in root directory, no folders, top quality USB drive.

It would be interesting to see, if this "feature" is present in a new model - planning to replace it this summer with a latest gizmo.
It's been in my car for nearly three years now, and when I fitted it, I thought "it would be great, if it lasted the whole year" ...

 

[Nerdio]

I sometimes get the head unit starting from the first track, after a particularly cold night (as in below zero, so not too often) - apparently, that's how its power saving feature kicks in ... by unmounting stuff.

All tracks in root directory, no folders, top quality USB drive.

It would be interesting to see, if this "feature" is present in a new model - planning to replace it this summer with a latest gizmo.
It's been in my car for nearly three years now, and when I fitted it, I thought "it would be great, if it lasted the whole year" ...

Thanks for your reply. My memory stick is a good brand and has a read rate on 100MB/s, I think that should be OK. In which case I will try your suggestion (and that of Mike Smith), and move all the files to the root folder.
I Will post my findings back here.
Thanks again

 

[Botus]

put it on a device intended to do the job,

an ipod or modern phone, structures the files differently and the car can cope easily.

I just posted about this its a known issue. My BMW using a USB 64gig stick couldn't do it without having regular moments. Its the file structure not the speed of the memory in use that's the issue. One day would work inside 20 seconds and behave, others it would go on strike for 20 to 30 mins. Sometimes it started the day OK, then had a moment if you stop for petrol or vice versa.

The happy clappy lot on that forum all came back saying its total rubbish and never an issue on a Ford. Then the OP having bought a fast hard drive on their recco explained he was having all the issues I said he would, (that he's also had on a USB stick).

My 180gig ipod works within 5 seconds and always allows navigation through its menus without a glitch. Its got exactly the same files (full fat .wav) that the USB stick had. On the ipod its a setting in iTunes. I didn't want MP3 (no one should) or Flac as that's far less compatible with other devices.

 

[Nerdio]

put it on a device intended to do the job,

an ipod or modern phone, structures the files differently and the car can cope easily.

I just posted about this its a known issue. My BMW using a USB 64gig stick couldn't do it without having regular moments. Its the file structure not the speed of the memory in use that's the issue. One day would work inside 20 seconds and behave, others it would go on strike for 20 to 30 mins. Sometimes it started the day OK, then had a moment if you stop for petrol or vice versa.

The happy clappy lot on that forum all came back saying its total rubbish and never an issue on a Ford. Then the OP having bought a fast hard drive on their recco explained he was having all the issues I said he would, (that he's also had on a USB stick).

My 180gig ipod works within 5 seconds and always allows navigation through its menus without a glitch. Its got exactly the same files (full fat .wav) that the USB stick had. On the ipod its a setting in iTunes. I didn't want MP3 (no one should) or Flac as that's far less compatible with other devices.

Thanks for your reply.

Moving all of my music files back to the root directory did not ultimately work. It is strange because when I set out yesterday morning everything was absolutely fine for about an hour and a quarter. then it started playing up. You make a valid point though, my old iPod has always worked faultlessly before, so there is clearly a subtle difference between that and a memory stick that the head unit does not like. There do seem to be a few posts on the web about 'spoofing' a USB stick to look like an iPod, I may try this and report back. If all else fails I may need to buy a larger iPod :-(

 

[Botus]

It is strange because when I set out yesterday morning everything was absolutely fine for about an hour and a quarter. then it started playing up.

that's how it was on my BMW (via USB) random confusion. the handbook said about allowing the car to "index" all the files. But I think the issue is it forgets it indexed it or gets muddled and has to do it over again regularly...

If you look at file set up of an iPod there's no big file of each track on it.. just multiple scrambled bits in multiple folders, seems to join it together as it plays.

 

[Nerdio]

I don't have a solution yet, but have been talking to my local dealer. First they suggested using USB-2, which I am now doing - no change. Three things in the pipeline to try out now;

1) A new USB Memory Stick (I don't believe this is the issue, but....)

2) Reduce the number of tracks to 100

3) Dealer suggested one of the files may be corrupt - maybe, but it has failed on tracks that work.

So, I am doing all of the above and listening to each of the 100 tracks through to see what happens. Changing three things at once is not really helpful, but if I can get something to be reliable it will be a start.

 

[Nerdio]

Update

My local dealership convinced me that this should work with mp3 and m4a files and that i t might not like what appears to be a corrupt file. So I have done as described above. New memory stick, 100 tracks. I listened to the first 30 or so in order, then started shuffling. All good. I upped the file count to 200, all fine, then to 300, all fine. Today I have gone to 500, so will try again tomorrow.

Worth noting this though. I don't have any playlist files on the memory stick yet. I also had one 'odd' file on their which was a .bak file that I had created to backup a playlist file. This is now missing.

Let's see how this goes.