Some car audio systems will only play MP3 music stored on USB 2.0 flash drives (USB 3.0 NOT WELCOME)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Here’s a lil’ throwaway/TIDBIT mindless-pointless data point: some older cars offering MP3 play with USB flash drives will ONLY work with USB2.0 (not 3.0) —and perhaps not all USB 2.0 flash drives either, SanDisk Cruz appears to be most compatible.

This has been recently verified on my 2012 Honda vehicle.

good morning <O/

So, if you cherish being able to listen to your music collection in your car… now is the time to get that USB2.0 flash drive before they become increasingly hard to find.

2

Any properly designed USB 3.x device is also USB 2.0 compatible, so I would not consider this a huge concern.

But, yes, some cars may not be able to handle all USB drives. This would be more due to bugs in the implementation, but such bugs are less likely to get fixed. So there is a chance your drive won’t work.

And, of course, there are just bad drives out there. The worst lie about their capacity, but even those which are legit can be crappy, which is why you should stick to the good name brands.

If you do that, the main thing I’d say to look into is formatting and the size of the drive your car will support. You may need to look up how to format a larger drive into FAT32, and it still might not work if its capacity is just too big.

3

The first time I saw a USB port in a vehicle was while renting a car four years ago. I naively thought it was an implementation of the USB audio standard, and that I could play music from my smart phone by selecting “USB speakers” as the audio output device. Only after reading more documentation did I realize that the designers intended the user to insert a USB mass storage device, and the computer built into the vehicle would handle all the decoding.

I have yet to encounter a vehicle that makes its speaker system accessible as a USB audio device. There seems to be no demand for such a feature, even though it was once pretty common to have the (functionally similar) 3.5mm aux input jack on car audio systems.

4

I’m not sure I’m fully understanding what you’re saying, but I can easily plug my phone into my car’s (2015 Nissan Rogue) USB port and easily play music through it. And I’ve had the same experience with pretty much every other vehicle I’ve driven that had the USB port.

5

I admit that my first reply was somewhat opaque in its casual use of jargon. Here’s a detailed breakdown of what I had in mind:
The vehicle has its own onboard computer (call it V) and the smart phone is itself a computer (call it P). Each speaker ultimately gets its analog signal from V. The crucial distinction is between:

  • V reading the contents of P through a mass-storage interface or the media transfer protocol, and navigating P’s music library via some touch-screen interface on the car dashboard. (Here P is behaving like an external peripheral plugged into V.)
  • V acting merely as the go-between that exposes the speakers to P (like plugging in a set of USB headphones), and the touch-screen of P is where the music selection takes place. (Here V is behaving like an external peripheral plugged into P.)

The second configuration I discovered not to be implemented in that car rental four years ago. The designers only implemented the first configuration. Perhaps newer models are more flexible these days. If so, then a streaming music subscription on my phone should easily be able to generate sound through a modern car’s stereo system.

6

I am not quite understanding your ‘second configuration’, but I have absolutely no problem playing music from my phone (either streaming or stored music) on my car audio system, via the Bluetooth access available in my car.

7

That I have no problem believing. Bluetooth audio is the wireless way to hook up external speakers. Once it became a common feature on both phones and car audio systems, there was no need to implement the USB audio specification. Come to think of it, with Bluetooth and WiFi in the picture only a jailbroken phone is likely to support these kinds of USB peripherals.

8

I’ve always had car stereos with USB ports, where I can load up a drive (any brand) with mp3s and plug it in.

But since I started putting music/books/podcasts on my phone, I’ve never made a USB “stick for the car”.

So, if you cherish being able to listen to your music collection in your car… now is the time to get that USB2.0 flash drive before they become increasingly hard to find.

Has the OP forgotten that people have music on their phones? Or thinks that “older cars” can’t interface with phones? (His is a 2012, my 2001 Insight played everything on my phone… with Bluetooth through the radio… until I upgraded the stereo to one with Bluetooth built in).

So, Kenny, before you start hoarding USB 2.0 drives, why not just Bluetooth from your phone? Or an iPod… or a Zune, if you’re committed to outdated technology.

9

What size drive are you trying to use? It could be drives larger than available in 2012 aren’t supported. Also, you may have to format the drive as FAT32, to be recognized. I think when I first got my 2017 Honda, I tried 64 and 128GB drives and it wasn’t recognized. Don’t recall if I formatted as FAT32, but probably not. I bought some cheap 8GB drives and use that. I don’t have a lot of music I regularly listen to anyway.

Lots of info here: https://www.civicx.com/forum/threads/biggest-usb-thumb-drive-that-works-on-honda-infotainment-unit.28579/

10

Yep, I can absolutely do that. I don’t really “store” MP3s on my phone, just use Spotify.

11

Do you then just play the music on your phone, or did you have to use the system in the car to select the music?

If the former, then it seems like USB audio was indeed implemented. If the latter, then the car is just treating your phone like a USB drive.

12

I use my phone. But the car controls also allow my to skip and play.