How to play music on a USB stick in the Leaf

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DeaneG said:
Prefix each album subfolder name with a short version of the artist's name. Then all of an artists's albums will appear adjacent to each other on the Leaf's screen...

Yeah, that's the plan, I was just hoping that I missed something and there is an easy way to group by artist as all normal MP3 players allow you to. USB playback in our cars is pretty lame IMO, but better that than none at all.
 
In random mode, to skip current song and go to the next random song:

Press "mode", "1 track repeat", "random"

Annoying, but works.

Anyone notice the random function often repeats the same song a few minutes later? Truly annoying.
 
Arvind said:
Anyone notice the random function often repeats the same song a few minutes later? Truly annoying.
Actually, no, that hasn't happened to me, although I have sort of been expecting it. I am irritated like others here that if you just hit the next track button or lever in All Random mode it goes to the next track in the folder, not random. The way I have usually dealt with it is to just hit the button for another folder, for example, switching from Classical to Rock. That doesn't change out of All Random mode, but the problem with that is it doesn't automatically select a random song with the Rock folder, it always goes to the first song in the folder. It always chooses the first one alphabetically, although I don't know whether that's because alphabetical order is the default or because I happened to have copied a whole folder of mixed tracks from my computer onto the USB drive in alphabetical order. I'm too lazy to do an experiment. Does anyone know the answer to that?
 
I have been listening to songs from a USB stick > 60 mins every weekday for about two months. The songs are in folders, one per album. The random function SUCKS. It repeats certain tracks while ignoring others. And there is no easy way to skip a song and go to the next random song.
 
I know it's not an ideal solution, and involves a lot of work, but one option is to copy all your favorite songs from a lot of different artists or albums into large folders and sort that folder on a somewhat random basis (e.g. by size of the file, or whether it is mp3 or wma) then copying to the USB stick in that order and then playing the folder in straight order. It's not truly random, but at least you will get every song. There are also programs that allow you to create playlists, selecting songs in whatever order you want from different folders. That's more work, but you can use those.
 
Rat said:
I know it's not an ideal solution, and involves a lot of work, but one option is to copy all your favorite songs from a lot of different artists or albums into large folders and sort that folder on a somewhat random basis (e.g. by size of the file, or whether it is mp3 or wma) then copying to the USB stick in that order and then playing the folder in straight order. It's not truly random, but at least you will get every song. There are also programs that allow you to create playlists, selecting songs in whatever order you want from different folders. That's more work, but you can use those.

I know this is an old thread, but I was having trouble playing MP3 files from a USB thumb drive in a 2018 LEAF. I got it working. Turns out that my older 4GB drive is not recognized by the LEAF, which I believe is USB 2 (formatted as FAT32, default format option). My newer USB 3 thumb-drive did work just fine.

Also, be careful about how you organize songs. It'll play them in the order they were in when copied, whether you sorted by name over track order. If you sort by track order and then copy, the songs are in the expected album order. When sorted by name, you get some variants of the song playing together, along with songs later in an album which may not be as good (not to mention breaking the flow of the album as designed by the band and producers).

So, if you're gonna pick up a little USB drive for MP3 files, get a USB drive and format it as FAT32 before copying music.

The tips about file/folder naming here are good and I used those. Thanks!
 
Put your songs in file folders on the USB drive. Put the songs in the related file folders and then you can choose the folders to play the songs you want.
 
Just to get started, I formatted a USB stick on my Mac, FAT32, and loaded one album as a single folder containing the songs. From Terminal I ran dot_clean within the folder and it got rid of all the extraneous files; did it on the top level and a lot of dot stuff remains. Tried it with 2GB and 32GB sticks. In every case, the Leaf's audio system says it can't find the USB drive or sometimes it says it's trying to read it (dot, dot, dot) but never does. Further pointers ? Thanks.
 
RustyShackleford said:
Just to get started, I formatted a USB stick on my Mac, FAT32, and loaded one album as a single folder containing the songs. From Terminal I ran dot_clean within the folder and it got rid of all the extraneous files; did it on the top level and a lot of dot stuff remains. Tried it with 2GB and 32GB sticks. In every case, the Leaf's audio system says it can't find the USB drive or sometimes it says it's trying to read it (dot, dot, dot) but never does. Further pointers ? Thanks.
Turns out, when formatting the drive on my Mac (using Disk Utility and the "Erase" button) not only do you need to select MS-DOS (FAT) as the format, you also need to select "Master Boot Record" as the "Scheme". This is on my ElCapitan machine. On my HighSierra machine, Disk Utility does not give you this second Erase option, and when I formatted there it did not work.
 
I really think that the usb is made to just control an ipod or iphone. I have had very good luck with a large Ipod left connected and in the glove box. It turns on when i turn on the radio and has been flawless for 6 months////

The trick is to get a good Ipod or iphone to dedicate to the sound system.. I have a 160 GB Ipod classic and it holds almost 20,000 songs in my glove compartment...
 
powersurge said:
I really think that the usb is made to just control an ipod or iphone. I have had very good luck with a large Ipod left connected and in the glove box. It turns on when i turn on the radio and has been flawless for 6 months////
Yeah, that's what I do in my Subaru (and take for rental cars). Only thing is, I think the iPod/iPhone navigation (of the music) is a lot better than car radios tend to do, so I plug iPod into aux-input jack and USB into a cigarette-lighter adapter (instead of the USB port) so the car radio won't try to take over navigation.

The USB stick is working quite well in the Leaf now, except of course only one level of heirarchy. But maybe I'll try to find a good used iPod for it too.
 
RustyShackleford said:
powersurge said:
I really think that the usb is made to just control an ipod or iphone. I have had very good luck with a large Ipod left connected and in the glove box. It turns on when i turn on the radio and has been flawless for 6 months////
Yeah, that's what I do in my Subaru (and take for rental cars). Only thing is, I think the iPod/iPhone navigation (of the music) is a lot better than car radios tend to do, so I plug iPod into aux-input jack and USB into a cigarette-lighter adapter (instead of the USB port) so the car radio won't try to take over navigation.

The USB stick is working quite well in the Leaf now, except of course only one level of hierarchy. But maybe I'll try to find a good used iPod for it too.

I started by trying the AUX cable, and it worked fine, but then you need to connect the power cable (at the USB), AND the AUX cable. Also you have to disconnect the system for each trip. Also, you need to manually adjust the volume and change songs, which is unsafe.

I have the S version of the radio, and the navigation is great on the radio screen, and I control everything from the steering wheel.. Best part is that I NEVER touch the Ipod. It stays safe in my glove compartment....
 
powersurge said:
I have the S version of the radio, and the navigation is great on the radio screen, and I control everything from the steering wheel.. Best part is that I NEVER touch the Ipod. It stays safe in my glove compartment....
If you're using an iPod instead of a memory stick. do you get more than one level of heirarchy (so you can have a folder for each artist and subfolders for each of their albums) ?
 
gringostar said:
Am I understanding this correctly, I can play music by putting a USB thumb drive into the USB port in my 2013 Leaf Model S?
It works very well on my 2018 Leaf, so I suspect it will. Subject to some of the issues and limitations described in this thread.
 
gringostar said:
Am I understanding this correctly, I can play music by putting a USB thumb drive into the USB port in my 2013 Leaf Model S?

Yes, but there are limits to how "deep" the folders can be or how long file names can be for it to detect the music. It's a long limit, but it is there. I have one of those "low profile" usb drives that just barely sticks out of the USB port and 16 GB of space, that's a lot of music. :mrgreen:
 
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