How to play music on a USB stick in the Leaf

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

DavidThi808

New member
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
2
No one at Nissan appears to know how this works so I’m posting this here until they get the full information out to their dealers, etc.

First off, the music titles can be in any alphabet. I was initially told by Nissan that the Leaf could not handle titles in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian). However, the USB stick of my music coincidentally had most of my English songs saved as MP3 files and all my Russian pop as MP4. (I can understand the dealer making this assumption, but 2 Director level people in the Leaf group at Nissan also got this wrong – worrisome.) I’ve tested and it both plays & displays Russian, Greek, and Japanese song titles fine.

Second, it only sees MP3 files. No MP4. I read one post that it also handles WMV but have not tested that myself. I’m guessing it does not support any other formats. So… you need to convert all your music to MP3 on the USB stick you use in the Leaf. NCH has a great program for this.

Third, it only sees the first 255 files in a folder. So if you have over 255 songs, you need to create multiple folders on your USB stick and put 255 or fewer files in each folder. If you don’t do this all you’ll get is the first 255 files on the stick.

When you select random play, it does properly select songs across all the folders. However, when you use the steering wheel control to go to the next song, it does not go to the next random song but instead goes to the next song in the folder the presently playing song is on. So if you want to skip past the artist you are listening to, you need to hit next a lot to you get to the next album in that folder.

Details & links on my blog entry at http://blogs.windward.net/davidt/2012/03/18/how-to-play-music-on-a-usb-stick-in-the-nissan-leaf/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

thanks - dave
 
This works great.
My son told me that they make USB sticks that only protrude about 1/8" beyond the socket.
Was skeptical, but found one.
I can close the cover over it!
Very cool.
Like having a music Keg - out of sight - out of mind.

Did get one little shock (not the right term on an EV forum probably)
While trying to get it to play the USB stick by repeatedly pushing the CD/AUX button, it started playing music that was not on the stick.
Turned out is was playing music from my blue-tooth connected I-Phone.

It went in and found the music files, and started playing them.

a little scary.......................... :evil: :evil: :evil:
 
KillaWhat said:
... Turned out is was playing music from my blue-tooth connected I-Phone.

It went in and found the music files, and started playing them.

a little scary.......................... :evil: :evil: :evil:
What's so scary about an iPhone playing music? It's one of the core functions of the device. I rely on this feature, and my Android phone is my main music source in the car.
 
DavidThi808 said:
No one at Nissan appears to know how this works so I’m posting this here until they get the full information out to their dealers, etc.

First off, the music titles can be in any alphabet. I was initially told by Nissan that the Leaf could not handle titles in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian). However, the USB stick of my music coincidentally had most of my English songs saved as MP3 files and all my Russian pop as MP4. (I can understand the dealer making this assumption, but 2 Director level people in the Leaf group at Nissan also got this wrong – worrisome.) I’ve tested and it both plays & displays Russian, Greek, and Japanese song titles fine.

Second, it only sees MP3 files. No MP4. I read one post that it also handles WMV but have not tested that myself. I’m guessing it does not support any other formats. So… you need to convert all your music to MP3 on the USB stick you use in the Leaf. NCH has a great program for this.

Third, it only sees the first 255 files in a folder. So if you have over 255 songs, you need to create multiple folders on your USB stick and put 255 or fewer files in each folder. If you don’t do this all you’ll get is the first 255 files on the stick.

When you select random play, it does properly select songs across all the folders. However, when you use the steering wheel control to go to the next song, it does not go to the next random song but instead goes to the next song in the folder the presently playing song is on. So if you want to skip past the artist you are listening to, you need to hit next a lot to you get to the next album in that folder.

Details & links on my blog entry at http://blogs.windward.net/davidt/2012/03/18/how-to-play-music-on-a-usb-stick-in-the-nissan-leaf/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

thanks - dave
Excellent post, but I have a couple of things to add. It definitely does play WMV files. I had to convert all my wav files to WMV and they all play fine. Also, another way to "skip past the artist you are listening to" is not to burn them onto the USB in whole album chunks. The Leaf plays the songs in the order they are copied onto to the flash drive. I suggest copying all the files you want in a folder (up to 255 as stated) on your desktop in the order you want them played. If you like random/shuffle mode, copy them in random order. That way when you hit the control for next, it will not be the same artist. There are programs that will copy songs in random order, but a simple method to do it is once you get all the songs you want in a given folder, use Windows Explorer to sort by file size or name instead of date/time copied, then copy to the flash drive. Windows will copy them from the desktop to the USB in the order they are displayed on the screen; I assume Apple has similar functionality but I'm not sure. Of course they are not truly random because once copied onto the USB drive they are in a fixed order, but at least they will not put 20 songs by the same artist together as it does if you burn an entire album in one chunk to the USB drive. Also, if you have more than one folder of songs you can hold down the lever on the steering wheel for two or three seconds and it will skip to the next folder, not just the next song.
 
KillaWhat said:
This works great.
My son told me that they make USB sticks that only protrude about 1/8" beyond the socket.
Was skeptical, but found one.
I can close the cover over it!
Very cool.
Like having a music Keg - out of sight - out of mind.

Care to share where you found that USB drive or what brand?
 
If you use a Mac, there's another wrinkle. The Mac places metadata in files that are normally invisible but the music player tries to play them as music, and fails. This isn't limited to the LEAF...

If you're setting up a USB stick for the LEAF on a MAC, you can get rid of the "garbage files" with a Terminal command (dot_clean).

http://boards.synccommunity.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&webtag=fordsyncmb&tid=3107" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

or launch the Terminal utility and enter:

man dot_clean

for more info.

This works and gets rid of the infurating garbage files. You will need to run this every time the files on the USB stick change.
 
If you want something bigger, here is Lexar 32 Gb.

http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-Backup-Drive-Flash-LEHZX32GBSBNA/dp/B004X6AQZQ/ref=sr_1_9?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1336805938&sr=1-9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I use it daily. Holds over 400 CDs. It had had some problems in the past. Lexar support will take your call and will replace it on timely basis which I find very reassuring. My second one works just like it did before. And if it screws up I will replace it free again. It's the only mini 32 gig flash on the market as far as I could find.

lexar.jpg
 
I've had my LEAF for just over one week and discovered the USB/play feature quite by accident. This is very cool, and kind of makes the CD obsolete... !!!
 
I have tried 4gb sticks and they worked great, so I went out and purchased a couple of Patriot 32 Gig sticks and loaded up my CD's only to find that it would not play in the Leaf. First it took quite a long time to read the stick and then once it was done reading it the leaf would only play about 20 sec of music and basically freeze up. I tried reinserting but the same problem occurred. I tried another 32gb stick with the same problem.

Also tried loading only half the stick too and no fix.

Anyone have any similar problems or better yet anyone know of a solution?
 
I've got some 16G Verbatim Store n' Save micro sticks that work fine. Be sure to use ones that are USB 2.0 compatible. I've got 12 albums plus spare memory on the sticks. 32G just might be overwhelming it.
 
I think I've read somewhere Patriot has problems.

The Lexar works great in Leaf - I have 1st hand experience with it for a year now. It reads about 3-4 seconds and it's on. I have it 2/3 full (about 300 mp3 CDs).

My 1st one disappeared from the Leaf screen after a few months of use, and once I plugged it in the comp it would not show up either. I called Lexar and in a week I had a new one as replacement. Again, it works great. They may have worked out some bugs. Fingers crossed.

I'll post if I encounter problems.
 
Any USB stick should work fine (I have a 16GB one), just be sure it's formatted FAT32.

I *hate* that it doesn't randomly go to the next song when you use the steering wheel controls - I consider this a bug.
 
I have my music arranged in a hierarchical structure:

Code:
artist1
    album1
    album2
artist2
    album1
    album2

Is there any way to navigate this structure in the Leaf? All it does is show me a flat list of all albums from all artists, not very intuitive as often I don't even remember the album names so it is very confusing as I have a large collection. The unit can read MP3 tags, so I'm surprised there is no way to sort by artist. I guess one way around it is to use artist_album folder naming, but I want to check if I'm not missing anything before I go on a folder renaming quest. Fortunately I have the skills to make renaming process automated, but it is still a PITA.
 
Valdemar said:
I have my music arranged in a hierarchical structure:

Code:
artist1
    album1
    album2
artist2
    album1
    album2

Is there any way to navigate this structure in the Leaf?

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:
Code:
artist1
    artist1-album1
    artist1-album2
artist2
    artist2-album1
    artist2-album2

Edit: Oops, should have finished reading your post before answering...
 
Back
Top