I got a brand new Octavia Style in may 2016.

I didn't bother to upgrade the radio from the standard Swing one. First because of the horrendous pricing of the higher units, but also because it, with it's bluetooth, SD and USB playing capabilities, would be fine for my purposes.

 

I plays perfectly via Bluetooth, and from the SD-card. However, when the exact same files are put on a USB stick and played via the USB port, the sound drops out once in a while.

The music plays, but at random intervals, it simply stops playing for just half a second or so.

If I rewind and play the same part again, there is no problem.

 

I know my way around computers, and immediately thought that this was probably due to the USB stick being not compatible etc.

So I tried different sticks. Both low values sticks, and expensive USB3 ones.

 

I tried different MP3 files. Some seem to work better than others, but none of my selections play without the dropouts happening.

Sometimes it happens every 2-3 minutes, but I've also sometimes been lucky and have the music playing for 40 minutes without any problems.

 

I took the car to the mechanic where I bought it, and showed them a video of the problem.
Due to it being an intermittent error it was difficult to show to the mechanic, but at first they did try to fix it:

 

At first they tried to upgrade the radio/car-software.

Problem still occurred after this.

 

Then they switched out the USBport and some wires. (Apparently this had happened before to some other customer, and this had been the solution for him.)

Problem still occurred after this.

 

Then they got a bit difficult. Now they wanted to hear the problem themselves.

Of course the radio played almost perfectly this time, but after 40 minutes of the most awkward drive, I've ever had it finally acted up and cut the sound for almost a second. The mechanic who had probably almost fallen asleep, jumped up in the seat and said "Wow! It's definitely not supposed to do that."

 

But... then he borrowed my USBstick for a weekend and drove around in another Octavia with the same type radio.

The result: EXACTLY the same problem.

 

Their conclusion: "It must be the files." and "Since the other radio did just the same, this is just how the radio is. It won't help to replace your radio."

Referring to the fact that MP3s can be compressed in different ways and that the mechanic had tried some of his own music on his own cheap USB-stick and it had played just fine after that.

(His files were Variable Bitrate and my files were 320 Kbps constant bitrate.)

 

I have a really hard time believing this, since all the files play just fine on my 10 year old Pioneer car radio that I have in my old Fabia.

 

I am now in the process of testing various types of files, that I compress myself, to make sure I know exactly what I put into the USB.

But the problem is happening no matter what. For now I've tried the two most common high quality types,CBR 320 kbps and VBR V 0, which should play perfectly according to the Swing manual... still same problem.

 

Can it really be true that Skoda in the year 2016 is not able to make a radio that can play MP3 files via USB?

Has anyone else had this problem? And know a solution?

 

 

TL;DR;  Swing Radio can't play perfectly normal mp3 files without drop outs. Example video. Mechanic says: "This is just how it is." What do I do?

 

 

Have

Have had this problem too but neot been too bothered as i remember whan tapes & cds jumped and jammed in the car as you clipped a pothole/speedbump etc lol