Hi All,

            My Karoq has got the Columbus sat nav which has a CD/DVD player which is great. I am thinking of experimenting using a USB stick for playing some music.

I've looked everywhere on the internet for a straight foreword easy to understand plain English way  of using a USB stick to store and play music but so far have not found anything! It's all sd cards and smart phones mp3 etc. etc. I've not got a smart phone and probably never will. Can I ask anyone in the forum, Is it a straight foreword thing to simply download onto a stick from a pc and then simply plug into the car usb port and away you go? This Is what I want to do just plug in and play. Can anyone help me out as to what format If any I should use please? I understand how to rip music onto a stick but what format? A lot of people swear by an SD card  as the better system, will any SD card do or do they have to be Skoda ones? Please help me out folks. 

 

See if this is of any help to you:-  https://www.wikihow.com/Put-Music-on-a-Flash-Drive#

I've got music as both MP3 and WAV  files on USB and SD cards, it's straightforward ripping straight to either from a PC, I use good old Windows media player - it has "file type" and "save to" options in the rip settings.  I use Media player because it's simple and fast - even though I've also got a couple of other programs on the system. 

I'm part way through my CD collection of several hundred, I've got around 180 CDs and only used some 38 Gb of a 128 Gb SD card (Kingston, but any decent brand is fine, doesn't need to be Skoda, they're just for the navigation maps) .

 

On the standard Amundsen system there's no noticeable difference in sound quality between MP3 and WAV.  Obviously you'll get far more album tracks on a USB or CD with MP3 than WAV.

 

All you need to do withthe USB/SD is put it in the appropraite slot, then look for it in the media input option on the infotainment (horrible word) system screen.  The card contents then appear lie a horizontal Rolodex and I can just swipe/scroll through tem.

I leave the SD card in the slot all the time - I prefer it to the USB stick because that can be knocked and damage the socket.  My 2019 Karoq has the two SD slots in the glovebox, one is for the maps card.

 

On some CDs that are copies of a friend's original discs the album cover and track names are missing, and though it's possible to partially edit this on my PC, I couldn't be bothered.

 

I appreciate there are chunks of this you already know.

17 hours ago, FlyingGecko said:

All you need to do withthe USB/SD is put it in the appropraite slot, then look for it in the media input option on the infotainment (horrible word) system screen.  The card contents then appear lie a horizontal Rolodex and I can just swipe/scroll through tem

I have used this technique for a long time.

1 trick is to place 1 track outside the folder structure by album.

Play this track then select random play, it will then go through the whole library playing tracks from any album..

vegit8,  won't this just play random tracks, or are you suggesting it as a cure for unlabelled albums?

 

 

 

(I've just seen the typos in my post.  Very embarrassing.  If theres' one thign I can't stadn, it's poor typnig.  I usuallly proofread every thting befor epostinng.)

thanks very much to all for your suggestions. To vegit8, I don't understand what to place 1 track outside the folder structure actually means or entails, but thanks for the tip. I will have a play around with usb and sd card. does an sd card have to have a certain amount of pin connections max or min? i will use mp3 with the slider in win 10 media player set to best quality at 320kps which seems popular. don't forget I have a columbus system , all these various ways to play music is great for mass storage of music but for me you cannot beat a cd player for ease of use or quality , take disc out of packet, put into slot on player and away you go easy! 

thanks barbus. 

6 hours ago, barbus said:

I don't understand what to place 1 track outside the folder structure

Each album has a folder with all the tracks from that album inside it.

If you stick one song file at the same level as all the folders (you will need to inspect the contents using file explorer / manager (depending what you call it and how old you are!!!).

If your play this file first and then select random, you then get a never ending selection of tracks from all of you albums.

Of course this is of no use if you want to hear an album in the traditional sense, but this overcomes the need to have to fiddle with the player looking for a new album when one finishes.

Edited 17 July, 20214 yr by vegit8

thanks for your help in this. I managed to put 2 albums onto a usb and it works well in my car. The quality Is quite good. All the individual tracks were ripped onto win 10 media player so I had to drag & drop every track onto the usb from my music folder in file explorer. In my Karoq, the artist ,title, track number and all the tracks are displayed in the infotainment screen and plays good. wheather you can simply put the album onto the usb without having to move individual tracks to drag & drop I don't know. A bit more playing about & investigating on my part probably needed. On saying that I am quite happy with it working as It Is. At least going into the future I am confident If necc that I can still enjoy my sounds without a cd player. It's been an interesting exercise more playing to do. 

Sandisk now do a small footprint 128gb usb thing - think its called a cruzer - works very well in a cheapo radio fitted in my kit car, it also is quite compact - sorry about the photo quality!!

Edited 19 July, 20214 yr by Frenchtone

12 hours ago, barbus said:

wheather you can simply put the album onto the usb without having to move individual tracks to drag & drop I don't know

Hi yes - you can make Media player automatically rip to a specific location.

 

Open Media player and click on the Organise menu, then choose Options

Click on the Rip Music tab

Click Change

Your USB drive will be listed in the window that now appears

Click on that then OK

Your new location should be shown like mine below (F:\ in my case)

 

If you have lots of CD's to process you may wish to click on the Rip CD automatically option

and 

the Eject CD automatically option

 

 

Click Apply - to save your changes.

Thats it, job done!

 

Make sure you only select the highest level in your USB device (known as the root), this will ensure that each album is stored in its own folder, if you choose a sub folder (named music for example) then everything will get put in there and I am not sure how the infotainment system will deal with that. 

Edited 19 July, 20214 yr by vegit8

The infotainment system should just search the device until it finds media folders to play.

 

I have an SD card I take in many different vehicles with me and I've noticed that some systems don't like certain file types. Fortunately for the OP, MP3 320Kbps seems to be a safe type so far.

18 hours ago, HeavyMetalRich said:

The infotainment system should just search the device until it finds media folders to play.

 

I have an SD card I take in many different vehicles with me and I've noticed that some systems don't like certain file types. Fortunately for the OP, MP3 320Kbps seems to be a safe type so far.

For my MIB2 I re-ripped all my CD's (or obtained MP3's from elsewhere) to 320Kbps as they were all orginally ripped to 96Kbps 10 years ago and sounded terrible.  I simply have a folder structure of 

 

Root of SD Card

     ------------  Albums

                          ABC Band

                              ABC Album1

                              ABC Album2 

                          DEF Band 

                           ...

                           ...

                           XYZ Compilation Album

                           ZZZ Compilation Album

                            ...

                           800+ Songs

 

    -----------   Classical & Christmas Albums

                         AAA Classical Album

                         BBB Classical Album

 

    -----------   Mega Mix 320kbps

                           800+ songs of 80's and 90's hits that are not in the albums above

 

I then created an m3u playlist for everyting (bar the classical & christmas music) so I could put the whole lot (apart from classical & christmas) on one massive shuffle if I wanted to (bit OTT but I was on a roll at that point) 

 

It took me weeks to do and I used MP3tag to make all of the tags correct including Album Art and another free program (I forget the name) to create my mega m3u file (just to be able to shuffle all the songs).

The most difficult bit was to get the m3u file right as you have to adapt the file (search and replace folder names to get the slashes right etc.) to make each track get picked up my MIB2

the second worst bit was using anything to get the right names into the tags for the classical albums as they have some seriously weird names and (for Windows) illegal characters/symbols.

 

For the mega mix folder I used my own album art file:

 

example of m3u file:

 

#EXTINF:185,Queen - I'm in Love With My Car
\Albums\Queen\Queen - Night At The Opera\3 - Queen - I'm in Love With My Car.mp3
#EXTINF:172,Queen - You're My Best Friend
\Albums\Queen\Queen - Night At The Opera\4 - Queen - You're My Best Friend.mp3

...

#EXTINF:187,Blondie - Dreaming
\Mega Mix 320kbps\Blondie - Dreaming.mp3
#EXTINF:153,Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone
\Mega Mix 320kbps\Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone.mp3

...

...

 

etc. etc....

 

It all works wonderfully, all the art is there too but was a serious ball ache to do   :-)

            

A bit OCD I know but in lockdown we all had to find someting to while away the boring days.

 

Cheers,

Paul

 

Edited 22 July, 20214 yr by smipx

4 minutes ago, smipx said:

For my MIB2 I re-ripped all my CD's (or obtained MP3's from elsewhere) to 320Kbps ...

 

...

...

...

 

etc. etc....

 

It all works wonderfully but was a serious ball ache to do   :-)

            

 

I reckon that's the understatement of the year!

True true  :-)

 

Everyone has their pet hobbies and interests.  For some it is modding their cars and pimping them up but for me it was getting my sounds nice and working the way I want in the depths of Winter in the middle of a national "lockdown" for Covid-19. 

 

It kept me sane at least and as a bonus I have a cracking SD card of music that is a pleasure to use - Different strokes for different folks right?

 

Edited 22 July, 20214 yr by smipx

7 minutes ago, smipx said:

Everyone has their pet hobbies and interests.  For some it is modding their cars and pimping them up - some people might think that is a bit "silly" too :-)

For me its getting my sounds nice and working the way I want.  Different strokes for different folks right?

 

 

Very true, smipx, I have the greatest respect for the work you've done there.  No offence intended!

Just now, FlyingGecko said:

 

Very true, smipx, I have the greatest respect for the work you've done there.  No offence intended!

None taken (after I properly read your reply)  

I was too quick on the trigger.

 

The thread posted above by VEGIT8 (great tag that lol) last Monday above, Is the way to go for putting cds onto a usb stick. I've used his advice and it works very well, It Is quick and easy and does the job very well.

The question I would like to ask, Is, can I use the same method to put cds onto an sd card? I assume the sd card will have to be fitted to a card reader then ripped onto the card via the removable storage drive, which Is E on my pc the same as I do with the usb stick.

Thanks.

10 hours ago, barbus said:

The question I would like to ask, Is, can I use the same method to put cds onto an sd card?

Yep...

Your PC, doesn’t care what the destination is as long as the path makes sense.

I have all my CD’s ripped to a NAS (network attached storage) box, this has 2x4Tb hard disks in.

All data that we, as a household, create goes on there.

 

The disks are mirrored copies of each other, so if one goes bad my data is still safe.

13 hours ago, barbus said:

The thread posted above by VEGIT8 (great tag that lol) last Monday above, Is the way to go for putting cds onto a usb stick. I've used his advice and it works very well, It Is quick and easy and does the job very well.

The question I would like to ask, Is, can I use the same method to put cds onto an sd card? I assume the sd card will have to be fitted to a card reader then ripped onto the card via the removable storage drive, which Is E on my pc the same as I do with the usb stick.

Thanks.

 

Yes absolutely. The only real difference between a USB stick and an SD card is their outer appearance. The the memory storage section inside and the way it works is the same for both as @vegit8 stated.

 

I'm sure someone with more knowledge may be able to correct me if I'm wrong. 

Edited 23 July, 20214 yr by HeavyMetalRich
Added info.

Thanks a lot for your advice. The only thing that puzzles me a bit Is that when I play my music via my usb stick  the infotainment screen shows unknown artists and unknown song/track along with the albums I put on the stick. I have checked the contents of the stick and the albums I put on are all there but does not show any unknown album/artist track etc, so where do the unknowns come from and how do I cure this please? Keep It simple If poss as I am not an IT expert. I am using the Columbus system.

thanks.

Hi barbus, have you tried playing any of the unknown tracks, to see if they actually are yours?  I've got a few like that on my Amundsen system, but when I look at the SD card via my computer they are actually ones with names on the card, which I've added myself to the folders  Usually copies of CDs burnt from an original.  The tracks' names usually show when I play them, but there's no consistency.   I'm probably doing something not quite right (burning CDs apart!) as I rip/copy the files to the card from the source.

 

(The same applies to a USB stick, as mentioned above.)

 

(Who can remember when a 32Mb - yes, Mb - card would cost about a pound a Mb?  I can remeber upgrading my PC HD from 4.2 Gb to 10 Gb. )

Edited 23 July, 20214 yr by FlyingGecko

Hi Flying Gecko,

                             Plugging my usb into my pc and checking the contents there is no unknowns to be seen. But, the albums I have put on the stick are copies burnt onto a blank cd by a mate of mine. I wonder If that Is the problem? Nothing seems to be straight forward with this technology I'll have to check by listening if the unknowns are part of what I have ripped onto the usb or not. It's a bit of a puzzle. the albums I have ripped play ok though.

7 hours ago, barbus said:

...

 

I'll have to check by listening if the unknowns are part of what I have ripped onto the usb or not...

 

 

 

Yep, try that.  I think I've got the same thing.

If I remember correctly, back in the days when i first ripped CD’s there is a fair bit of additional data embedded in the file that includes such things as artist name, album name, track name, running time and so forth.

Nowadays it also includes digital records of who contributed to the creation / production of the track for PRS and PPL purposes.

My stepson is a professional musician and sound engineer, this is how he gets paid (fractions of a fraction of a penny) whenever a track gets played commercially.

If you think back to vinyl days all you got was the music, all the additional information was on the album sleeve, hordes of pen pushers in the BBC and other places had to manually record plays and who should get a credit.

 

If during the ripping process any of the identifying data got missed the system reading the track will have no idea who and what it is, hence the ‘unknowns’.

 

If you get the original product and re-rip, all this information will reappear.

The file name that you see is created by the ripping software.

In windows Media Player you can choose what information is included in the file name.