Another option would be a short right angle USB extension. It would only protrude slightly and the USB stick could lie in the tray.

9 minutes ago, RobL50 said:

Another option would be a short right angle USB extension. It would only protrude slightly and the USB stick could lie in the tray.

I was thinking about that but it may block the wireless phone charging?

This adapter any good?

https://amzn.eu/d/78JaWAm

14 hours ago, SteveTheElder said:

This adapter any good?

https://amzn.eu/d/78JaWAm

Possibly - but I was thinking more of a "short squat" stick, without an adapter that could survive the inevitable knocks

2 hours ago, chelon said:

Possibly - but I was thinking more of a "short squat" stick, without an adapter that could survive the inevitable knocks

Ah! my mistake, sorry.

How about these? I use one in my car.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07RBPRM2W?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_15&th=1

On 21/03/2025 at 15:37, SteveTheElder said:

Ah! my mistake, sorry.

How about these? I use one in my car.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07RBPRM2W?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_15&th=1

Sorry Steve probably not - it still looks a bit "vertical" - I've seen so many mini & micro USB sockets written off on laptops in the old days usually by something as innocuous as someone tripping over a cable and to my eyes usb-c looks no better. A quick Google seems to reveal that a lot of people have found them very fragile...

1 hour ago, chelon said:

Sorry Steve probably not - it still looks a bit "vertical" - I've seen so many mini & micro USB sockets written off on laptops in the old days usually by something as innocuous as someone tripping over a cable and to my eyes usb-c looks no better. A quick Google seems to reveal that a lot of people have found them very fragile...

Can see where you're coming from, and yes, it does stick up a bit - not like some of the SanDisk ones that fit very low in a USB-A socket. One day maybe...

Guess I may have been lucky that mine has lasted four years with no issues.

Just a quick update, I ended up getting a Kingston as suggested above and it's very good:

When plugged into the car the purple flap offers a bit of support and stability if it does get knocked.

So I copied my 44GB of music from my itunes library folder on the PC to it and in the car it seems to play fine - however - about 75% of the album art is missing.

100% is there on itunes but when I view the itunes library in windows explorer only 75% is visible - anyone know exactly why? (really don't fancy having to manually add all that artwork...)

I might dl media monkey and have a play, maybe that will use all the artwork that's there and hopefully transfer it to the stick...

4 minutes ago, chelon said:

So I copied my 44GB of music from my itunes library folder on the PC to it and in the car it seems to play fine - however - about 75% of the album art is missing.

100% is there on itunes but when I view the itunes library in windows explorer only 75% is visible - anyone know exactly why? (really don't fancy having to manually add all that artwork...)

Windows, and I suspect the MIB system, expect the album art to be embedded into each and every MP3 file. I use an MP3 Tag Editor to add album artwork to every file.

7 minutes ago, PetrolDave said:

Windows, and I suspect the MIB system, expect the album art to be embedded into each and every MP3 file. I use an MP3 Tag Editor to add album artwork to every file.

I fear you are correct and that will mean tons of work.

I've just noticed that in windows explorer the art jpg is actually in the album folder (one with all the songs in it)

Would be great if there was an option in itunes or via another piece of sw to copy all the embedded artwork to this location

1 hour ago, chelon said:

I fear you are correct and that will mean tons of work.

Not really, using this tag editor you open the folder in Windows and copy the album art to all MP3's in one go.

Then replace the updated albums on the SD card.

On 11/04/2025 at 13:38, PetrolDave said:

Not really, using this tag editor you open the folder in Windows and copy the album art to all MP3's in one go.

Then replace the updated albums on the SD card.

I have done that before but in this case there's a few hundred to do...

Anyway quick update - ended up installing Media Monkey as suggested above. It seemed to autofill most of the missing artwork but I still had to spend about 30 mins adding some missing stuff - fortunately Media Monkey does a better job than itunes of finding it online.

so all sorted...or so I thought...but on plugging the stick into the car there is still the odd album with missing artwork...and this is with 100% of the artwork showing correctly in itunes, media monkey and in windows explorer.

So I've no idea what the cause is but there's only a handful of albums affected so I'm hoping won't take too long to fix it.

Real smoke n mirrors this artwork stuff...

I've redone the artwork using smaller jpegs. around the 200 x 200 size and it seems to display fine now. So I'm thinking the car doesn't like bigger files for the artwork, anyone know if there's a spec for this sort of thing?

On 19/01/2025 at 17:49, Benjybobs said:

I plugged my iPod classic in to one of the usb ports and it didn’t recognise any music on it, i think you’ll need to put it all on a usb pen instead. 
 

you can use software like media monkey to write all the album covers etc and titles to the USB stick, then you can browse it perfectly well on the media display much like the iPod would have. 
 

i tend to use the genre as a shortcut, if you make all artists beginning with an “a” as genre “a” and all artists beginning with “b” as genre “b” and so on, it can make looking for what you want a bit quicker, as you just pick the genre search function,  otherwise you have to search from the beginning artist every time and scroll all the way down. 
 

it’s pretty good system when you work around it’s quirks, voice commands even works on it. 

 

or just get Spotify.

Thanks for the tip re media monkey, I installed it on the pc and it's done a decent job of adding missing artwork etc...then I just copied my entire media library to the USB stick using Windows and all the content is visible (I'll try your genre tweak to make it less tedious browsing).

If you use media monkey to write to the USB (instead of Windows) does that give you anything different when you're browsing sat in the car?

Yeah i think it does make it better, i can’t remember now, but i think I tried just copying the files and directories over and i was disappointed, but can’t remember why exactly. It might have done the tracks in alphabetic order or something.

Using media money ensures the tracks are in the right order, artwork is correct etc. also once you’ve sorted it all out, you can sync changes and update it with new music when you have it etc.

Also got a load of kid tv shows and films on there in case I’m ever sat in the car waiting for something.

The genre thing is a life saver when you want to jump artists without searching through the lot from “a” every time.

To be fair i use Spotify most of the time

Edited 17 April, 20251 yr by Benjybobs

18 hours ago, Benjybobs said:

Yeah i think it does make it better, i can’t remember now, but i think I tried just copying the files and directories over and i was disappointed, but can’t remember why exactly. It might have done the tracks in alphabetic order or something.

Using media money ensures the tracks are in the right order, artwork is correct etc. also once you’ve sorted it all out, you can sync changes and update it with new music when you have it etc.

Also got a load of kid tv shows and films on there in case I’m ever sat in the car waiting for something.

The genre thing is a life saver when you want to jump artists without searching through the lot from “a” every time.

To be fair i use Spotify most of the timei

ok I'll try Media Monkey to manage it all - so I probably need to delete the existing music from the stick then sync the stick with Media Monkey on the PC, is that easily done?

It’s fairly easy, but can be time consuming if you’ve got a big library, more so if you have pro levels of ocd and like it all to be perfect 🤩

Maybe experiment with a spare usb stick in case you get lost along the way

10 hours ago, Benjybobs said:

It’s fairly easy, but can be time consuming if you’ve got a big library, more so if you have pro levels of ocd and like it all to be perfect 🤩

Maybe experiment with a spare usb stick in case you get lost along the way

Cheers would you know best way to do that?

9 minutes ago, chelon said:

Cheers would you know best way to do that?

Not sure what exactly you mean but what I meant is rather than wipe the stick you have already, just experiment syncing a different stick, even if you just sync a few artists rather than your entire library.

That way you can practise and see if it’s what you’re looking for. Once you’re happy you know what you’re doing, then wipe your big memory stick and sync the whole library over to that.

I’m not an expert on media monkey anymore as it was years ago I first used it to get my iPod classic sorted out without using itunes but there’s forums and advice specifically for that on media monkeys website and elsewhere on the web with loads of advice and guidance.

Basically you get your library how you want it and then plug your usb in to the computer and sync the bits you want to. You can have multiple different usb sticks syncing to it if you want.

41 minutes ago, Benjybobs said:

Basically you get your library how you want it and then plug your usb in to the computer and sync the bits you want to. You can have multiple different usb sticks syncing to it if you want.

The most important bit is making sure that how tracks are ordered into folders works with the infotainment system. I am pretty sure I just used the default settings when I set up my SD Card, but I might have been using a tweaked ordering - mine is \Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track #:2> $Left(<Artist>,20) - <Title>

You can change all of this in Media Monkey to suit your preferences. An old car I had would not play album tracks in the right order so I had to add the track number at the start of each track title to get it to sort correctly. Media Monkey is very good for that kind of thing.