usb folders

[Danr]

Hello!

Can anyone explain how the audio system works from a  USB stick.  I have copied my iTunes library which is just folders sorted by artist names with subfolders for albums.  When accessing the usb stick and using the folders option in the car it refuses to show the artist folder but simply lists the album folders as one great big list which makes navigating to the album very frustrating.

The usb stick has had ample time to be read.

The usb stick is formatted as exFAT.

Any ideas how to fix this as I have never come across this with any other vehicle. 

 

[Herbie]

Might be wrong but I seem to remember it should be FAT32.

It's years now since I listened to an album in its entirety, preferring instead to have it on random play. Even when I used to use CDs I would burn 6 CDs with random tracks and then have the system play them randomly. One minute could be LED Zeppelin, next may be the Mediaeval Baebes, followed by Seth Lakeman, followed by Gregorian Chants and so on; everything was a surprise

[Las Palmas]

32Gb USB formatted with exFat. No folders, all music in root. Play without problems. Will try a 64Gb just to see if car will accept that. Tried with lossless files, car will not read these. Highest quality the CT will read is 320kbps MP3 files. Have .flac 24bit files and they play extremely well when going from line out to line in, ML has made good audio for Lexus. Bluetooth in the 2017 model is no better than MP3 320kbps even though phone can play 24bit lossless 192kHz files. Want full quality from the ML audio you must use cable.

[PDM]

13 hours ago, Danr said:

Hello!

Can anyone explain how the audio system works from a  USB stick.  I have copied my iTunes library which is just folders sorted by artist names with subfolders for albums.  When accessing the usb stick and using the folders option in the car it refuses to show the artist folder but simply lists the album folders as one great big list which makes navigating to the album very frustrating.

The usb stick has had ample time to be read.

The usb stick is formatted as exFAT.

Any ideas how to fix this as I have never come across this with any other vehicle. 

 

I am surprised that it plays exFAT, as I always used (and thought it necessary to use) FAT32.... but John seems to have made exFAT work, as do you, so, I've learned something!

In folder view, what you are seeing is the expected behaviour (even if it is not what you might consider logical).  Only directories that contain music files are listed....  So a directory that only has subdirectories (artist->albums in your case), will only list the album folders.  This is as designed (we can debate the logic of the design of course).

I organise my music in top level directories by genre, then artist, then album.  Only the album folders are listed in the folder view.  

However, the system is more designed to use mp3 tags rather than folder structures.  The system will scan the folders and build an index based on mp3 tags, so that you can search by album, artist, genre, song title etc, and these have nothing to do with filename or folder name or hierarchy... you could, I believe, dump all your files on the root (subject to the limit on max number of files per folder) and as long as the mp3 ID3 tags are all done correctly, the system would catalogue them for you into albums etc.

It takes a bit of getting used to but I actually think this is sensible behaviour - you just have to work this way rather than fighting against it.

The difficulty arises in that whilst all of this is done on mp3 tags, the order in which tracks are played is not determined by the ID3 tag for track number, but instead by an alphabetical sort of track names in the ID3 tag.  This is questionable behaviour at best, but according to Lexus is "how it was designed".  This means you need to label your tracks as "01 track name 1", "02 track name 2" etc etc.  There are automated tools for doing this.

Hope that helps.

Paul

[Danr]

10 hours ago, PDM said:

I am surprised that it plays exFAT, as I always used (and thought it necessary to use) FAT32.... but John seems to have made exFAT work, as do you, so, I've learned something!

In folder view, what you are seeing is the expected behaviour (even if it is not what you might consider logical).  Only directories that contain music files are listed....  So a directory that only has subdirectories (artist->albums in your case), will only list the album folders.  This is as designed (we can debate the logic of the design of course).

I organise my music in top level directories by genre, then artist, then album.  Only the album folders are listed in the folder view.  

However, the system is more designed to use mp3 tags rather than folder structures.  The system will scan the folders and build an index based on mp3 tags, so that you can search by album, artist, genre, song title etc, and these have nothing to do with filename or folder name or hierarchy... you could, I believe, dump all your files on the root (subject to the limit on max number of files per folder) and as long as the mp3 ID3 tags are all done correctly, the system would catalogue them for you into albums etc.

It takes a bit of getting used to but I actually think this is sensible behaviour - you just have to work this way rather than fighting against it.

The difficulty arises in that whilst all of this is done on mp3 tags, the order in which tracks are played is not determined by the ID3 tag for track number, but instead by an alphabetical sort of track names in the ID3 tag.  This is questionable behaviour at best, but according to Lexus is "how it was designed".  This means you need to label your tracks as "01 track name 1", "02 track name 2" etc etc.  There are automated tools for doing this.

Hope that helps.

Paul

Many thanks for the clarification.  I tried another stick which was formatted as Fat32 but with the same result. 

Lexus being too clever on this occasion that they have rendered that function virtually unusable if it has more than a handful of albums. I had my entire library at 30gb on the first stick. The tags are all done but iTunes and windows Groove player regularly ***** up the tags and windows sometimes loses the properties when copying to a fat32. 

I suspect ntfs might work as well but I  not tried it  yet but an older merc I had would accept ntfs so may be lexus might have updated that since fat32 has some problematic limitations.

On another note the Sat nav today was telling me porky pies today all the way home.  Apparently I was about 4 miles away from where I actually was at any given point and the sat nav still thinks it is not parked on my driveway but about 4 miles away!

 

[Danr]

use of the short word for a  male chicken gets censored 😀.  We learn something new every day! In future i will avoid references to  🐓 up! 

[peniole]

Haven't had problems navigating my 64Gb stick, even using voice commands works. Here's how my files are organized:

Nothing is dumped into the root folder.

Every artist has their own folder, then inside that the album folders, or if multiple artists the main folder is the album name, all organized by language/genre.

ID3 tags are either as they came from amazon for example, or if I ripped my old CDs using Lame on audacity, I let windows media player or audacity autofill them. Although sometimes I have to pick from more than one album match. WMP automatically applies album images, although sometimes I have to paste in an image directly on WMP.

File names are the song title.

Copy order will make a difference. So make sure your folders and subs are in alphabetical order before copying. If you add folders later they will be dumped to the end. I've used the latter to my advantage in creating sub categories while maintaining alpha order (e.g. all artist folders first then the mixes then soundtracks then instrumental, with each being in alpha order).

No, I didn't do the folder structure specifically for this car, I'm just that OCD. Plus it is pretty fool proof no matter the system it's plugged into, and I've used some pretty old and weird systems through the years.

Folder structure looks like this

Root>English>Artist>Album (like yours it ignores the first folder "English" but then reads subsequent folders)

Hope this helps you.

[Huwge]

Are the tracks played in album order? I had read elsewhere that Lexus had problems playing eg, track one then track two, instead playing in alphabetical order

[PDM]

2 hours ago, Huwge said:

Are the tracks played in album order? I had read elsewhere that Lexus had problems playing eg, track one then track two, instead playing in alphabetical order

Vehicles with MM13 and MM15 systems need the tracks copying onto the disk in order as they are played back in the order they appear in the file allocation table. Or you can fix the ordering later using an application like drive sort (this means file names need to be alphabetical (eg 01_name.mp3, 02_name.mp3 for drivesort to be able to rewrite them in the correct order in the FAT).

Vehicles with MM17 and MM19 systems play the tracks in alphabetical order of title in the ID3 tag. For this you need to prefix your songs as "01 tracktitle", "02 tracktitle" etc.  I'm not sure of the order of play back if using MM17/19 in folder mode rather than album mode.  Of course if you often use voice commands to play an album, it will be in album mode anyway ("play album .....")

I have no idea about MM21 systems as in the new NX as i have not spent enough time with one to understand the behaviour, other than knowing that on original revisions of the software the voice indexing of files bug from later MM19 builds had been carried over.

Paul)

[PDM]

On 1/12/2023 at 8:21 PM, Danr said:

Many thanks for the clarification.  I tried another stick which was formatted as Fat32 but with the same result. 

Lexus being too clever on this occasion that they have rendered that function virtually unusable if it has more than a handful of albums. I had my entire library at 30gb on the first stick. The tags are all done but iTunes and windows Groove player regularly ***** up the tags and windows sometimes loses the properties when copying to a fat32. 

I suspect ntfs might work as well but I  not tried it  yet but an older merc I had would accept ntfs so may be lexus might have updated that since fat32 has some problematic limitations.

On another note the Sat nav today was telling me porky pies today all the way home.  Apparently I was about 4 miles away from where I actually was at any given point and the sat nav still thinks it is not parked on my driveway but about 4 miles away!

 

If tags are getting corrupted it could be a dodgy memory stick.  I doubt NTFS will work.  The multimedia system runs Linux, but I doubt the NTFS drivers have been loaded.

With proper ID3 tagging it is possible to make it all work sensibly.  I have about a 128GB stick well over half full and it works absolutely fine... Everything plays in order.

Did the sat nav fix itself? There are very very few occasions when the sat nav cannot get a position fix but it will often be fine the next day. I have had this once in 2 years with my RX and never in our older NX.

Paul

[Huwge]

Thanks for the reply PDM

[Las Palmas]

On 1/12/2023 at 9:37 AM, PDM said:

I am surprised that it plays exFAT, as I always used (and thought it necessary to use) FAT32.... but John seems to have made exFAT work, as do you, so, I've learned something!

In folder view, what you are seeing is the expected behaviour (even if it is not what you might consider logical).  Only directories that contain music files are listed....  So a directory that only has subdirectories (artist->albums in your case), will only list the album folders.  This is as designed (we can debate the logic of the design of course).

I organise my music in top level directories by genre, then artist, then album.  Only the album folders are listed in the folder view.  

However, the system is more designed to use mp3 tags rather than folder structures.  The system will scan the folders and build an index based on mp3 tags, so that you can search by album, artist, genre, song title etc, and these have nothing to do with filename or folder name or hierarchy... you could, I believe, dump all your files on the root (subject to the limit on max number of files per folder) and as long as the mp3 ID3 tags are all done correctly, the system would catalogue them for you into albums etc.

It takes a bit of getting used to but I actually think this is sensible behaviour - you just have to work this way rather than fighting against it.

The difficulty arises in that whilst all of this is done on mp3 tags, the order in which tracks are played is not determined by the ID3 tag for track number, but instead by an alphabetical sort of track names in the ID3 tag.  This is questionable behaviour at best, but according to Lexus is "how it was designed".  This means you need to label your tracks as "01 track name 1", "02 track name 2" etc etc.  There are automated tools for doing this.

Hope that helps.

Paul

Hi Paul,

.flac files are music files but lossless files are not recognized as music files in the CT.

I have all files in root in a DVD, no problem at all. Also, all files in root on a micro-SD-card 32Gb same as DVD = no problem.

That the car is not able to read lossless files (have had all different lossless file types I know of) is stupid when the excellent ML audio is far above the quality of even the highest quality recordings in MP3.

Not one of the files I have are having track names on them as very many are from high quality lossless which has tune-name, artist, album and nothing more.

I have around 300Gb music on my phone and play randomly, which is not possible with DVD or micro-SD-card.

When sitting waiting for family shopping (can take time) I use line-in so I can have full use of the ML audio quality as line-in accept 24-bit 192kHz bitrate and that is just or almost as good as sitting home listening to music. Far better than even latest Bluetooth in the phone can transfer (the car has probably a very old Bluetooth version).

[PDM]

4 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

Hi Paul,

.flac files are music files but lossless files are not recognized as music files in the CT.

I have all files in root in a DVD, no problem at all. Also, all files in root on a micro-SD-card 32Gb same as DVD = no problem.

That the car is not able to read lossless files (have had all different lossless file types I know of) is stupid when the excellent ML audio is far above the quality of even the highest quality recordings in MP3.

Not one of the files I have are having track names on them as very many are from high quality lossless which has tune-name, artist, album and nothing more.

I have around 300Gb music on my phone and play randomly, which is not possible with DVD or micro-SD-card.

When sitting waiting for family shopping (can take time) I use line-in so I can have full use of the ML audio quality as line-in accept 24-bit 192kHz bitrate and that is just or almost as good as sitting home listening to music. Far better than even latest Bluetooth in the phone can transfer (the car has probably a very old Bluetooth version).

Hi John,

I can't remember about our NX, but the RX (MM19 system) will play flac files from usb (but not from disc).  Are you sure that you cannot do flac from a usb memory stick?  I agree the ML audio quality is excellent.  I use highest quality mp3 (It would be too much effort for me now to re-encode all the CDs as flac!) and it works very well indeed.

Paul

[Las Palmas]

7 minutes ago, PDM said:

Hi John,

I can't remember about our NX, but the RX (MM19 system) will play flac files from usb (but not from disc).  Are you sure that you cannot do flac from a usb memory stick?  I agree the ML audio quality is excellent.  I use highest quality mp3 (It would be too much effort for me now to re-encode all the CDs as flac!) and it works very well indeed.

Paul

Remember to have tried all lossless file types on DVD and think also having tried on USB stick, but will try again, when your RX can. Still, your car is 4 years newer and maybe having different software. The one we have has MM11 navigation with micro-SD-card, so more or less same. Easy to try. Will follow up.

[PDM]

13 hours ago, Las Palmas said:

Remember to have tried all lossless file types on DVD and think also having tried on USB stick, but will try again, when your RX can. Still, your car is 4 years newer and maybe having different software. The one we have has MM11 navigation with micro-SD-card, so more or less same. Easy to try. Will follow up.

Hi John,

I just checked the manual for our 2015 NX - it can't to flac on usb (or disc).  So you have a 2017 car... you are in with a chance... will be interested to see what you find.  (Incidentally I have never tried it on usb in the RX... only ever mp3... but as it is in the manual I have no reason to think it can't do it.)

Paul