Swanheart

I had a car audio engineer look at the speakers and he doesn't see a problem with replacing most of them with Bose. Unfortunately, it was booked in for the work in late March so that hasn't happened yet for obvious reasons. My 'problem' with listening to music in cars is that I have spent most of my life working as an acoustics engineer and the transient and sibilant response of speakers is extremely important to me as it is essential to the good reproduction of drums. Unfortunately, at the moment, it is not quite as good as I'd like even using CDs as I have been a bit spoilt by the Bose system in the Honda Legend for the last 8 years. There is one thing that still really bugs me though and I wonder if anyone can solve this as it happened again this morning during an essential shopping trip. I selected an album from the USB device using a voice command which is a really great shortcut, and the the album played and when I got to Sainsbury's, the display said Album 16 Track 5. When I came out of Sainsbury's and got back in the car, the same track was playing but the display now said Folder 27 File 7 and when the track finished it moved on the File 8 which happened to be Track 1 again. So to find Track 6 (which I had really been looking forward to), I had to load the album again using a voice command and then manually select Track 6 knowing that on my way home I would also hear Tracks, 7, 8, 9 & 10 in that order. Does anyone know how to stop the car changing from Album mode to Folder mode as it's doing my head in!! What I don't understand is that all other devices I have used playing in folder mode such as my mp3 player, tablet and phone plus others in the past, when you select a folder it plays the tracks in conventional numerical/alphabetical Filename order which is what I've always understood Folder play to mean and as I've edited all the track filenames so there is an 01 xxxxxxxx for the first track, 02 xxxxxxxx for the second track, etc, the tracks all play in the order they are designed to. This is the first device I've found where this doesn't apply. Does anyone know of any workarounds for this? Any help appreciated. My wife listens to audio books on headphones when out walking and these come from the library as a set of about 8-12 CDs. I rip these to mp3, rename every the track filename so they can run alphabetically in a single folder on either her phone or mp3 player starting with aa, ab, ac, etc - only takes about 10-15 minutes to rename about 150-200 tracks. She can then listen to the whole thing over a period of a couple of weeks and only have to press pause then off when she's finished knowing it will start again where she left off without any bookmarking and she'll never have to fiddle around finding folders then files as I've taken all that out of the equation for her. She couldn't listen to that story in my Lexus in folder play as the files wouldn't necessarily play in the right order! Bizarre. Dave

Hi Keith, I've solved the problem with the folders being displayed in the order you copy them! I've discovered that I can just use a voice command to play which ever album I want to listen to and don't have to search for anything so it doesn't matter what order they're in. Simple as that. On the down side, I have discovered that the Mark Levinson audio system in my GS isn't a patch on the one in my 4th Gen Honda Legend which is down to the quality of the speakers so I may have to find someone who can upgrade the speakers with Bose ones which are standard in the Legend and much much better. Dave

Thanks John, yes, 128Gb is a lot of music, even at 320kbps quality, but as I said in my reply to Mark, I'm trying to setup something that is permanently in the car rather than using external devices of which I have quite a few! Cheers, dave

Thanks Mark, the car does have Bluetooth connection for audio but I'm trying to set up something that is in the car permanently rather than use external devices which need to be activated every time I set off and so it's still accessible even if I don't have my phone with me, Ultimately, my intention is to have far more music available than will fit on my phone anyway. Cheers, dave

Thanks Robert, but I don't use itunes and I don't want to open another can of worms when I've only just taken the lid off one! Cheers, dave

Many thanks Keith, that has been very helpful, especially the tag/folder modes and I have just spent a few more minutes fiddling with the system (just another excuse to sit in the car really!) and I think I'm getting there. I still can't access the Artists folder level but I have at least found my way to the Artists tab but it takes the Artist names from the ID3 tags and not from the folder names but I guess that's a viable plan B. It seems an odd system that presents the folders in the order in which they were loaded and not alphabetically but I will check out the link you provided for resorting as you suggested so thanks for that too. Regards dave

Hi All, Is there anyone on here who is particularly knowledgeable about using a USB memory stick with a Mark Levinson audio system? My previous cars have all had a 6-CD autochanger which I was always ok with but CDs are now considered passé so my newly acquired 2014 GS300H is only fitted with a single CD slot. (BTW, I did know this before I bought the car!). Anyway, No problem I thought, I bought a 128Gb USB memory and started re-ripping my CD collection in 320kbps quality to get reproduction in close to CD quality and ensuring that all ID3 tags are complete. So far so good and playing the mp3 files is fine but my problem is trying to get to grips with the folder/file hierarchy so it's easier and quicker to find a particular album, artist or folder which I will definitely need when I eventually have 250-300 albums on there instead of the 20 or so I have currently. The handbook says that Maximum directory hierarchy is 8 levels and I'm not using anything like that just Root / Artists / Albums / tracks but when I select Media/USB it immediately starts playing the first track in an album folder (or from where it left off previously) and scrolling through folders just goes through the album folders in some sort of random and most definitely non-alphabetical order and there doesn't seem to be any way of accessing the Artist folders level from there. The handbook shows pics of the screen in 2 play modes called Tag mode and Folder mode but it doesn't explain how to choose between them and it goes on to show a picture of what the display screen looks like for selecting Folder, Artist, Album (which is where I'm trying to get to) but again it doesn't adequately explain how to get there from where it seems to default to. Hence I'm struggling. Is anyone able to help me with this please? Any and all help most appreciated! Cheers Dave

Hi All, Just bought a 2014 GS300H Premier. This is my first Lexus after 25 years of driving Honda Legends so there are probably a lot of Lexus quirks that I'm not familiar with so may be back on here over the next few months for advice on various things that I haven't been able to sort out from the owner's manual! Cheers, Dave