How do play USB music in your civic?

roth91

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I have a 2017 EX-L with the CarPlay touch screen. I am looking for tips and tricks on how others use the USB music. I have tons of songs.... about 6 thousand. I know the format of the drive has ti be FAT32. If I throw all the songs on a thumb drive will the radio organize them by artist? Or do I have to organize all songs into folders with artist names? Is there any limit to the number of files I can have? I think I can ask the radio to play a certain artist, right? I am just curious how you listen to your music on a USB device? I am looking for helpful tips and tricks.
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I have a 2017 EX-L with the CarPlay touch screen. I am looking for tips and tricks on how others use the USB music. I have tons of songs.... about 6 thousand. I know the format of the drive has ti be FAT32. If I throw all the songs on a thumb drive will the radio organize them by artist? Or do I have to organize all songs into folders with artist names? Is there any limit to the number of files I can have? I think I can ask the radio to play a certain artist, right? I am just curious how you listen to your music on a USB device? I am looking for helpful tips and tricks.
When i use media player and transfer songs to my usb drive, it puts them into folders and I then have to search through a million folders to find one song sometimes and it's a pain. So I just started dragging songs to the drive so there is only one folder and when I want to bring up a certain song ,I can find it a lot faster since they are alphabetized.
 

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When i use media player and transfer songs to my usb drive, it puts them into folders and I then have to search through a million folders to find one song sometimes and it's a pain. So I just started dragging songs to the drive so there is only one folder and when I want to bring up a certain song ,I can find it a lot faster since they are alphabetized.
I did pretty much the same thing on my Mac.

At first, I just dragged the entire Music folder from of my iTunes library and copied it onto the drive, but it was organized by Artist/Album/Song -- which made it a pain in the ass when an Album was performed by different Artists, so an album was spread across multiple folders. The head unit's Android music player only browses as if it were a file directory, and it doesn't use the iTunes-built library.xls file.

The other thing I did was, I picked playlists I had made in iTunes, then dragged them from the iTunes window onto the USB stick.

Oh yeah, I did one more thing: using Terminal, I removed the random hidden files that began with "._", which the head unit refused to play.

All told, while it was kinda nerdy-cool to stash a bunch of music on a little USB stick, it's just easier to use an iPhone or iPod.
 

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it's just easier to use an iPhone or iPod
Yep, sure is. I use a 160gb iPod classic and while it takes a minute to scroll through some of the lists (I have over 16k songs on it), my non-fancy, non-touchscreen radio can control it just fine.
 

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At first I just dragged my entire iTunes library, almost 1,800 but it was a PITA especially if I want to listen to a certain genre.

So I ended just creating folders to organize & separate my tracks.

Speakers can't compare with my Murano but the infotainment system is better easier to control.
 


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At first I just dragged my entire iTunes library, almost 1,800 but it was a PITA especially if I want to listen to a certain genre.

So I ended just creating folders to organize & separate my tracks.
Yup. I did some of the same, and it felt like I went back to 1999 and the early days of mp3s with apps like MPlayer and whatnot.
 

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I have a 2017 EX-L with the CarPlay touch screen. I am looking for tips and tricks on how others use the USB music. I have tons of songs.... about 6 thousand. I know the format of the drive has ti be FAT32. If I throw all the songs on a thumb drive will the radio organize them by artist? Or do I have to organize all songs into folders with artist names? Is there any limit to the number of files I can have? I think I can ask the radio to play a certain artist, right? I am just curious how you listen to your music on a USB device? I am looking for helpful tips and tricks.
I use folders (Artist, Album, Songs). It's easy for me since my entire collection is on folders on my computer so I just drag and drop. Just remember that if you add new artist/album folders at a later time to the flash drive, those new folders will appear at the bottom of the artist directory of the infotainment screen. Someone here mentioned "Drivesort" which will prevent this from happening and sort the artists alphabetically. I use Drivesort any time I put new music onto my flash drive. Works really well.

As for limit, I've found that for my flash drive, it will only let me display 700 folders as the max. Anything over 700 and the infotainment screen will not show those additional artists. I hope it's just my flash drive and not all of them, because I will have to find a better way to organize my music if I go over the 700 limit.
 

BarracksSi

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As for limit, I've found that for my flash drive, it will only let me display 700 folders as the max. Anything over 700 and the infotainment screen will not show those additional artists. I hope it's just my flash drive and not all of them, because I will have to find a better way to organize my music if I go over the 700 limit.
Mine stopped at 700 folders, too. And it was 700 folders regardless of where they sat in the directory tree -- if I had an Artist/Album/song.mp3, that counted as 2 folders.
 

ropil728

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Yep, sure is. I use a 160gb iPod classic and while it takes a minute to scroll through some of the lists (I have over 16k songs on it), my non-fancy, non-touchscreen radio can control it just fine.
I have a ipod classic 5th gen with bunch of songs but every time I plugged in the cord, it doesn't do anything other than get charged. how do you get to play your music? thanks in advance. (Btw, I tried resetting it, using different usb port on car...nothing works) :(
 

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Try a different cable maybe? I'm not sure. I had zero expectations for my sport head unit to control it, but I plugged it in and to my surprise, I was able to navigate it almost as easily as my old Alpine iDA-X100. I'm not even using an original iPod cable, so I have no idea why mine works and yours doesn't.

I'd also like to rescind my statement about my usb port being 1.5A. Taking a look at what iPod cable I had made me realize my mistake. It is, indeed a 1.0A port.
 


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I use folders (Artist, Album, Songs). It's easy for me since my entire collection is on folders on my computer so I just drag and drop. Just remember that if you add new artist/album folders at a later time to the flash drive, those new folders will appear at the bottom of the artist directory of the infotainment screen. Someone here mentioned "Drivesort" which will prevent this from happening and sort the artists alphabetically. I use Drivesort any time I put new music onto my flash drive. Works really well.

As for limit, I've found that for my flash drive, it will only let me display 700 folders as the max. Anything over 700 and the infotainment screen will not show those additional artists. I hope it's just my flash drive and not all of them, because I will have to find a better way to organize my music if I go over the 700 limit.
I am about to load my new car's first USB music library and I'm wondering if you can walk me through the best way to go about it?

I've made sure that the flash drive is formatted to FAT32 and I've downloaded drivesort so I'm ahead of the game I think!

My music is all downloaded to a my music folder on my computer. Should I make a "Music" folder on the USB drive and drag files to that or just start dragging album files over to the USB?

I see people mentioning that they have their files in a certain order like 'Artist, Album, Song' is there a best way to go about doing that so the car's Head Unit recognizes them easily? Meaning do I select each album on my computer and rename it in a special way?

I'd like to make this as easy as possible for the car to play music without many hiccups...I'm still scratching my head as to why they didn't just put a 3.5mm auxiliary jack in it from factory.

Anyways...any direction and help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. I am not overly computer savvy but I can follow direction well! Just ask my wife :p

Cheers,

M1KL
 

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are all the factory civic usb ports able to transmit data to the head unit or is it only the drivers usb able to do that and the others just for charging?
 

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are all the factory civic usb ports able to transmit data to the head unit or is it only the drivers usb able to do that and the others just for charging?
The drivers USB can charge,use CarPlay and play from a USB.

The console USB can charge and play from a USB only.
 

M1KL83

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are all the factory civic usb ports able to transmit data to the head unit or is it only the drivers usb able to do that and the others just for charging?
I think they both do, driver's and in the armrest console by cup holder one does too at least for viewing photos and videos through the Head Unit.
For example:


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