Alpine CDE-134HD

Does anyone here own an Alpine CDE-134HD? I just got one, and the damn thing wont read USB mp3's from the flash drive formatted in FAT32 like it says to do. It will read ipod touch and 2006 model of creative nano mp3 player, but not raw MP3's. Anyone have this issue?

 

By "Raw" mp3's what do you mean?

I've seen HU's have issues with MP3's due to the following reasons

- Doesn't support the bitrate of the MP3 (rare issue)
- Too many songs in one folder. Most HU's support 256 songs per folder.
- Try FAT vs FAT32
- Too large of a file name for song and/or folders. (under 256 characters should work, but I've seen a Jenson HU that only supported 24characters for each track/folder name)
- Bad USB stick- try another just to make sure
- Stick is too large and incompatible. Try a 4gig stick or smaller and see if it works. Some HU's only support 32gigs or less..
- Stick class speed may be too slow (Rare). Make sure your USB is class 4 or faster. I'd suggest class 10

 

I tried pretty much all of those variants with no luck. I cant figure out why it wont read. Called Alpine.. and they were like not very helpful.

Called Crutchfield and they exhausted every option as well and are mailing me a new unit. I'm guessing I may have gotten a lemon. Hopefully the next one will work correctly. I guess its just one of those things that happens when everythingggggg is made in china these days. ]

----edit........if anyone is going to buy one of these....and you want to use an actual flash drive to play your MP3's...DONT buy it. Crutchfield was awesome enough to send me another unit, and it did the same thing. (no File found). I called Alpine back and said WTF I have 2 of these.... and they were like "oh it works in ours" which is b.s. and the guy told me it will not play (protected mp3's)...Which is b.s.....therefore I loaded some that I made from scratch to the specs and guess what? (no file found). Plus it mentions nowhere in the product specs that it will not play protected songs like itunes.

Basically the conclusion I came to is that this unit will ONLY read Usb (DEVICES) from the front usb port...and not memory sticks..IT will only play from other players..Although they market it to play mp3's from usb....they even send you an 8GB memory stick with it. The whole point of buying it was to use a tiny memory stick and avoid cables... Complete lie! buyers beware.

 

I'm calling bad USB or MP3 format, not the HU.

I don't understand your issue after you post.

It works from the front USB but not the rear? I don't see a rear USB listed in the manual or did I just over look that?

You said it only reads USB from the front, so it works from the front USB then?

What 'memory stick' are you using? Are you using a sony memory stick? what is the model of your USB flash drive?


Alpine makes solid products, this is either a bad/incompatible flash drive, incorrectly formatted USB, incorrect file system, incorrect MP3 bit rate (doubt it, it plays WMA's as well), or a user error.

I'll tell you right now, its not the HU giving you problems.

Download the test tunes from the sticky in the Audio/Video thread, place them on a USB Flash Drive.. Not a memory stick, not a MicroSD card in a USB adapters, nothing that isn't a flash drive like similar to this:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-cruzer-16-gb-usb-2-0-flash-drive/9226875.p?id=1218062423830&skuId=9226875&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=9226875&extensionType={adtype}:{network}&s_kwcid=PTC!pla!{keyword}!{matchtype}!{adwords_producttargetid}!{network}!{ifmobile:M}!{creative}&kpid=9226875&k_clickid=1188bc5b-50bc-55a8-6a42-0000557ebb25

 

No. Basically it only has front usb. not rear.

I formatted 3 different flash drives in FAT32 and tried 10 different MP3's all with varying bit rates but all under 320kbps. One of the drives was an 8gb made by alpine that actually came with the unit.

When the flash drives are plugged in, the unit reads (searching) and then (no file). When I plug in an ipod touch, or creative nano mp3 Player to the same usb port, the Alpine unit reads the files no problem.

The same MP3's were used on both the flash drives and the players.

But for some reason the unit will only read other mp3 players and not flash drives.

I dont see how I could be missing anything here, alllllll of my other devices play these files no problem. Even my LED tv plays them all, and every computer i've tried reads these drives no problem.

To be honest I think it is the USB controller that is built it to the unit. It's not broken....but it is not capable of reading raw memory. I believe this unit is designed with the absence of a USB controller that will browse raw memory. Instead it uses the usb controller on the mp3 player device to browse the files on the device......

I can't see how its anything other than that. Otherwise it should read these files immediately. I think Alpine is just shady about the fact that this unit will (only read other devices) and not raw ram memory. They fail to mention that anywhere.

 

I just bought one of these, and I too am having problems with flash drives. I've owned two Sony units and one Pioneer unit, and none of those had any problems playing MP3s from flash drives. I tried a 32GB memory stick (FAT32 formatted, I believe) in my Alpine unit, and it wouldn't even read it. I can get it to work with a 16GB stick, but a lot of the time I get a read error, and I have to unplug the stick and plug it back in to get it to work. It's very annoying.