Observations on the Entune system with a flash drive

Grrrrr, that's a bitter disappointment. I'll be driving from CT to AZ in June to get my topper (AT Overland Habitat). The plan WAS to have gobs of music and audio books to listen to along the way. My Samsung Android phone just doesn't have the capacity to do that so, plugging a USB stick directly into the Entune (not Entrust - my mistake) system. Plan C: connect the USB stick to the phone via an adapter and use the phone to navigate the folders. That means having to manually connect/disconnect every time I get out of the truck.

Thank you very much for your excellent advice.

 

I can browse and switch anything in my 17. That probably doesn't help you but that is my contribution

 

It's the same for me on my 19 4Runner. I only get locked out of Navigation address input and some settings while driving.

 

You'd think that my 21 would have the benefit of lessons-learned improvements but this doesn't feel that way. If this is a "feature" to protect against distracted drivers, I wish it would just come out and say so. But it just goes into this one-track-mind mode which sure looks like a programing bug instead of feature.

 

I don't understand why they don't allow you to AT LEAST use the Tune/Scroll knob on the front of the HU to step up/down through folders.

 

How do you stop it from doing that?^

wow six years later still SNAFU


Btw, I had a single level file vehicle, and the solution was:
The system read the files by date entered into the USB. If song #1 was entered first on the USB, it played first.
If song #22 was entered first on the USB, it played first.
The titled area was not read by the vehicle system.
I have file folders 1 thru 18 the tacoma reads them by number but assigns some kind of alphanumeric name (?). In each folder the songs are in the right order i.e. the order entered on the USB.
I just changed the USB order, but the system is reading the old order - which is no longer on the USB.

 

New to the forum, I see @nfpgasmask knows quite a bit about the formatting of the USB.

I can confirm that as long as the USB is configured at a FAT32 it should be good. Now then, on to why I'm replying:

A friend of mine gave me a flashdrive not long ago, where she took her iTunes library and dropped it on a flash drive. The files come out perfect.

I download alot of my music from youtube, via a conversion site Here where I can easily find the song I'm looking for and download it. It downloads as an mp3, but the formatting of the file seems to not play properly on the Tacoma interface. Any suggestions? Am I going to have to import it to iTunes and then export it?

Thank you

 

Do the YouTube MP3s play on your computer?

 

I have a few converted youtube mp3's from live shows not available anywhere else, on my thumb drive. They play just fine. YMMV

 

Yes they do. Perfectly. I've tried the flashdrive on a few computers with the converted music too, they play just fine.

 

Maybe you could try a different site/method to do the conversion?

 

Go to file properties and click on details.

Are any of the data fields filled now or can you fill them by opening the field with a double click (PC)?

If not, that’s why they are skipped (if that is what happens in the Taco)– there’s nothing there to grab on.

Theoretically a tag editor might be able to fill those but I’m not sure why if it can’t be done manually.

 

Why convert them? One of the formats is m4a, which the Entune units will play. You can use youtube-dl to grab the audio files directly. Also, you'll get higher quality audio if you have YouTube premium.

 

Update!
I can now confirm that the MP4 works but the MP3 doesn't from conversion using that site. It saves as a music video though, and when driving the video doesn't play but the audio does.

I'm good to use MP4s if that's all I can do.

 

The mp3s are saving as a video? Or the m4a? Entune is strict about the m4a format. It must end with extension .m4a, only contain AAC-LC audio and not contain any video.

Re-encoding from AAC to MP3 will likely reduce the quality some. The AAC/M4A quality YouTube uses are CBR 48k (139), 128k (140) and 256k (141/music premium). AAC at 128k will typically sound better than an mp3 at the same bitrate (depending on your ears).

YouTube keeps the audio and video separate, and they get muxed together during playback. Some lower quality videos are already muxed, and I wonder if that website you use is grabbing the wrong stream, creating bad mp3s. Shouldn't be an issue though it your grabbing the audio from YouTube Music. youtube-dl will grab the m4a audio directly, but I believe it will also convert to mp3 as well.

 

Thank you for this ^^^

Seriously, this is exactly what I was looking for!

So glad I found this thread.

Even more glad I found this forum.

 

The supported file formats are listed in the Multimedia System Owners manual. On my 2020 with the premium stereo system it starts on page 147 in the PDF or 149 in the physical copy.
I use FLAC as my file format of choice which the system gladly plays without issue.
I use the Album Artist tag to group music by a particular artist together. This is especially helpful when an artist or OST has a lot of guest artists on the album.
I use the music application called Strawberry to organize as well as sync my music to a 256GB USB.
The USB must be formatted as FAT32 as stated by the manual, this can be a problem for a windows user since windows places an artificial max partition size of 4GB on FAT32. This was to force users over the NTFS when they were first introducing it.
Some issues I have noticed with the radio.
Sometimes if I add or remove tracks from the USB, the system does not recognize these changes. I have worked around this by formatting the USB every time I wish to make a change. This sounds like a pain but on with a USB3 drive, I can write the entire playlist back to the drive in about an hour at worse. This is about 230GB of data being written. This could shorten the life of the USB however I do this maybe once every few months when I have a number of tracks I want to add. Currently I have 9875 tracks on my playlist, I don't know if the 9999 is enforced or not.
The headunit, despite being designed and programmed by the Japanese, does not support anything but latin-script characters. I had to translate many titles from OSTs that would just show up as blank on the unit. It would still play them despite being unable to display the name of the track.
The Grace Database does not update. I follow their exact instructions using a spare USB with just the database update file on it and it never works. I have given up on that.
The last one which is an actual bug of the head unit is if I set off before the warning message has time to clear, the cameras kick on and once I'm going fast enough for them to kick back off the unit is now stuck on the warning message. I can raise and lower the volume and skip tracks however it is stuck on that warning screen. A full cycle is required to fix it. I was considering taking into the dealer and having them update the OS on the head unit if possible.

 

Not a fan of the newer Entune system my wife's Highlander has. This thing takes 10 times longer to scan my USB drive (both initial and resume scan), and it ignores the album covers. Got to stare at this for 10+ minutes...



Is that normal for the newer units?

 

Mine does take a few minutes to scan the USB. However when it does scan it plays the last song it was playing while it does so. I can't change tracks until it is done. It is scanning about 230GB+ when doing so which I don't expect it to do quickly. The album art is hit and miss. You can tell it to prefer the graceDB or the album art embedded in the song. I rarely ever keep in on the music screen though so I don't really care. I keep it on the home screen with music as a sub screen with weather and the map. As far as the graceDB goes, that has never worked properly for me, I've tried to update it multiple times and it has never worked.[/QUOTE]

 

My flash drive only has about 62GB on it. I have just a few files shy of the 9999 limit. It's all MP3 and AAC files.

I did a test, timing from when the song starts playing from the previous trip to when I can select another other song to play.

My 4Runner only takes 10 seconds.
My wife's Highlander takes 52 seconds.

Not horrible, but it was the initial scan in the Highlander that takes forever. The first track that plays is a 1:43 comedy track, that I had to listen to a dozen times before anything else loaded.