Observations on the Entune system with a flash drive

My album art shows up.

 

What file type are they saved as? And are they saved in each respective album folder?

 

Not sure about type of files, basically copied and pasted my entire iTunes library onto a stick. Every band has a folder with sub folders that are albums. I'm far from an audiophile, pretty simple stuff.

 

How long does it typically take for the head unit to load everything? Because it's taking longer than I would have thought. Music is playing though. Using a 64gb drive.

 

As far as I know the head unit just reads from the flash drive, it doesn't download it. I don't notice any delay when playing music from my flash drive, as soon as it's select it starts playing. If it's taking a long time there's probably an issue with how the songs are loaded on the flash drive.

 

All good. Just took a while to read it all.

 

Next question: is there any way to rename USB? In other words, instead of USB, name it Truck Music or some such nonsense? I thought I saw a picture either on here or FB where someone had changed it...

All of my music was tagged properly via media monkey, so I'm having zero issues with song labels, so that's great. It works far better than I thought it would, so I dedicated a 64 gb micro flash drive to that slot. I also took the cover off of the USB/aux plate.

 

Not sure about that one. Been using the same drive for my motorcycle, both just read USB.

 

When plugging in the flash drive, it does take about 10-15 seconds to sort of read the music inventory, but it at least starts playing something right away and seems to play out from where it left off when that particular drive was last inserted.

As for renaming the drive, yes you can but you do it from your computer. Simply right click on the drive icon, select "rename" and type something in. I named mine "METAL DRIVE" and thats how it shows up in the headunit. Helpful for distinguishing between identical drives.

 

Yes! I figured it the other day and neglected to post.

 

"Taco Noise" I like it.

I run 2 separate 64gb drives. METAL DRIVE and EVERYTHING ELSE, lol.

 

Oh, and I did some experiments on the album art thing. Seems that, in order to see your album art, 200x200 is max size for the image file and it must reside in the same folder as the song file.

Tried 300dpi pics and they would not take.

 

My 2017 Limited has the JBL Premium Audio. I have a USB flash drive set up with folders by Artist, and then sub-folders under each Artist with MP3's for each CD by that Artist. Like for AC/DC there is a folder "ACDC", then 11 folders under that one (one for each AC/DC album that I own).

For a number of months recently, I had the JBL set on Random, so it would skip around through the 200 or so albums on the flash drive and randomly play something. During those months, the JBL underwent two "upgrades" from Toyota via the internet.

I could SWEAR that before ever using RANDOM, that the Up/Down seek button on the JBL or on the steering wheel would step through each cut in sequence for whichever album was selected, and when it reached the end of that album it would move to the NEXT album by that Artist, or to the next Artist if it had reached the end of the first Artist's albums. NOW it seems that no matter what I do, the seek buttons will only rotate through the cuts on the selected album (after the last cut it returns to the first cut). The only way to move to another album is to Browse to it via the on-screen interface.

This doesn't seem right. Am I not remembering correctly how this worked when the truck was new (before I ever chose RANDOM)? If it should work the way I want it to work, how do I get back there? I've been struggling with this for weeks now. It seems there is no button combination to force a step to the next album (Folder) on the flash drive. It's downright dangerous to try to change from The Beatles to ZZ-Top using the on-screen interface while driving.

BTW, I get album art... and I have no idea where it's coming from. All I ever did was rip my CD's to mp3's for the flash drive. I never intentionally put any images on the drive.

 

The gracenote database, built in to the unit, will present the album art that it has in memory if no art file is present. For a band like ACDC, they probably have most albums' art images. For more obscure bands, probably not. In which case, finding no resident image file, it will toss out an image that is generic to the genre of that song file (assuming that its genre is identified in the ID3 tag)

 

As for the song shuffle dilemma,

You may ask for it (the head unit) to shuffle ALL songs or songs within a sub category.

So, to shuffle thru ACDC, you would nav to that artist and shuffle those tracks. It will bounce through all ACDC songs in all of those albums, presumably randomly.

If you have selected to shuffle everything on the drive, advancing to the next song manually should also randomly select something from anywhere in the drive.

Im speaking from Entune Premium, not JBL and am not in the know on any operational differnces

 

Great to know. Thankfully I am happy with my 64gb iPhone and Bluetooth. Have been impressed with my Entune so far, especially XM radio!

* Next step is the photos in the startup/shutdown mode!

 

The window sticker says "Entune Premium JBL Audio w/ Integrated Nav". So I guess it's Entune JBL. All I really want to do is step up/down through songs and folders like I "thought" I could do before on this system. I can step up/down like I want to in my 2011 Honda CRZ and my 2014 Maxima. It could be that my memory is failing and the Tacoma never worked like I think it did. But then it doesn't make sense that the only way to advance to another album is to use random, or to have to go back to the Browse menu while driving.

 

Well, it kind of does, actually. Random means random and you will always have to specify the horizons for that functionality. i.e., random within the entire drive, random within an artist, random within an album, random within a genre, etc.

If its getting it to play all of the songs for, say, ACDC before moving on to, say, Blue Oyster Cult...then you shouldn't need the random function. I would think it would play all of the ACDC and, after the last song in that artist folder, move on to BOC...but they will be in order as determined by track number in the ID3 tag.

Are you trying to get it to shuffle thru all ACDC before shuffling thru all BOC (for example)? I don't think it will do that.

 

Those of us not wishing to be guinea pigs in the global research on whether Bluetooth radiation is harmful will likely not choose this option.

 

Great thread!