# USB Thumb Drive - Audio



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

I took a USB 2.0 8GB Kingston thumb drive and decided to test to see if I could load music in my car. I downloaded some songs to my mac (I usually just have them on my phone). The HD If Available checkbox was checked in iTunes and I copied the directory structure that iTunes uses directly onto the drive. The files are m4a files.

Anyway when I put the drive into the car the USB option shows up and when I select it the car can see the files. When I select a file it shows artist/album/artwork etc... but I get a loading error on all the files.

Any thoughts to what I need to do to support this? I can use my phone no biggie but I thought it would be kind of cool to have all my iTunes music in my car. I wanted to test on an existing USB drive before I purchased a larger one that would be dedicated to the car.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I"ve read a thread where someone loaded up a big USB drive. They had problems as the car was taking a long time to index and read through the drive. I do think it played the songs, but he found it seems that you can't use too big a drive with too many songs.


----------



## Joaquin (Jan 15, 2018)

Convert them to mp3. I think iTunes can export into mp3 if chosen in the settings.


----------



## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Is it Apple Music music or iTunes purchased songs? If Apple Music, it might not play.


----------



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

Purchased I don’t have Apple Music.


----------



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

I just downloaded Tesla tunes. I am going to try that later.


----------



## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

ummgood said:


> Purchased I don't have Apple Music.


Well there goes my theory


----------



## Charlie W (Apr 23, 2016)

ummgood said:


> ... I can use my phone no biggie but I thought it would be kind of cool to have all my iTunes music in my car. I wanted to test on an existing USB drive before I purchased a larger one that would be dedicated to the car.


For a while, I thought I was the last person on the planet who was wanting to use a USB to play songs instead of having to use my phone. I feel better now. 

~Charlie


----------



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

So I think there is something weird with Apple files that the Model 3 doesn't like. I converted a few to FLAC just to test and the car can play those but I have a problem with the car going to the next song on the drive after playing for roughly 30 seconds. So that isn't quite perfect yet but that could be because I had to go and pulled the drive and probably messed up the file transfer.

I tried TeslaTunes and it is pretty neat but it will not convert to FLAC unless it thinks the files are Apple lossless (which I guess they aren't but I think they are because the car won't play them) so it does a nice copy but won't auto convert and there is no way to force it. I opened an issue with the developer and he has reached out so maybe we can get this solved which would be awesome!

I plan on getting some more files converted to FLAC and will try it again today. I just wanted to keep everyone up to date because I haven't seen many Model 3 postings on getting the right format on a USB drive.

For reference I have a Macbook Pro 13" with Touchbar that I am using to try to do all of this. I could try on one of my work laptops but they have this software on there that sniffs all outgoing packets and it makes USB transfer super painfully slow.


----------



## duckfriedrice (Mar 23, 2018)

Hey guys. The issue for some could be the format of the USB drive. It needs to be FAT32. I'm not on my computer at the moment, but if it's not an option for Macs find a PC to format the drive with. They mention the format in the manual of someone else wants to find it. Not sure what file types they support, but I heard that the model S supports FLAC amongst others.


----------



## duckfriedrice (Mar 23, 2018)

From the latest manual:


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

duckfriedrice said:


> Hey guys. The issue here is the format of the USB drive. It needs to be FAT32. I'm not on my computer at the moment, but if it's not an option for Macs find a PC to format the drive with. They mention the format in the manual of someone else wants to find it. Not sure what file types they support, but I heard that the model S supports FLAC amongst others.


Just as a confirmation the Mac can format FAT32.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

if I recall though, there is a size max for FAT32 (at least from OSX), so a top thumb drive may be ok, but not a 2T SSD drive.


----------



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

I already had it formatted FAT32 and then for good measure I wiped it and formatted it again. That didn't fix the issue. The car can read the USB just fine and see all the files on there. Plus it knows the song name/artist/title on the m4a files. When I choose a file to play it shows up on the screen with the info about the file including album art but it says "Loading Error" under the song name and will not play.

I have better results with FLAC but that still isn't perfect and I don't want to manually manage all the files myself. The utility I tried is very basic so I have to choose a directory at a time and it will copy to a root level on the thumb drive. So I am hoping to get a new TeslaTunes version that will do this for me. I could get his code and change it to do what I want but right now I don't have time and I haven't done Mac development before so there would be some learning curve.


----------



## Edward Reading (Jun 26, 2017)

What is Teslatunes?
Thanks,
Ed


----------



## Joaquin (Jan 15, 2018)

In my previous life with other cars that were supposed to play music from USB or CDs with mp3, there are several things to consider:

Double check that the files does NOT have DRM (copyright management stuff). iTunes uses this even if you purchased the song.
Try to use a very well known format and codec. Specially those DRM-free (mp3).
Double check the names of the folders and files: look for spaces, symbols, long names, etc.
Remove any non-music files: images, meta-data files, etc.
Try first with a small number of folders/files.
I remember having lots of pain with all these stuff. It was a blessing when I could use my iPhone over BT with Apple music locally cached in the phone. Much less drama.

Not sure what is the perfect recipe for the Model 3 USB itself, let us know if you find it


----------



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

Edward Reading said:


> What is Teslatunes?
> Thanks,
> Ed


It is a utility written by a fellow Tesla owner. It runs on Mac OS X and it syncs your iTunes library with a thumb drive. So if you buy new songs it identifies the new ones and copies only them over so you can keep a USB thumb drive in sync with your music without much work. In addition it is supposed to convert apple files you cannot play on the Tesla to FLAC format so the car can play them. It works fine keeping the files in sync for me but it isn't converting the files to FLAC so either it thinks the files are ones that are compatible with Tesla or they are compatible with Model S/X but not with 3.

If you have a Mac it is really a nice piece of software that helps manage a USB drive. Unfortunately at this moment it isn't working for me but I filed an issue against his project so he has reached out to me. I'll follow up to let others know what comes of it.


----------



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

Joaquin said:


> In my previous life with other cars that were supposed to play music from USB or CDs with mp3, there are several things to consider:
> 
> Double check that the files does NOT have DRM (copyright management stuff). iTunes uses this even if you purchased the song.
> Try to use a very well known format and codec. Specially those DRM-free (mp3).
> ...


Thanks I am trying different things and will let everyone know what works. I have things though during the process. 1. It has to work. 2. I have to have some easy way to maintain the files on the USB drive. If I can't get both things to happen then I'll give up on it. That is why I went the TeslaTunes approach first because I like how it helps sync and convert at the same time. If I have to manually convert and keep everything sync it will not be worth it to me. I might be tempted to write software that can do it but why if someone already has something that does everything I want.


----------



## Edward Reading (Jun 26, 2017)

ummgood said:


> It is a utility written by a fellow Tesla owner. It runs on Mac OS X and it syncs your iTunes library with a thumb drive. So if you buy new songs it identifies the new ones and copies only them over so you can keep a USB thumb drive in sync with your music without much work. In addition it is supposed to convert apple files you cannot play on the Tesla to FLAC format so the car can play them. It works fine keeping the files in sync for me but it isn't converting the files to FLAC so either it thinks the files are ones that are compatible with Tesla or they are compatible with Model S/X but not with 3.
> 
> If you have a Mac it is really a nice piece of software that helps manage a USB drive. Unfortunately at this moment it isn't working for me but I filed an issue against his project so he has reached out to me. I'll follow up to let others know what comes of it.


Wow, that sounds great. Thanks for the reply. I will have to check it out.


----------



## Runt8 (May 26, 2017)

Joaquin said:


> Double check that the files does NOT have DRM (copyright management stuff). iTunes uses this even if you purchased the song.


iTunes stopped using DRM on purchased songs in 2009. However, songs that were purchased before then could still have the DRM in the files. Deleting and re-downloading them will delivery DRM-free versions.


----------



## ummgood (Feb 13, 2017)

Runt8 said:


> iTunes stopped using DRM on purchased songs in 2009. However, songs that were purchased before then could still have the DRM in the files. Deleting and re-downloading them will delivery DRM-free versions.


Yeah I don't have any old files because my laptop is new and I just downloaded the library (I was streaming off the cloud before).

The developer from TeslaTunes verified that one of my files plays on his Model S so it must be an issue with the Model 3. Hopefully that gets fixed soon. I am going to try a new USB flash drive to see if that solves the issue.


----------



## Spinball (Jun 20, 2017)

Joaquin said:


> Double check that the files does NOT have DRM (copyright management stuff). iTunes uses this even if you purchased the song.
> Try to use a very well known format and codec. Specially those DRM-free (mp3).


[Dang, beat to the punch!]

Some corrections:

1. iTunes hasn't sold any DRM-encumbered music since 2009 (not counting Apple Music subscription, which of course is not a purchase anyway). If you have music you bought from iTunes and last downloaded it from 2009 or earlier, you can use this guide to check if you have any files left with DRM and then delete and redownload them without DRM.

2. m4a _is _a very well known format. I play m4a files over USB in my BMW and Chevy.


----------



## PatrickM (Oct 3, 2017)

The issue is that they are .mpa. I had a brand new song that I just bought, downloaded and put on a USB drive and it didn't play. I got the title of the song and the album artwork but the song itself would give a loading error. The MP3's that I have played fine but the album artwork didn't carry over.


----------



## OneSixtyToOne (Apr 17, 2017)

i'm using a 32 GB USB drive with MP3 files and everything works great including the album art. I have my music and video library on a 4T NAS (Western Digital My Cloud network attached storage) drive and it's used by my Mac, Windows PC, and my TV (via DLNA). The NAS is setup as a DLNA server. To get around the album art issue with DLNA I've created an album art image called folder.jpg in every album's folder.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

OneSixtyToOne said:


> i'm using a 32 GB USB drive with MP3 files and everything works great including the album art. I have my music library on a 4T NAS (network attached storage) drive and it's used by my Mac, Windows PC, and my TV (via DLNA). To get around the album art issue with DLNA I've created an album art image called folder.jpg in every album's folder.


What do you think your M3 is doing with the album art? Do you think it is pulling the album art from your thumb drive or from a grace notes or like database? Also how full is your 32 GB drive and did you ever have any indexing issues?

I downloaded Telsatunes and ran that yesterday. I've got about 45 GB of music. Purchased a 64 GB drive on Amazon today, hope it will hold it all and not have indexing issues.


----------



## OneSixtyToOne (Apr 17, 2017)

GDN said:


> What do you think your M3 is doing with the album art? Do you think it is pulling the album art from your thumb drive or from a grace notes or like database? Also how full is your 32 GB drive and did you ever have any indexing issues?
> 
> I downloaded Telsatunes and ran that yesterday. I've got about 45 GB of music. Purchased a 64 GB drive on Amazon today, hope it will hold it all and not have indexing issues.


I'll check on how full it is and get back to you.

The Model 3 indexes it pretty fast it has to be using the data on the disc because a lot of what I have has no artwork on grace notes (dozens of Grateful Dead limited edition concert CDs). On most of my stuff grace notes pull the music info but the album art is hit or miss. I typically scan the cd cover or find an image online and use that. iTunes has no problem when i add the artwork but the DLNA doesn't use it, that is why I create the folder.jpg file. I do notice that an additional thumbnail file is created by something, haven't figured out exactly what. Maybe it's the DLNA server.

Image: Dead's complete Europe '72 tour came in a suitcase; all 22 shows, 73 CDs


----------



## OneSixtyToOne (Apr 17, 2017)

GDN said:


> What do you think your M3 is doing with the album art? Do you think it is pulling the album art from your thumb drive or from a grace notes or like database? Also how full is your 32 GB drive and did you ever have any indexing issues?
> 
> I downloaded Telsatunes and ran that yesterday. I've got about 45 GB of music. Purchased a 64 GB drive on Amazon today, hope it will hold it all and not have indexing issues.


Update:

My thumb drive is using 15 GB: 1,721 files, 98 CDs

Doing some research I found out the Thumb.db file is a hidden file created automatically by windows to cache images.


----------



## Rich Nuth (Jan 25, 2017)

It seems that there are problems reading m4a files even if you use TeslaTunes. I had the problem on my Model X. I could never get the system to play through all the songs without some sort of error.

Many have resorted to converting to mp3. I converted to FLAC and have had flawless playback on the X and the 3 ever since.


----------



## Gregor (May 11, 2017)

Have you tested the m4a files with the latest software.. most of my music is m4A. If I may ask what ap/prgm did you use to convert? Like many I am prepping like crazy. Thanks


----------



## Gregor (May 11, 2017)

Sorry, meant to add that MP3 is criminal to use with such a nice sound system


----------



## bbelding (Apr 16, 2017)

Although I have a 2013 Model S and not a Model 3, I suspect we're having the same issues.
TL;DR - The car doesn't like changing audio formats. You need to convert everything into one format (I chose 320K MP3). It also has weird sort logic that can be fixed with consistent Album and Artist tags.
......Long version......
I had all sorts of loading errors etc. over the past week. I have ~300 songs from a variety of artists and albums in both MP3 and M4A. I'm an IT guy with a music habit and a penchant for solving problems.
Suffice to say, this annoyed the **** out of me.
Here's what I did to fix it...
Tools:
MacBook Pro with macOS 10.13.4
MusicBrainz-Picard - this is to edit the metadata tags (album, genre, etc.) - necessary to overcome some weird sorting logic in the media player app
MediaHuman Audio Converter - converts everything to MP3 - this is KEY to avoid the loading errors
USB drive formatted as FAT32 (get a good one from Sandisk or Samsung or someone you've heard of)
Process:
Install both apps above.
Insert the USB stick
Launch MediaHuman Audio Converter and add the songs you want on the USB stick. I did one album at a time.
Set the format to MP3 320K
Let it convert all your files.
Click on the spyglass next to one to find the directory with the converted files (it's buried somewhere)
Once that window pops up, open Picard and drag all the new files into that app. Set the Artist and Album to the same thing on every track, even if they're different artist. This is the only way I could figure out how to fake out the sort logic in the car.
On the USB stick, create new folders per album and drag the files into the appropriate folder.
Unmount the stick from your Mac and remove.
Put it in your car, touch USB, wait until it loads, and start playing and changing songs. It shouldn't lag at all or cause issues.
The albums will be right; the artists may not be if the album is a compilation.
My hypothesis is that it there is a bug (or set of bugs) when changing file types. It'll read MP3, M4A, FLAC, and some others I think. I've seen the errors when I've switched from an MP3 album to an M4A album (for example). I haven't when you switch across the MP3 files.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

bbelding said:


> Although I have a 2013 Model S and not a Model 3, I suspect we're having the same issues.
> TL;DR - The car doesn't like changing audio formats. You need to convert everything into one format (I chose 320K MP3). It also has weird sort logic that can be fixed with consistent Album and Artist tags.
> ......Long version......
> I had all sorts of loading errors etc. over the past week. I have ~300 songs from a variety of artists and albums in both MP3 and M4A. I'm an IT guy with a music habit and a penchant for solving problems.
> ...


Thanks for the information and details. I have to say that this looks like a lot of work. I spent several weeks a few years back ripping my CD's to iTunes - most all of those are MP3. The albums purchased since then are m4a. I don't think it's worth the time to get it all on a USB. Will just play from the phone over bluetooth. It's an interface I'm already familiar with. If I can play a few songs from the USB and notice a difference over BT it might be worth coming back and doing this work going through my library again, but not feeling it just yet. Hope to have a car in a few weeks to compare.


----------



## Defjukie (Sep 28, 2017)

hopefully they put some work into the USB music player, once the other launch kinks get ironed out in the M3 software. I would much rather use USB than Bluetooth for music. Stuff like shuffle, auto-resume, general compatibility, ability to search via voice, etc. is still missing, if I'm reading correctly.


----------



## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Defjukie said:


> hopefully they put some work into the USB music player, once the other launch kinks get ironed out in the M3 software. I would much rather use USB than Bluetooth for music. Stuff like shuffle, auto-resume, general compatibility, ability to search via voice, etc. is still missing, if I'm reading correctly.


Everything that you've described potentially works via Bluetooth.


----------



## Defjukie (Sep 28, 2017)

SoFlaModel3 said:


> Everything that you've described potentially works via Bluetooth.


But I don't want to use BT. I prefer to use USB because I have all my favorite records ripped in FLAC format.


----------



## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Defjukie said:


> But I don't want to use BT. I prefer to use USB because I have all my favorite records ripped in FLAC format.


Understood... I was just covering that each of those items you had listed work via Bluetooth


----------



## Ricob (Mar 25, 2017)

[mod note: posts from several different threads have been merged here, leading to some repetition]

hi All,
First time writing here, and i've got a puzzling question. Had my 3 for about 4 weeks now. in the last week have finally had time to figure out how i'm going to do music. Can use the phone and bluetooth, but also wanted to have a few USB drives so i could have lots of my music at my fingertips. i loaded about 65 gigs on to a drive. it took the 3 about 2 minutes or less to index it all, and i could play anything from it. So i thought all was good, here's the weird thing that has happened 3 times, and i've given up, but thought i'd ask here to see if someone has any suggestions, etc. after leaving the car, and coming back to it, the next morning. i go to put in in reverse, the R does not come up, the camera does not come on, but it does move in reverse, same with D, essentially the screen is locked up. i remove the usb drive, and have to reset the screen. Then everything works perfect, until the next time i put the USB in. I'm flummoxed that this could lock up and / or crash the 3's system. Any insight would be great. Really bummed this simple function seems like something i shouldn't do, for fear of screwing up the cars computer. 
thanks.


----------



## LTskier (Sep 13, 2017)

I've had two gripes with USB playback of MP3 music: slow loading of the library every time I start the car, and no shuffle/repeat. However, while skimming the online manual I noticed page 96 says, "You can also shuffle tracks in a playlist or repeat a playlist or track using the shuffle/repeat icons displayed below the album cover art." 

Does anyone see such icons? I don't. 
I'm on SW version 2018.21.9


----------



## skygraff (Jun 2, 2017)

Nope.

High on my list of software enhancements in the other thread.


----------



## AndyN (Jan 10, 2018)

"... in a playlist"? anyone know how to make a tesla-compatible USB playlist?


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

LTskier said:


> low loading of the library every time I start the car,


others have concluded that mixing various music file formats together will cause loading speed issues. You may want to try a USB drive with only one file type and see if that helps the indexing speed.


----------



## Ricob (Mar 25, 2017)

Hey guys. this is not about 2.0 or 3.0, but about your desire to have music on USB in that size. I initially tried ~100gig drive. it worked, but probably every 3rd time of getting in the car and starting to drive, it forced me to restart the screen, as it locked up function. I down sized it to 60gigs. it happened less often, but it still happened. It appears that the built in media player can't handle reloading, or loading it everything you stop then start the car. if any one has any advice or a different experience, i'd love to hear it. Super bummed, i can't have all my music on a few drives and with me for all trips, etc.


----------



## MTN Ranger (Aug 2, 2017)

Ricob said:


> Hey guys. this is not about 2.0 or 3.0, but about your desire to have music on USB in that size. I initially tried ~100gig drive. it worked, but probably every 3rd time of getting in the car and starting to drive, it forced me to restart the screen, as it locked up function. I down sized it to 60gigs. it happened less often, but it still happened. It appears that the built in media player can't handle reloading, or loading it everything you stop then start the car. if any one has any advice or a different experience, i'd love to hear it. Super bummed, i can't have all my music on a few drives and with me for all trips, etc.


I have used two different 256GB flash drives, on USB 2.0 and the other 3.1. I haven't had the screen lock up. The only problem I have is that it has to re-index every time I start the car. I don't think it matters what size. The USB 3.1 re-indexes in 2 minutes while the 2.0 does it in 3+ minutes.


----------



## TirianW (Oct 31, 2017)

For drives that large, USB 2.0 / 3.0 is not the issue, but the filesystem on the drive. Look at page 96 in the manual, they specifically say that they only support FAT32 volumes not NTFS or ExFAT. Technically, FAT32 has a 32 GB partition size limit so any larger drive may not work. There are implementations of FAT32 that will work on larger volumes (up to 2 TB) but they are very device specific. Now, having said that, 32 GB is still a significant amount of music and if you needed more than that then either multiple thumb drives could be swapped out, or a Bluetooth transmitter () and your favorite music player (iPod, etc) would also work.


----------



## LTskier (Sep 13, 2017)

MelindaV said:


> with only one file type


Do you mean container type, compression type, or both? Asking because I have mostly .mp3.. no FLAC or WMA types of files. Sounds like you're talking about the container type (file extension) regardless of how it's compressed. Thanks.


----------



## RzrSharp (Oct 19, 2018)

I've been enjoying my new model 3 for 2 weeks now. Only thing that bugs me a bit is the functionality of a USB drive to use to play music. Previous car had an 8 year old low level Pioneer deck with a USB port, which would instantly allow me to access the functions of an ipod and listen to music, and would also instantaneously have access to music on a USB drive. I have a Samsung 32GB USB 3.1 drive (200 mb/s transfer rate) that I put my music onto as the ipod doesn't seem to work at all in the model 3. The model 3 takes about 10 minutes to index the songs before I can access them, and any folders I created on the drive do not show on the folders selection of the audio player. When I select 'Folders', it basically just lists all songs on the drive. Any ideas on how to make an actual separate folder appear, and tips for having the drive index quicker? Had not for these problems with the audio system, the car would be perfect ... 

Thanks for everyone's input!


----------



## mswlogo (Oct 8, 2018)

I have 10k mp3’s About 70GB and it is annoying but takes about 2 minutes to scan. It seems to be random when it decides to scan or not with each start. 

But 10 minutes on 32Gb seems slow. Also 32Gb gives no indication of how many tunes you have which is what matters most.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

RzrSharp said:


> I've been enjoying my new model 3 for 2 weeks now. Only thing that bugs me a bit is the functionality of a USB drive to use to play music. Previous car had an 8 year old low level Pioneer deck with a USB port, which would instantly allow me to access the functions of an ipod and listen to music, and would also instantaneously have access to music on a USB drive. I have a Samsung 32GB USB 3.1 drive (200 mb/s transfer rate) that I put my music onto as the ipod doesn't seem to work at all in the model 3. The model 3 takes about 10 minutes to index the songs before I can access them, and any folders I created on the drive do not show on the folders selection of the audio player. When I select 'Folders', it basically just lists all songs on the drive. Any ideas on how to make an actual separate folder appear, and tips for having the drive index quicker? Had not for these problems with the audio system, the car would be perfect ...
> 
> Thanks for everyone's input!


Do you have a mix of audio file formats or are they all true mp3s?


----------



## RzrSharp (Oct 19, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> Do you have a mix of audio file formats or are they all true mp3s?


Mostly MP3 with a couple dozen M4A files mixed in there, about 4k songs total.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

convert the M4As to MP3 and things should load better.


----------



## RzrSharp (Oct 19, 2018)

MelindaV said:


> convert the M4As to MP3 and things should load better.


Thanks, I will try that. Any thoughts on the folders not showing correctly?


----------



## LTskier (Sep 13, 2017)

I'm very happy that MP3 shuffle is finally here, but whenever I try playing my MP3s the car is still indexing them. It takes ~7-10 min to complete, and it's *every time* I start the car. Why? My prior cars would index a thumb drive once, then never do it again unless you remove the drive. Many of my short drives are over before indexing completes 

It's about 60GB of MP3s without DRM, so nothing fancy going on. I'm using a Lexar JumpDrive 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive.


----------



## BluestarE3 (Oct 12, 2017)

I've only started playing MP3 files on my Model 3 for about a week, so my sample size is small. It indexed my files the first time I plugged in the flash drive and one other time a couple of days ago. The rest of the time, the files are available to play without re-indexing. I'm using the exact same flash drive as you, but my music collection is only half the size of yours, so I don't know if the difference in behavior is due to the number of files involved?


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

LTskier said:


> I'm very happy that MP3 shuffle is finally here, but whenever I try playing my MP3s the car is still indexing them. It takes ~7-10 min to complete, and it's *every time* I start the car. Why? My prior cars would index a thumb drive once, then never do it again unless you remove the drive. Many of my short drives are over before indexing completes
> 
> It's about 60GB of MP3s without DRM, so nothing fancy going on. I'm using a Lexar JumpDrive 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive.


So where does it store the index that it is creating? I would hope that the index isn't 4 GB, but is there a chance that it actually writes the index back to the same thumb drive and it doesn't have room to store it all? And it doesn't give you an appropriate error? I've not played any music from a thumb drive, but it's just an observation with the size you note that you have and the amount of music on it.


----------



## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

I had the same problem with indexing of my MP3s so I stopped using the USB drive. I then watch a video that claimed the lossless FLAC music files on the USB was the best way to get quality sound. I gave it a try and the quality was noticeable even compared to premium slacker stream. I only have about 5 albums in FLAC so I am currently not having the indexing problem, but I imagine it will return. I had both the Dashcam and the usb drive connected to a USB hub. I after a couple of trips it would recognize the drive but it would say 0 songs. This happened a few times, so now I have them both in the front two usb ports. It has worked fine for about a week now. I will load it up this weekend in different chunks to see where the indexing problem returns. I also plan to try to install another socket but in the front of the console or run cable from the current socket to the wireless phone chargers. I should be ably to tap into the rear side of the exiting socket and then hopefully install the new socket on the other side.










I lifted this picture form another member to help with my disassembly this weekend but lost the thread to give them credit. Does anyone have photos of the cup holders removed?


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

A bit off topic to the title, but hand in hand with that last post. Here is a video from a friend who tapped into the original lighter socked to add one in the front cubby for power. This leaves the original USB's for Music and DashCam and doesn't use a splitter. Here is a screenshot I captured from this video and the video link:


----------



## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

GDN said:


> A bit off topic to the title, but hand in hand with that last post. Here is a video from a friend who tapped into the original lighter socked to add one in the front cubby for power. This leaves the original USB's for Music and DashCam and doesn't use a splitter. Here is a screenshot I captured from this video and the video link:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That was just what I needed to keep me from destroying some expensive stuff.


----------



## LTskier (Sep 13, 2017)

Hmm, I haven't thought about the index location @GDN . I will experiment by making space on the drive or getting a bigger drive. 
FYI, I've got the drive in the front left USB port and not via a hub. The right port is another drive for DashCam. For TeslaPad wireless charging I ran this under the trim from the cigarette lighter.


----------



## LTskier (Sep 13, 2017)

I hadn't maxed out the drive... it was only 60% full (24.1GB free). So it's not a space issue for the index. I did find a few dozen .m4a files, so I deleted those to make it only .mp3 files and it still has indexing every time the car starts. It's 4905 songs all in the root directory (no folders), formatted FAT32.


----------



## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

Madmolecule said:


> That was just what I needed to keep me from destroying some expensive stuff.


Added a socket in the front bay of the console to power my wireless charging pad. I removed the console to do this. It went pretty well.

I could not remove the console or reinstall it without removing the top plastic bracket and the top console door.

I wish I would have found a socket that was shallower if possible.

I would have also had a console wrap available to put on while I had it out.

















Removing the Console to add a 12V socket


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I've got a friend with a 3 that did your same retrofit, but didn't take the console out. You've got to be super careful, but he used a speed bit to cut the hole where you did. He tapped power at the cigarette lighter in the back of the console.


----------



## Madmolecule (Oct 8, 2018)

I saw the video doing it with the console in. I think removing it makes for a more solid install. I felt it was a big mistake while I had the console out and messed up the spring. Glad I did it, but I should have left it to the professionals, but I posted the video with part numbers if interested. It is also probably a how to void your warranty video


----------



## Dr. Prunesquallor (Dec 11, 2018)

I did a search, but haven’t seen any posts on this since 2018.48. 

I simply copied my iTunes library (ALL m4a) using Finder drag/drop to a 64 GB thumb. Things seem to be working pretty well on the Model 3 Media Player. When selecting by Artist, all the albums are there, album art is correct, songs are in correct order and sound great. No skipping or errors so far. When selecting by Album, not so much. A lot of albums are split into fragments with several songs each. Player loses its place when the car goes to sleep. 

The file structure iTunes uses is Artist/Album/Song, so that’s probably why that option works well. 

My iTunes library is all m4a because I use iTunes Match, which essentially replaces any ripped/copied song with Apple's "lossless compression".


----------



## JustTheTip (Jun 7, 2018)

Hmmm. I should try plugging my iPod in.


----------



## OneSixtyToOne (Apr 17, 2017)

Last night I lost all streaming capability, favorite icons missing, no USB music, spinning circle of death, etc. The only thing that worked was the radio. Rebooting did not fix the situation. Finally, I pulled out the USB stick and plugged it back in and everything started working. I've always had the intermittent loss of the USB drive but nothing like this.
Additional info:
Version 2018.50.6
32 GB USB 2.0 thumb drive with about 10 GB of music.
I don't have a directory on the USB for video.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Seems like it was timed with your USB stick removal, but there were other similar problems to your reported across the country last night. It could have been the same issue. You might check out this thread as it sounds similar even though you seem to be tied to the USB removal. https://teslaownersonline.com/threa...-after-power-off-and-two-button-resets.11182/


----------



## OneSixtyToOne (Apr 17, 2017)

GDN said:


> Seems like it was timed with your USB stick removal, but there were other similar problems to your reported across the country last night. It could have been the same issue. You might check out this thread as it sounds similar even though you seem to be tied to the USB removal. https://teslaownersonline.com/threads/"routing-with-no-traffic-data"-lte-streaming-music-stopped-working-even-after-power-off-and-two-button-resets.11182/


Hmmmm...... It might be related. I did notice an LTE loss at one point but then I had all the LTE bars and traffic info. Favorite icons started reappearing but I still had the spinning circle of death for several minutes. As I stated above, when I removed the USB stick and plugged it back in, everything instantly started working. Some programmers at Tesla need to review their error handling and recovery code.

BTW this all happened between 9:00 and 10:00 PM PST


----------



## OneSixtyToOne (Apr 17, 2017)

FYI This situation occurred again so it is unrelated to the LTE outage.
I entered the car and the entertainment system had the spinning wheel of death. TunedIn was the last thing I was playing before I left the car. This time I immediately removed the USB drive and everything started working again. After putting the USB back, it works fine too.


----------



## OneSixtyToOne (Apr 17, 2017)

Like most of us, I've had issues with the USB losing its place after exiting the car. Recently I've also had issues with the USB causing the streaming to go into the spinning circle of death.

I had never created a TeslaCam folder so I decided to give it a try.

Last weekend I partitioned the thumb drive and use the first partition for video and the 2nd for music. So far everything has worked flawlessly. The mp3 song position was even maintained through the last update (2019.5.4).

My new working theory is that there is some sort of conflict or timeout occurring when the car is simultaneously trying to find a non-existent video folder and the last song file on the same partition.


----------



## TheHairyOne (Nov 28, 2018)

I switched from a stick to a SSD and have had way fewer issues. My precious Usb stick would overheat in the car when not in use, usage light blinked while playing streaming music (separate stick from dashcam stick).

I now use a fat32 (cam)/ext4 (music) partitioned 2TB ssd and haven’t had a spinning death issue since.


----------



## Gusm3 (Nov 29, 2018)

iTunes compression algorithm is better than the MP3s from the streaming correct ?


----------



## eric_in_co (Sep 12, 2018)

I had a discovery regarding USB loading time. I have a USB drive with 40+ GB of mp3 music on it, and it was taking over 10 minutes to index every time I got in the car. One of my folders had thousands of files in it. I moved the files in that big folder into lots of smaller folders (organized by artist/album), and that significantly sped up the indexing time. Now it takes 45 seconds to index.

Unfortunately indexing still happens every time I get in the car, and it never remembers or resumes where I was last listening on USB.


----------



## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

Yes, usb audio is STILL broken, despite promises to fix it when v9 came out several months ago. Still doesn't remember where you left off when you restart the car, and doesn't sort files correctly in folder view. Annoying. Not the end of the world though. One thing that helps the indexing slowness - a ssd formatted in ext4. I'm still experimenting with it, and may not have enough files on it to really tell yet, but it seems to load almost instantaneously.


----------



## eric_in_co (Sep 12, 2018)

sduck, Tesla is at least promising to fix USB playback? I've contacted them several times and they suggested scheduling service so they can look at it.


----------



## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

No, perhaps I wasn't clear. USB audio playback works, just not in the way I'd like it to, or that other cars do. If USB audio isn't working at all for you, that's a different issue.


----------



## eric_in_co (Sep 12, 2018)

sduck said:


> No, perhaps I wasn't clear. USB audio playback works, just not in the way I'd like it to, or that other cars do. If USB audio isn't working at all for you, that's a different issue.


USB playback works great for me once loading is complete. Before I reorganized my music loading took over ten minutes. Now it takes 45 seconds, but it does still load every time. And more importantly, it never resumes what I was listening to on USB last time I was in the car.


----------



## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

I'm hearing that they've fixed the resume problem with the new update. Haven't been able to test it yet. And I'll second my ext4 formatting recommendation - I pulled my drive to add a bunch of files, now there's some 20GB of files on it. When I put it back in the car, I pulled up the usb window to see how long it would take to index it, but it was already done - almost instantaneously.


----------



## eric_in_co (Sep 12, 2018)

Do you know with which new update resume is fixed? Two days ago I received 2019.5.15, and it still doesn't resume for me.


----------



## eric_in_co (Sep 12, 2018)

Actually just this morning it resumed twice for the first time ever! Maybe resume is actually fixed. I'm not sure why it wasn't working immediately after the update.


----------



## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

It has resumed successfully the 3 times I've tried it so far. That's worlds better than it was before. (this is with 2019.5.15)


----------



## eric_in_co (Sep 12, 2018)

It's consistently resuming for me now. The worst behavior of my car is now completely fixed. Awesome!


----------



## 299792458 (Dec 25, 2017)

ugh, why am I still stuck on 2018.50.6 (?! -- sympathy is welcomed haha)

Any indication about the fix action containing:

1) if USB drive is not removed while awake, no indexing is performed after wakeup && USB audio becomes selected (?) 
2) if audio file being played before sleep exists, continue playing said file (?) (regardless if USB drive contents have been updated)


----------



## eric_in_co (Sep 12, 2018)

299792458 said:


> ugh, why am I still stuck on 2018.50.6 (?! -- sympathy is welcomed haha)
> 
> Any indication about the fix action containing:
> 
> ...


Sympathy for your old version. Are you unable to connect to WiFi or cell signal? You should be on a more recent version if your car can connect. Otherwise, maybe something is wrong with your car and it needs to be serviced.

Both problems you mentioned were fixed for me in 2019.5.15


----------



## 299792458 (Dec 25, 2017)

eric_in_co said:


> Sympathy for your old version. Are you unable to connect to WiFi or cell signal? You should be on a more recent version if your car can connect. Otherwise, maybe something is wrong with your car and it needs to be serviced.
> 
> Both problems you mentioned were fixed for me in 2019.5.15


Firmware needed to be pushed, and got it squared away by Tesla Virtual Service yesterday. Now running 2019.5.15, and I've not 'noticed' any reindexing. 😁


----------



## OakTownGuy (Mar 15, 2019)

So I have a USB thumb drive with a bunch of music on it and recently noticed that a lot of songs aren't showing up when connected to my car. The drive its formatted to FAT32 and all the songs are .mp3 files. Am I doing something wrong or is this an existing issue. Sorry if it's a noob question that has been already addressed here.

Thanks for any help.


----------



## TrevP (Oct 20, 2015)

Make sure your files are indeed MP3s and not just named .mp3 and also make sure you don't have any strange characters in the file names. The Tesla media player is notoriously slow to index USB drives if you have a lot of music on them and it tends to reindex them frequently resulting in frustrating delays in getting the USB stick to come up.


----------



## EV Dr. (Jun 21, 2018)

Check the Files view. You will possibly see songs that don’t appear where you expect them in the Artist, Song and Album views.


----------



## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

I'm having a strange issue with the music partition on my USB drive. After updating to 2019.8.4, the index for the drive became corrupt when the car briefly lost connectivity to the USB drive while indexing. (I blame a sub-optimal USB splitter for that.) Most songs on the drive cannot be found (by artist, album, folder, etc), and those that can will not play ("USB Loading Error"). If I plug the drive into my PC, all of the songs are visible and playable, so I know the drive itself is not corrupt. 

Does anyone know a way of forcing the car to re-index the drive? 

Unplugging the drive and plugging it back in doesn't seem to do the trick... though I have not yet tried plugging in a different drive with music, letting it index, removing it, and then plugging the original drive back in.


----------



## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

Change something on your current drive, it should re-index it.


----------



## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

sduck said:


> Change something on your current drive, it should re-index it.


You'd think that would do the trick, but no dice...... added a few new songs in new folders, and no change. The drive has 10.5 GB of music (~3000 MP3s), so you'd think it would re-index in just a few minutes, but I don't see any indication that it's even attempting to do that.


----------



## Bokonon (Apr 13, 2017)

Okay, I've looked more into how USB audio indexing works.... skip to the bottom for the steps I followed to rebuild a corrupt index.

Indexing in the current firmware (2019.8.5 as I write this) seems to be differential. In other words, if you add new songs to the drive, they will be added to the index, if you remove them, they will be removed from the index, and if you change them they will be updated in the index... but the car will not re-index any songs that haven't changed.

Indexing is also specific to a drive. If you have USB drives A and B, the car will maintain a separate index for each drive. As a result, simply swapping one drive for another doesn't trigger a re-index. The index itself is not stored on the drive.

All of this is normally great, because it means that the car won't have to re-index the entire drive every time it gets mounted on startup, and USB audio is available almost immediately. However, if the index gets corrupted, then you're in a small pickle, because the only way to wipe out all of the missing/corrupt entries is to remove the underlying files and replace them. But you have to do this in two steps, so that the car sees that the drive is empty and has a chance to remove all songs from the existing index.

In my case, the steps I followed were:

1. Re-formatted the music drive (using the "quick format" option, which is equivalent to deleting all files and folders in one go)
2. Went out to the car and plugged the drive in.
3. Switched to USB Audio and waited until the car showed no songs, artists, albums, or folders on the drive (~15 seconds after it had finished reading the drive)
4. Removed the drive, plugged it back into my laptop, and copied all of my music back onto the drive.
5. Returned to the car, plugged the drive in, switched to USB Audio, and waited for the index to rebuild (~45 seconds).
6. Confirmed that all artists, albums, and songs were present and properly indexed.


----------



## Blue Meanie (Sep 25, 2016)

I've noticed that compilation albums (more than one artist) show up not only under Artists for each song, but under Albums as well: so for a single compilation of 15 artists I'm seeing the album listed 15 separate times under the USB Album selection tab. I know that in iTunes I've tagged the album as a compilation of various artists but that doesn't appear to help the Tesla interface. Any ideas?


----------



## FurryOne (Apr 19, 2019)

Blue Meanie said:


> I've noticed that compilation albums (more than one artist) show up not only under Artists for each song, but under Albums as well...


Most likely the only way around this is to use a MetaData Editor to change each song to point to a Album that you create.


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

I just copied my iTunes music to the drive and also discovered a mess when I looked for albums or artists but the best thing I’ve discovered is the “Folders” at the bottom of the list. If you use Folders your albums that are compilations are all listed under “Compilations” so go to “C” to find them each in their own folder kind of like you’d expect them to be.


----------



## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

Yes, this is a problem with the current USB audio system. And one of the main things I complain to tesla about regularly - I hope and wish that they'll eventually fix this mess of ancient cobbled together code. The workaround is to use the Folder tab. But you still need to go into the files and edit the tags to have the track numbers in the title field, if you want them to play in the correct order.


----------



## FurryOne (Apr 19, 2019)

FurryOne said:


> Most likely the only way around this is to use a MetaData Editor to change each song to point to a Album that you create.


Well, I tried creating a folder/Album called RoadTunes, added 13 songs, changed their metadata - Album name and numbering, and while it shows and plays correctly under "Folders", I end up with 13 "RodeTunes" entries under "Album"


----------



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

FurryOne said:


> Well, I tried creating a folder/Album called RoadTunes, added 13 songs, changed their metadata - Album name and numbering, and while it shows and plays correctly under "Folders", I end up with 13 "RodeTunes" entries under "Album"


Yep - hence my comment above. Folders is the easiest way to make sense of it.


----------



## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

Is anyone able to use AIFF files in the Model 3 with recent firmware?


----------



## TheHairyOne (Nov 28, 2018)

40GB worth of music in my car on a 240GB SSD, lossless formats sound way better. Wish surround was supported. Wish favorite persisted after removing drive. Would be cool to have a playlist creator or supported format, vs. putting files in a forced alphabetic order in a folder. Anyone have better luck making playlists some other way?


----------

