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Music Files from lap top to USB Stick, need help.


murkat

Question

Posted

I took some time to burn my CD's onto a high quality USB memory stick so I can listen to in the car, etc.

Some songs, albums, artists, are not even recognized by my car's audio.

Are some artists, albums, etc., encrypted to the point that even I can see the files, but they will not be able to play?

Anyway to fix? or am I stuck lugging around CD's again?

20 answers to this question

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Posted

Does an IPod work if you plug that in?

Posted

I do not have an Ipod.

it is basically the same albums, not matter what source it is. Only using actual CD will work.

Me thinking the artists of encrypted something.....

I don't know.

Posted

Most stereo systems can't read NTFS formatted drives.  If that's the problem you'll need to reformat the stick to FAT32 and simply copy the files over again.

Posted

I don't think it's an encryption issue or you wouldn't be able to play them on your computer, would you?

You burnt the CDs to a USB mem stick, but was it a direct transfer from the CD or was it converted to a compressed format as is typical of converting to an mp3 player? What year is your car?

What program do you use to burn the mem stick? Does it have options for determining format, bitrate, etc.? Variations in that could confuse the DAC in the car. 

Posted

We ripped a bunch of music to the PC (in our case, in Windows Media). I then copy those to the memory device. In the two newer cars, they seem to play flawlessly, regardless of whether I use a USB device or a camera style memory (SDHC) card. Different cars might not be quite so flexible.

Posted
18 hours ago, django49 said:

We ripped a bunch of music to the PC (in our case, in Windows Media). I then copy those to the memory device. In the two newer cars, they seem to play flawlessly, regardless of whether I use a USB device or a camera style memory (SDHC) card. Different cars might not be quite so flexible.

This is what I did. on my microsoft lap top, and on  mac lap top. Same USB stick type. 2016 toyota prius. same albums not showing up from either laptop.

I will dig a lil more.

Posted

Open disk utilities on your mac (applications/utilities/disk utilities), select the thumb drive, then select the info tab at the top right and in the resulting window verify what file system is in use.  If it's anything but some version of FAT, that's the problem.

Posted

Are some files WAV and some MP3?  Maybe the system doesn't recognize the format.

another thought is the size of the memory stick.  My car will only recognize up to a 16gb usb stick. I loaded a bunch of files onto a 32gb stick and could only see/read half of them.

Posted
15 hours ago, cynic said:

Open disk utilities on your mac (applications/utilities/disk utilities), select the thumb drive, then select the info tab at the top right and in the resulting window verify what file system is in use.  If it's anything but some version of FAT, that's the problem.

just checked, it is ms dos FAT32 format. the stick is a samsung 32 gb, highly praised.

Posted
8 hours ago, murkat said:

just checked, it is ms dos FAT32 format. the stick is a samsung 32 gb, highly praised.

Did you reformat it?  Try reformatting it on Windows, put the music on there and trying it again.   What format is the music in?  According to their manual, mp3, AAC (m4a) and WMA are supported.  If it's another file type, convert it.  

Posted
2 hours ago, scottcald said:

Did you reformat it?  Try reformatting it on Windows, put the music on there and trying it again.   What format is the music in?  According to their manual, mp3, AAC (m4a) and WMA are supported.  If it's another file type, convert it.  

all the files are wma.

I try it again.

Posted

Some radios prefer to have the songs copied to the USB stick in one operation. They don't like patchwork copies.

Posted
6 hours ago, gorch said:

Some radios prefer to have the songs copied to the USB stick in one operation. They don't like patchwork copies.

Oh, wow, that's interesting.  I wonder why that is.  Hadn't heard that before.  

Posted
3 hours ago, scottcald said:

Oh, wow, that's interesting.  I wonder why that is.  Hadn't heard that before.  

Files are stored with hidden IDs. Some radios can only handle consecutive numbering without gaps or jumps in between. Poor programming burned into silicon.

Posted
On 8/30/2016 at 0:36 PM, gorch said:

Files are stored with hidden IDs. Some radios can only handle consecutive numbering without gaps or jumps in between. Poor programming burned into silicon.

So, If I pre edit an album, remove a few songs from, I can be screwing up the balance of the universe in the realm of?

Posted
2 hours ago, murkat said:

So, If I pre edit an album, remove a few songs from, I can be screwing up the balance of the universe in the realm of?

That could be a major liability if you ever run for elective office!

Posted

A few thoughts on things I might try to debug this:

#1> Do you have a manual for your radio?  If so, it should have some information about file system / file types that can be read off your USB stick.  There's a chance your radio just might not be able to read WMAs.
#2> Can you put your USB stick in a different computer, open it in windows explorer and see / play your files on a different computer?  
#3> If you have a different USB stick (even a cheapo one -- I personally wouldn't pay too much attention to amazon type reviews on this kind of stuff), try putting one of your files on different / smaller / older stick and test with that.  Believe it or not, this is more of a variable than you might think.
#4> When you say you ripped it from a CD, I'm assuming you mean a physical CD disk, and not a download of a CD?  Downloads from amazon / itunes, etc are encrypted, and require you to be logged into your account to play them.  Files that you rip off a physical CD typically shouldn't be encrypted...
#5> Another option might be to try using a different program to rip files from your CD, or changing the file format to a high quality MP3 instead of a WMA.  I haven't used iTunes in a while, but I'm pretty sure that I used to rip files from CD using iTunes.  

Good Luck.  This kind of stuff can be frustrating as hell.

Posted

1. yup. it reads the wma's. it is reading most of the music. The same albums, music on the same stick is not read on different radios.

2. yes. yes.

3. Same thing. specific albums will not read.

4. yes, an actual paid for printed CD of an album.

5. I have ripped from both camps, two different sticks, same results from the same artists, albums. I will try one in MP3.

Posted

Ah ok --

If you can play some albums but not others from the same USB stick, it feels like a DRM (Encryption / Digitial Rights Management) issue with those particular CD's.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if certain publishers have figured out a way to add some technology to keep you from ripping a song from a CD with Windows Media Center / iTunes.

Do you get an error in iTunes or Windows Media Center when you try to import songs from those CD's?  Or do they create files that you can play on the same PC?

At the heart of the thing, it's pretty silly because anyone could just play their CD and record their own unlocked audio file from it.

Posted

Take a look at the directory labels. Are the ones you can't use in your car longer, with spaces or special characters \n /%26 or otherwise different? 

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