2016 Head Unit Question / Discussion
 

Posting this because I had a question but also feel free to talk about the new head unit.

My question is that I have a Note 4 and one time I connected it to the unit and it had a browse button that let me browse through my phone's library by artist, song, or album.

That was one time. I've never been able to get that browse button to appear again.

Also, I have album art for pretty much ever song. But some of my Thin Lizzy songs show album art that I didn't put for the song. It's like this group photo of them instead of the album cover embedded in the song. Where is it getting this photo and how to I get it to show my actual artwork?

Thanks!

Some things I noticed that I don't like:

One thing about the browsing that kind of sucked was that it doesn't let you type in the first couple of letters of what you want and jump to it, nor does it let you drag the slider down the side.

It has no screen auto-off.

Can't directly touch where you want to jump in the song progress bar.

Little things aside, it seems like a step up from last year's model.

Once we PDI the 2016 we have in stock I'll check it out for you if I get a chance.

Try unpairing and repairing. I wish a user manual came with it, I can't even find one on Pioneers site and nothing in my manual or in the manual case.

There's an option that basically says pair device from vehicle or pair device from phone.
I've selected both. Will mess with it some more and report back.

http://www.scion.com/audio/

Download the PDF and see if that helps

For the song list browsing to work, you need to hook up your Note 4 using a data USB cable and set the audio source to USB.

But... It already worked without using a cable at all. In fact, I haven't even lifted up that little USB flap yet.

Thanks!
Just read through it and it doesn't mention anything about hooking it up one way or another to get the browse button to show up. :/

I have a similar but unrelated problem with the 2014 BeSpoke unit in mine (swapped out the original 2013 base unit). With an iPod plugged in, if I go to Browse/Songs, it lists the songs in alphabetical order, but by Artist/Album/Song. I want it to just list the bloody things by song title. It even has the guide at the bottom to jump between letters of the alphabet, but that jumps by artist, not by song title.


Very aggravating because I typically listen to music by starting with the 1st song, and playing all the way through my entire collection in alphabetical order (gives you the effect of random, without the repeats). I ended up having to create a playlist.

Dude it just happened again when I got in my car! It connected, said browse, I clicked on browse and started going through songs, then it kind of went back to the main audio screen and the browse button was gone.

Also, when I touch the album art, it doesn't show me a list of songs queued up.

So I figured out the browse button situation.

I use PowerAmp for my music.

I decided to test using the built in music player app and as long as I use that, the browse button appears.

I like it when people post the solution after they figured it out.

I'll never like a device that forces me to sort via ID3 tags instead of folders. I had to go through all my music, I have over 500 albums, and fix a lot of tags that never were a problem with my JVC in my last car. Call me anal, but when all my bands that begin with "The" get lumped together, I get annoyed. And artists should be sorted by last name. Especially when literally every other device and program reads them that way, including Foobar, my main PC program, except this Pioneer unit. Seriously?

The best part is that after I did all that and plugged my 64GB USB card back in, it takes over 15 minutes to update and recreate the catalogue. And if i add another album... Another 15 minutes. I can't do anything in the interim... Just watch the spinning wheel and wait. Like I said, I have a lot of music. The JVC didn't use ID3 tags so it could load in about 15 seconds.

Also, if you just change the tags and don't delete\add something to force a media update, it doesn't actually recreate the catalogue so none of your changes take effect.

As Devante noted, it has issues with album art. Seems to like a separate jpg and not integrated into the song. That's great. I guess I'll get to add jpegs to 300+ albums now since I stopped doing that a couple years ago since EVERYTHING else can read it from the song itself. Disappointing really.

I'm ridiculously anal about my music. I will force this thing to sort and play my music correctly if it kills me. :bonk:

Well the weird thing about the album art is some songs have the right art, some songs from the same album show a group picture it got on its own, and some don't show the art at all.

I've noticed this as well. Very odd as I know all mine are formatted exactly the same.

I played around with the different folders a bit more and you're right. I can't find a reason to why it works with some jpgs and not others. More investigation is needed. I wish it would just show my album art without fighting me. I put a lot of effort into finding nice, clear jpgs for all my music.

Do you think maybe this head unit has some type of size limitation on the jpgs? Mine vary from 400x400 to 500x500. Pretty standard. I shall keep looking for the solution.

I found out the OS on the stock Pioneer is Linux. I want to change the splash screen. Any HU hackers out there? :P

I'd love to get rid of the idiot warning that pops up when it turns on.

Yes it's quit annoying.

I've been looking into this and trying a few more things. What I've found so far is that Gracenote, the system this Pioneer head unit uses for Album/Artist ID3 tag management, pretty much controls everything about how your music gets sorted and what picture gets displayed. I don't know where it pulls the picture files from precisely, but it's obviously not using any of my pictures. They're being pulled in from another location.

What this means to me is that I have little control over anything this Pioneer does.

Hmmm I think that it can pull the artwork from the HD radio antenna. Thats a digital signal so it can receive small images.

Any one know what the max size USB device you can use and what file formats are supported (ie ntfs fat32)

2016 pioneer head unit

Nm read the above pdf, it's fat16 or fat32 which limits it to 32gigs

It's true that is the highest they officially support, but if you format your 64GB or 128GB card/USB drive in FAT32, you can use it just fine. I'm currently using a 64GB microSD in a USB adapter in my car. Works great. I do the same with a 128GB microSD card... Just don't need it for the car.

Look for a program called guiformat. It'll do the job for you.

I think if you format your device with fat32 it will only make a partition size 32gigs max as that's it's limitations. So it would be pointless using a larger device as it will only use 32 gigs of it, you would have to format it as ntfs or exfat to support a larger file size but the headunit does not support those. This is all theory though What do I know! And I like pink

Not true. FAT32 should be able to go up to 2TB. I'm currently using (not just spouting off garbage info here) a 64GB drive in my FR-S, formatted in FAT32. I also have a 128GB drive formatted in FAT32 that I use in my Fiio X5. Trust me, it works, it's easy to do. You just have to use a formatter like "guiformat" that I mentioned before, or have an MP3 player like my Fiio X5 that will format them to FAT32. If you just try to do it in Windows, it will only let you use NTFS or exFAT in drives 64GB or larger, but this is just Microsoft setting a limit, not a limitation of FAT32 itself.

I've been doing this for years in cars and MP3 players that "only" support up to 32GB USB drives and/or microSD cards. Just use "guiformat" or a similar tool (I have an old one made by Panasonic that's basically the same thing) and you can give a virtual middle finger to Microsoft and "the man" at the same time.

I'm not saying you can't use a larger device but fat32 will only make a 32gigs partition on that device unless you have some type of black magic wand, I like green

I apologize your black magic program defies science you are correct

Right, now I see what you were saying. Haha, yep, the black magic lets you use the entire size of the device... all 64 or 128GB, not just putting a smaller partition on a larger drive and losing the extra space. It's awesome. You can have all 20000 of your 320kb mp3s with you wherever you go. :)

Anyone know how to get this thing to read playlists (on an Android phone)? I guess it doesn't read the playlists you make on the phone itself, and the manual says it doesn't support .m3u.
Thanks for any advice.

So do we know how to update the Gracenote Database?? I bought a 2016 FR-S in a trade in for my 2013. Library version 5.6.2.36 and database version 5488.

Any suggestions. As i have found no where to get this database from. Any Help??

Sorry man. I cannot find a place to update the Gracenotes (although really I'd like to disable it) or the firmware for the head unit itself.

There's no mention of where to go in the manual, either.