Sirius XM

[tiger1964]

Thanks, all good to know. We're exploring all options for music: (a) an accessory CD player, which we're used to for longer trips, (b) someone implied we can stick a thumb drive loading with files into the car and it will play, and a friend offered to share his extensive collection, (c) SiriusXM would be acceptable for really short trips (my wife's commute is 2.25 miles, one way) and (d) for the moment there's still broadcast radio but even in a "major market" few stations playing the genre(s) we like and it's increasingly just talk anyway.

A few days in, we're lucky she knows how to turn the darn thing on and off. Go back to as recently as 2015, and she was still playing cassettes.

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

You should never have to pay full price for SXM. When we were using it, I was able to consistently renew it for $5 to $6/Month by talking to a live agent. That said, I'm surprised they maintain their high cost. It's just not worth it even at the $70 or so per year.

[Spektyr]

A low-profile flash drive can be inserted into any of the USB ports (there's 2 in the center console inside the arm-rest cupholders). The simplest solution there is to only put the music in root folder, and it'll just play through sequentially (alphabetically by file name) and loop when it hits the end. You can also tell it to play specific folders and such, I believe it'll even do artist/album using the file metadata, but doing this through the head unit is distracting enough that you don't want to mess with it while you're driving.

Another option is Android Auto or CarPlay through a USB cable. That works fairly well, and you can use a wireless dongle to skip needing to actually plug your phone in (which is what I do.)

I can't really stand radio anymore - too many morons who think their opinions about music and (increasingly) non-music topics are what I've actually tuned in to listen to. And Sirius XM is worse than broadcast for that these days.

So my solution is to set the audio to nothing at all so that it's silent until my phone connects. I also have a USB drive that stays in for if I forgot my phone or something isn't working in that regard, I can just tell it to start playing the USB media.

A CD player would drive me nuts. I'm not about to start rifling through CDs trying to find something to listen to, or limit myself to a 6 CD changer like it's the 1990's. Far too easy to rip those CDs to MP3 and load a hundred (or a thousand) songs on a USB drive.

[OkieSnuffBox]

I just download playlists to my phone on Spotify account so I don't have to use data. Have it connect through Bluetooth. If make sure I have Spotify opened on my phone, it just automatically connects and starts playing.

[tiger1964]

Originally Posted by Spektyr

A low-profile flash drive can be inserted into any of the USB ports (there's 2 in the center console inside the arm-rest cupholders).

OK, a friend says I can download his collection tomorrow. I have a flash drive (not sure if it qualifies as low profile, it's 1.5"x3/4"x3/8" with the socket retracted) at 256GB.... and the friend says I should check to see if the car can accept one with that much capacity, his newer Honda won't take one anywhere near that big. Is this known?

[bcj]

My PNY 16Gb was $15 at Walmart and is only about 1/4 filled with slightly under 200 albums.
I just leave it there, as who would think to look for it under the flap.
Mostly mp3. The sound quality of the car doesn't rate much more.
Now I need to re-rip most of them for FLAC while I still have a CD drive that still works.

Yours will be fine for various definitions of fine.

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by tiger1964

OK, a friend says I can download his collection tomorrow. I have a flash drive (not sure if it qualifies as low profile, it's 1.5"x3/4"x3/8" with the socket retracted) at 256GB.... and the friend says I should check to see if the car can accept one with that much capacity, his newer Honda won't take one anywhere near that big. Is this known?

just a forewarning, the usb drive can be a major rabbit hole. if you've got computer-literate kids/neighbors, it's be worth giving them $50/or let them drive the car around the block, to setup correctly.

1. the flash drive must be formatted correctly. i believe it must be fat32, though each format has size restrictions.

2. the files must be of a specific type/bitrate. many oem radio's don't just support 'everything'.

3. everything is organized by folder. can be a major pain to set up, it depends on how the friends music is cataloged.

4. the way the music is tagged digitally effects what displays on the screen, but also the order in which things are played. this again comes down to how the friends music is cataloged.

5. size of the flash drive does matter--smaller drives will load faster than larger drives. i tried keeping my entire library on a 250gb flash drive. it can take upwards of 5 minutes for it to start playing a song

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by tiger1964

OK, a friend says I can download his collection tomorrow. I have a flash drive (not sure if it qualifies as low profile, it's 1.5"x3/4"x3/8" with the socket retracted) at 256GB.... and the friend says I should check to see if the car can accept one with that much capacity, his newer Honda won't take one anywhere near that big. Is this known?

Likely the USB drive is formatted incorrectly for the radio. I have 10 year old head units that will easily take that size drive.

[Spektyr]

Physical size of the drive doesn't matter a lot - I use a low-profile just so it's not in the way of anything else (like my wireless Android Auto dongle that's right in there alongside it). Unless it's massive, it won't get in the way of closing the arm rest.

Digital size of the drive has been covered. Honestly, you're not going to get tired of listening to only a couple GB of music. It's likely to be between 8-16 HOURS of music per GB (depends on how high the bitrate is, but for most people listening to a car stereo even 128kbps - 16 hours per GB - is indistinguishable from any other audio source.) If you're a huge audiophile AND you've upgraded the car's speakers, higher bitrates can help.

So realistically, get the smallest (both physically and storage) USB drive you can find. Only put the music you want to hear on it.

If it's properly curated the MP3 files will contain artist, album, genre, etc. Your infotainment unit will be able to look up and play music based on that information. But if there's discrepancy between some files having that data and some not, using that feature will mean you'll never hear songs that are missing that extra data.

What I do is dump all the songs that fit a mood or style - basically a "playlist" into folders that are named accordingly. So I have "Queen", "Classics", and stuff like that. (Classics being stuff I love from my teens/20's - not "Oldies" because that's what I grew up calling Oldies.) Then I can just play those folders and get stuff that's all basically similar but not necessarily called the same genre/artist/etc. in the metadata.

Another fun "problem" that you'll sometimes come across in MP3's is volume leveling. You'd see it in the older media: mix tapes. Where someone records a bunch of songs from different sources so some songs are quiet and some are loud. There are tools that auto-level entire libraries of music but I haven't kept up on that since I fixed my vast library years and years ago (just shy of 9,000 songs). I don't rip CDs anymore because I don't buy them - I just buy music digitally online and that's already properly levelled.

When you're inheriting someone else's collection there's no telling how meticulous they may have been.

If you wanna get really nuts, you can set up your music collection in a Plex server and then stream it from your phone. Heck, most people's entire music collections will fit on a decent smartphone.

[Pedro13]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

You should never have to pay full price for SXM. When we were using it, I was able to consistently renew it for $5 to $6/Month by talking to a live agent.

That said, I'm surprised they maintain their high cost. It's just not worth it even at the $70 or so per year.

Totally agreed with Dadhawk, you always can negotiate a better price with a live agent...

Said all that, I will give you my two cents opinion regarding Satellite Radio: I'm already old (on my 50's) so I growing listen radio, way before all this new music platforms and because of that, even now, after being subscribed to SXM for almost 15 years , I still finding convenient: I commute about 35 minutes each way to my work, so found with all this music genres (I love rock music) very entertaining.

Yes, I have Spotify too with my personal playlist, but even though, still like me better Satellite Radio...I know, maybe is because my age and on top of that it is a couple of shows that you can get in SXM that are not available on any of the new music platforms, like 70's, 80's , 90's countdowns and the main show (for me at least): Eddie Trunk: whoever that loves metal music knows who I'm talking about: He have a daily show @ Faction+ an extra show on Mondays @ Hair Nation. The stations that have commercials are the ones are the talking stations only...Any music channel have commercials, FYI.... Again, understand that this opinion is MY personal opinion, and comes from an "old" guy , Last, I swear SXM don't give me a cent for this opinion ( I wish!).... only my two cents.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Pedro13

Said all that, I will give you my two cents opinion regarding Satellite Radio: I'm already old (on my 50's) so I growing listen radio, way before all this new music platforms and because of that, even now, after being subscribed to SXM for almost 15 years , I still finding convenient: I commute about 35 minutes each way to my work, so found with all this music genres (I love rock music) very entertaining.

Yea, I agree it has it's advantages and that's why we used it as long as we did. My major complaint is the cost, even after negotiating. Primarily, the way they don't allow portability between cars. I own 3 cars that all (could) do SXM natively. I can't drive them all at once, so I shouldn't have to pay for them all. It should work like any other streaming subscription where it works wherever I connect.

We did use the version with Internet streaming for the last 3 years we had it, and that was relatively convenient, but then it's just another streaming service.

[AK2112]

Originally Posted by tiger1964

OK, a friend says I can download his collection tomorrow. I have a flash drive (not sure if it qualifies as low profile, it's 1.5"x3/4"x3/8" with the socket retracted) at 256GB.... and the friend says I should check to see if the car can accept one with that much capacity, his newer Honda won't take one anywhere near that big. Is this known?

most importantly, you need to format the drive to fat32 for the car to read it

and the car's head unit oddly has a limit of reading 5,000 songs (probably due to indexing speed) so you're definitely not going to need 256 gigs of space.

recommend this drive for durability, speed and its low profile https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...KIKX0DER&psc=1

[tiger1964]

Thanks. (a) I'll Google "fat32" and maybe figure out how to do that. (b) I suspect once I receive this drive back from my friend, I can stick it in my home computer and delete what I don't want until down to <5000 songs, no?

Originally Posted by AK2112

most importantly, you need to format the drive to fat32 for the car to read it

and the car's head unit oddly has a limit of reading 5,000 songs (probably due to indexing speed) so you're definitely not going to need 256 gigs of space.

[AK2112]

Originally Posted by tiger1964

Thanks. (a) I'll Google "fat32" and maybe figure out how to do that. (b) I suspect once I receive this drive back from my friend, I can stick it in my home computer and delete what I don't want until down to <5000 songs, no?

this 100 second long video will explain how to format a large drive to fat32

since formatting will erase everything on the drive, you'll want to put the music from the drive, onto your computer prior to formatting. once the music has been transferred to your computer, format the usb drive as shown in that video and then go ahead and add whatever music you want back onto the newly formatted drive.

[soundman98]

like i said. rabbit hole. it's a 3-saturday project, minimum...