Took delivery on a new 2021 RDX Tech on April of this year. Love the car so far, but a USB problem is driving me crazy. USB will play when I first leave my house, by after a short stop somewhere when I restart the car the screen shows "DEVICE NOT CONNECTED". Sometimes after I make the next stop the USB will play, and other times not. I have tried a few different flash drives, I only have about 100 songs on the disk, no folders. USB 2.0 and 3.0 with the same results. Have not reported this to the dealer yet. Is there anything I can do or that the dealer could do to fix this? Really imitates me that a supposedly upper scale car would have this kind of problem, albeit that this is the only problem I have detected with the car that I have found so far.

Gary

 

I have the same issue. All the time. If you choose to take to the dealership let me know how it goes!

 

Welcome to the Acura RDX glitchy infotainment system that has been having issues since 2019. Good luck with the dealer since most don’t even acknowledge a issue and others just give you a sheepish look and shrug. Some will jump in here and say “I have no issues” well, good for them but quite a few of us are.

 

same..2021 A spec.... tried soooo many usb sticks... finally said screw this... switched to bluetooth or Android Auto. not worth the frustration.

 

Same exact problem on 2020. Music on USB drive totally unusable. iPod works better, but still glitchy (has to be restored occasionally to work properly). Class action suit in progress in CA, but dropped elsewhere as I understand. Very disappointing for a so-called luxury car.

 

Probably not the answer you're looking for, but use Bluetooth. I have all my music on my phone. It's easy to take it everywhere that way.

 

I have a 2019 and next week marks two years, same problem of "no device connected" and most times "initializing" for most of the trip. At least my dealership admits to knowing about the problem but cant fix it. As others have said on this forum about this and the Nav system, get a set of highly skilled whiz kids and let them fix it in a very short time. On the Nav question, north of the border I tried to update my maps and Acura Canada wants to charge for an update...................next time I will go back to Mercedez.

 

I just bought a 2021 A-spec with these same issues. My iPod is unusable at this point. Very disappointed.

 

It happens to mine I pull the USB out wait a bit then reinsert. Or use Android auto or rarely stop the engine wait a second then restart. This a 2021. I love the car but if I had known the infotainment to was so fubar would have looked harder at the signiture CX 5. I have also heard the infotainment on that one is not very good either. You would think these multi billion corporations would plan r+d better.

 

Not having any trouble with my 2021 with Samsung smartphone products, if the info helps anyone. No problems with the infotainment, either.

 

We're strictly speaking about USB connected devices. Are you using your Samsung this way?

 

I am. You guys don't want to hear this, but it's probably an Apple problem.

 

Wouldn't doubt it. Are you using your phone, music player or a storage device?

 

Generally use the phone to play music through bluetooth, but use it through USB when Android Auto is being used.

 

What I've found is that the more music you have on the drive, regardless of the file type, the longer in takes to initialize the drive so you can see the artist list. My iPod would take forever to sync and would skip and make noise when starting, plus I would have to unplug when turning the vehicle off and plug in when starting. I tried converting to Flac from m4a but it made no real difference in load times. I even bought a USB 3.2 flash drive and loaded 300GB of music on it but it doesn't seem to load any faster. After 15 minutes in the vehicle it was still initializing. I did test about 100GB of Flac files which loaded fairly quick, but that's not a whole lot of music.

I think the whole issue is the read capability of the audio system. I had a F150 Lariat with a great Sony system that gave me no problems using an external hard drive with over 300GB of music. Also my wife's Volvo has no issues what so ever. I'm still disappointed with this problem, especially with this great sounding stereo. Honda could have done a better job. I sent an email to them but don't expect a response.

 

Nothing works correctly with the USB. Android Auto works sometimes, but not every time. USB drive doesn't work reliably. iPod doesn't work reliably. I've done the 3 finger reset dozens of times. I'm starting to believe that Acura built the infotainment system on a $49 Walmart tablet. They either have no interest in addressing the problems or can't due to the crap hardware some executive picked to save money.

 

Are you hitting reverse or start driving before system fully boots?
I get similar issue with apple car play, which uses USB and also does not connect.
I found it to connect almost all the times if after starting car I wait for it to boot before hitting reverse to pull out of the garage.
I know its stupid, but it is what it is, seems like a bug…

 

i would guess it is noise on the line, or the traffic on the internal bus competes and the software has a hard time handling.

 

I had a similar issue with my '16 with Android. If it was set to play music from the phone, the results would be unpredictable. Most of the time, the issue was that the music just wouldn't play until I manually started it. Sometimes the volume would be screwed up, etc. Don't seem to have the same problem with the '21.

 

Anyone having issues with car detecting USB connection, please note if its related to times when you engage rear view camera before system fully boots or start driving before full boot. It might be same issue I am having with USB not working to detect carplay. Whenever this happens, USB is red in diagnostic screen. But when I click on it, system does not show any errors as it should when something is red. Is it hardware or software?

 

I went to 3 finger hardware auto detect, and USB is either greyed out or red. Is that normal?

 

I find myself using the flash drive for music less and less and either Bluetooth or Carplay more and more partially because of this issue. Also if you are an Apple Music subscriber, it seems easier to manage playlists on the IOS iphone rather than on flash drives if you have sufficient iphone memory as a personal opinion. I kind of moved away from the problem with flash drive music towards using the phone rather than trying to figure it out.

 

Same here. It's easier to put all the music on the phone so you can carry it anywhere, including rental cars, etc. Fortunately, my phone still has an SD card slot. The next one will just need to have a lot of internal memory.

Regarding the intermittent USB, it may be the car or may be the connector/cable. I've had a lot of trouble with intermittent connections since I've started needing to use the USB-to-USB-C adapters. A lot of the adapters don't last very long.

 

I rotate between 3 large capacity USB drives for all of my FLAC music. I find that the USB is quirky in that it is positional. If I put something in the bin where the USB is, there is a good chance that I will bump the drive and it will start initializing again. The weird thing is that when I let it settle itself it starts playing the same song in the same spot as before. The same thing happens when I start up…..as I posted elsewhere here, I try to remember to remove the drive when I stop, then reinsert it during the blue Disclaimer screen and it picks up in the exactly same spot in the song….that tells me that there must be some memory in our infotainment system.

We just returned from a 5,000 mile road trip up to Minnesota and then return through Texas so we could pay homage to Magnolia Silos in Waco, TX. I used my Apple CarPlay with navigation and music. The main disadvantage to doing it this way is that I don’t get my FLAC music. Apple is offering higher quality music but that requires streaming from Apple Music. I recently got a free 6 months, but Apple turned my purchased music into their music and wouldn’t let me copy my own music. Nope, not gonna happen again. Sorry for the rant……

Oh, one other interesting event: We wanted to listen to a book on my wife’s phone, so in the middle of Texas we plugged her phone into my Apple CarPlay. We both have iPhone 12s but I am part of the Apple Public Beta program. Well, her book played just fine, but then my dash lights on the infotainment started to dim and brighten randomly, my maps started “blinking”….after 100 miles of that we stopped for lunch. I sat in the car doing Factory Resets…it took 3 times before the flashing maps, dim and bright dash lights went away on my phone. I guess I could use her phone more and see if I can get it to operate normally, but…..nah, I will just use my phone on CarPlay.

 

My issue is that USB port stops working. I can not plug in USB flash drive,or use car play, port is dead, only charges phone.
some kind of a glitch if rear view camera is engaged while system boots. I usually wait before driving, but often I quickly hit reverse after starting engine. And then find out USB dead until next reboot.

 

Wanted to prompt up this thread.
Is anyone else having random issues with USB port not working (CarPlay or Android) when rear view camera
is engaged before infoteinment fully boots?

typically if you start car and put it in reverse quickly (before boot if finished), it will make USB port unusable until next reboot.

trying to see if its common issue, or something unique to my car.

will be going to dealer soon for other things, will
mention this but have low hopes of them doing anything

 

Good observation. I have backed out of my garage late in the boot-up process…apparently our infotainment system has no RAM….and have had the music boot up while in reverse, but that is kinda rare.

 

Another good observation. I have heard that the whole system on our cars is Android, but that doesn’t explain why USB thumb drives cause the same problem when the music on the drives is recorded as FLAC formatted files.

 

Thanks to this reply, I never have a problem with USB if I wait a bit before putting it in reverse. This solved my initial problem.

 

same here, if I wait for Infotainment full boot it always works. Sometimes I am in the rush, and hit reverse quickly after starting a car, this messes up USB ….

So you have the same issue if you dont wait for full boot up before engaging rear view camera?

 

yup common issue that happens with ALL RDX's. no fix afaik.

 

ok, makes me feel better 😀

I think its software, this started to happen beginning with 1.5.x release.

Doubt we will see any updates to infoteinment, they are now focused on 2022 software only ☹️

 

I've tried it a couple of times backing out of the garage, hitting reverse right after the engine started. No problems with USB. It was playing music from the phone by the time I was halfway to the street. That's on a '21 Advance.

 

thanks. I also noticed that infoteinment goes to full sleep after about 10min when car was shutdown. If its been less than 10min since last drive, it seems to work.

When you tried it, was it in the morning first time you start?

 

Tried it first start of the day today and leaving for lunch after the car had been shut down for about 5 hours. Worked ok both times. Seems like I've had random lockups a time or two, but no apparent pattern. They've always been when I plugged the phone into USB shortly after the car had been started - like maybe 10-15 seconds later.

 

Maybe because mine is not advanced and has different rear view cameras hardware so it works differently, or something is wrong with mine, yet someone said they had the same thing happening.

 

Thanks much for the help RussianDude and others!

I've had my new-to-me 2020 rdx Advanced playing music on USB with NEVER an issue, for the last month, with a 512gb USB stick chock full of MP3s.
Only drawback had been the system taking SO long to find all the folders/artists/albums, but there are a LOT!
I was shocked the software would NOT retain info once the stick was scanned for the first time.
Often it would forget and have to search a long time for albums/artists/folders during use.

Today I made the move to a 32gb USB with ONLY FLAC files that I wanted to try as I just heard the Acura will play them.
Boots up in NO TIME! The sound is fantastic! Amazing! I was in love!
Then, after a stop at Walmart, I got the dreaded message that there was no USB attached.
It happened right after a quick start up of the car, and a pull into reverse before infotainment had done it's work.
When I got home, I turned the car off and restarted a number of times, waiting each time, for infotainment to browse, but did not cure the issue.

I let the car sit while I went to this forum to see what was up, and found this thread.
Went back to the car, removed the USB, started the car, waited for boot up, then put the USB back in.
It begin initializing immediately, and quickly began playback where I'd left off!!
The wonderful sound of Shpongle followed.

Thanks so much ya'll!! Love my car, and now...this forum.

 

Well, I will just update my experience now at the 92,000 miles, I think I have figured this amazing (when it works) sound system. I will randomly get the “nothing in the USB” message and my method for restoring it is:
1. Turn off the ignition (obviously do this in a safe place)
2. Open and close the driver’s door.
3. Restart the engine and go about your business. Even before all of the yada yada blue screen disclaimer, your music will continue where you left off.
4. I have found no correlation between the rear view camera as the etiology for the no response. It is just that after we start our engines, hopefully you let it circulate the oil and the turbo before backing out of your garage.

The only variable I am not sure of it the initializing time. Sometimes the music starts right away, other times it seems to initialize forever. My solution for that is to do a quick remove/replace the USB drive. Probably anecdotal but I think it works.

Having lived with this sound system for all of these miles, and having such expert advice that introduced me to FLAC files and 5.1 files….and even provided some samples. WOW! I love my RDX, I did have the wiring for the USB drive fixed free by the dealer, and when you put awesome files in, the return in filling your car with multi-track sound. Whether it is a Brahms Symphony or Genesis or Aretha Franklin, the sound system is what has convinced me not to replace this car but just enjoy it! I pray my post here is useful to those of you who are not “techies”…I used to think I was because I was teaching college when the Netscape browser was introduced and all I can say is WOW, what a blast! God bless you and …..go to church!

 

G,
As I have informed different people on this site and Facebook that the Sure way to fix his problem is do not start the car until the starburst goes away then everything seems to work pretty well.
i have a 2019.
The 2024 MDX has the same issue so it seems to be a chronic issue with the start up sequence.

F

 

Whenever I've had the occasion of either Carplay or USB drive not working on startup, I've just used the three finger reboot process and upon reboot everything talks fine. I've added a link below to a different thread that speaks to how to do the three finger reboot.

https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-rdx-.../#post16906292