NSXFTW

So, as a former 2004 TL and current 2012 MDX owner, I have a lot of DVD-A's I need to rip in anticipation of getting my new RDX. I also have SACD's, Blu-Ray, DTS discs, etc. that I have listened to in my home theater that I am excited can now join me in the car! But as a newbie to storing and listening to music on USB memory sticks, I have a few questions for the resident experts.

Do I want to get the biggest storage in one stick, or have multiple smaller sticks to swap out as needed? I didn't know if there was a lag time on reading the larger capacity sticks, and would I be waiting around for the system to read the USB stick every time I start up the car?

There are some pretty expensive USB sticks out there that supposedly are much higher performance (i.e., faster to read). Would that make a difference, or is everything constrained by how fast or slow the RDX infotainment system operates?

Finally, how much space does the average multi-channel album take on a memory stick? Just wondering how big my investment is going to be!

Acura dealers should provide a "ripping service" for loyal customers who have been long time users of the fantastic ELS system! Of course, most dealers don't even seem to have knowledge about how great this sound system is.

Stew4HD

I use a 265GB stick but that is because I have about 140GB worth of FLAC files that I have ripped

I wouldn't get the most expensive nor the cheapest.

As for space, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is 1.35 GB for the entire album which was a bluray to FLAC conversion

The end result is an amazing sound stage! I was listening to Gentle Giant - 3 Piece Suite in 5.1 .. wow, just wow

Madd Dog

dcmod

Maddog, after you ripped those musci tracks, you should tag them with an audio tagger , put it all the necessary info. Such as track number, artist name , name of songs and also album cover . The cover will display on the infotainment screen .
Also when u play from USB , u can select by folder or by albums . I usually put it in a folder and organize by album .

FYI : the first time you plug in the USB, the system will take its time to sort and catalog the albums and folder name. So the next time , it will be much faster to search.
Don't use a slow USB stick , get at least a USB 3.0 specs . I know the USB slot next to the driver is only rated at USB 2.0 , but if u get a USB 3.0 , the read speed is guaranteed fast to match the USB 3.0 interface .
Already tested a couple of this USB stick and definitely the USB 3.0 stick trumps the USB 2.0
U need that if u opt to get a larger size, because the searching can be so so slow

Wander

The head unit indexes the tracks on the thumb drive, and this takes a while. But the upside is that when it's complete this allows search by artist, album, genre, etc. instead of just track number like some "dumb" head units I have dealt with in the past. From the "system description" posted elsewhere, it is limited to USB 2.0 speeds, and the head unit only stores index data for one device at a time. Index data for a new device will overwrite the previous data in the head unit memory. So this would argue in favor of keeping the most frequently used tracks on one drive. But there is also a comment that track order data is written to the thumb drive, and I'm not sure what the implications of that may be. Can previously generated indices be read from the drive rather than reprocessing them? What happens if you write more tracks to a drive?

If I get bored enough, maybe I'll write different tracks to a couple of thumb drive and see what it does with them.

NSXFTW

Thanks Wander, I'd be curious to see what happens as you add tracks to the thumb drive. In my case, the vast majority of the music I listen to will be on my iPhone through CarPlay, and the thumb drive will be strictly for 5.1 surround music. So if it works well, my inclination would be to have one large capacity thumb drive with all my surround music on it, hopefully with the ability to add tracks as I go and not screw up the existing indexing.

Madd Dog

Madd Dog

oblio98

One thing I have noticed with files on this system is that it ALWAYS defaults to alphabetical order. Even if you make a playlist (.m3u) for a folder or a disc, it will always put all of the songs in alphabetical order, so if you want a folder to represent an album in the original order of the album, you have to put 01, 02, 03, etc in front of the track name.

You can still voice search without the number, for example, if your track is labeled "01-Funeral for a Friend" to keep that song first in the folder, you can still say "Play Funeral For a Friend" and the car will find that track.

It's a pain, and I don't think there is a way around it, so when you make your playlists (if you use them), you will either have to live with alphabetical order or put the sequence numbers in the song title tags.

dcmod

That is not correct .. You need to tag each music files and input the Track number field for each music files and then play it by clicking on the Albums , Play All ,, not the Folders ..
The whole album will play Non Alphabetically , but by the track designators that you have set up

dcmod

Don't use iTunes ,, it sucks .. Use Audioshell Tag Editor . Download here : https://audioshell.en.lo4d.com/
You can do Multi Tag and its very fast . Organize your music files in folders . Each folder is an Albums . So you can view it in your infotainment and play by Albums

dcmod

PC folder view


AudioShell Tag the music files with Track 01


Infotainment view , open by Albums, It will play by track , non Alphabetically


Infotainment view, open by Folder, it will play Alphabetically

oblio98

THANKS! I will try it this weekend. 'ppreciate that!

oblio98

Yep, you are right! Thanks. I was NOT putting that info in my tagging information.

Stew4HD

I found a free tagging app that I use to tag the album info and add the album cover art as well.

I still find that a few albums will show up in the 'UNKNOWN ARTIST" group when sorting by artist even after I tag them. I know I just need to look closer at the tagging info.

Most all of my music does show up properly and sounds awesome.

NSXFTW

Can you use a portable SSD drive for music storage? These things are getting smaller and cheaper every day.

Eiffel

Yes, I have two that I have used in the RDX. Both are Samsung USB 3.1 SSDs with the first being the T3 with 250 GB, and the second being the T5 with 500 GB. The T5 is the better deal on Amazon at almost the same price as the T3.

But be aware that filling the T5 up to 75% of 500 GB, as I have done, may incur a significant performance penalty with the RDX infotainment Android system even beyond the initial indexing. Over this last weekend, I re-tagged the files to no longer have separate folders for each artist - album combination as I read online the more directories, the longer indexing takes. I instead decided to go with genres, i.e Folk, Jazz, Rock, etc, so ~30 sub folders for each top level directory.

Before I re-tagged the high resolution files on the T5, I did the same genre folders on the T3. These are my CD files. After the initial indexing, which took 3.5 minutes, it seemed to perform better than having well over 150 artist - album folders. I have less CDs than the SACDs and Dvd-Audios so there is less files on the T3 than the T5.

I am considering getting another T5, since it cost the same as the T3, then with the 3 SSDs, split the files up by:

1. CD (two-channel, 16 bit-44 kHz)
2. 2CH (two-channel, high resolution 24 bit-48 kHz)
3. MCH (multi-channel, high resolution 24 bit-48 kHz)

gtssenior

Are there any limitations to the number of folders or files that the infotainment system can handle? I have several folders on a USB flash drive and many files spread out amongst the folders. I can play all of the songs that appear on the screen, however when i put the flash drive into a Windows 10 computer it finds more files than the vehicle sees. Are there any file naming restrictions that Windows can handle, but the infotainment system can't handle?. I don't find any discussion on this in the big manual that is online. Any ideas? It has got me stumped.

gtssenior

Never mind - my error. Windows sorts by filename in Explorer and the infotainment systems uses tags of song name, artist, and folder name on the display if the file has those tags filled in. I had some tags with song names that were totally different than the file name, so I could not correlate the Windows lists with the infotainment. Guess I have some work to clean this up.

oblio98

Amazon and Newegg have the 500Gb T5 for $99 right now. That's a very good deal for those interested.

asdecorazones

I created a playlist of about 110 songs from different albums and put the songs in a folder with the filenames starting with 001, 002, etc., matching the order in which the songs appear in the playlist. I thought this should cover every possibility of how the system might work (since it does read playlists), but when I play the playlist the songs appear in a different order. I haven't checked, but I assume it is still using the track number tags to determine play order, i.e. playing all of the track 1 songs first, then all of the track 2 songs, etc.? The songs come from many different albums; does anyone know if just setting the track number tags to match the playlist would cause the tracks to be displayed in the intended order? I guess this is kind of a moot point because the system seems to start playing whatever it considers to be the first song of all the songs on the USB stick every time the car is started. Or rather, it finishes playing the song I had been listening to, but then it starts playing something else instead of continuing with the same album or playlist. I haven't quite figured out what it's doing yet, but I'm disappointed that it doesn't seem to have at least a little bit more intelligence. I guess I've been spoiled by the audio system in my, ahem, 2002 TL, which has a six-disc CD changer and always picks up playing wherever it left off the previous time. Maybe I need to see if USB audio works better with one of my old iPods...

gtssenior

Do you have the random order icon deselected? See p. 296 of online manual. I find that if I play out of either a specific folder or a specific playlist by selecting "ALL" on the right side of the screen that lists all of pertinent songs within either the folder or playlist) and having the random icon deselected and the repeat icon selected without the little circled 1 showing, the music is played in ascending alphanumeric order through either the playlist or folder depending on what you chose from the initial music library icon. I have noticed skipping around to other songs outside the playlist or folder when I don't have the settings as I described here.

DHood

I have a question regarding the use of "USB Flash Drives". Will I get better response time and accuracy of information from using "Apple Car Play" and my created Play Lists instead of the USB Flash Drive? My previous experience with Flash Drives is that they are not very responsive and only present the Songs and Albums in a specific way depending on how you created the Flash Drive.
Is there more flexibility and responsiveness using Apple Car Play and my already created Playlists?

Sorry if the question is not clear but using Apple Car Play is new for me.

subin

I don't use "car play", but on my thumb drive, I created folder for each artist and from the USB stick playback menu, I would select the option to play certain folder/artist. It is not difficult to switch from folder to folder, but you do need to take eyes off the road for a few seconds.

Jay9

Finally got around to testing FLAC lossless audio on a USB stick in my ~4 week old RDX and it sounds amazing. Saw this thread and look forward to testing out some DVD-A/5.1 tracks at some point.

I believe not possible, but does anyone know how I can use USB stick and Apple CarPlay at the same time? It appears that the only USB port that works for either of these is the one by cupholders in middle by driver.

Madd Dog

asdecorazones

I have now tried this again. No matter what I do, I can't make the songs in my playlists appear in the correct order. The behavior baffles me. I also don't understand why there isn't a more-detailed manual for the audio system.

joeliu2003

Has anyone successfully ripped DVD-A to 24 bit, 48KHz wave and had it playback in proper 5.1?

Tried it today and it sounded like straight stereo.

Joe

oblio98

It has to be .flac at zero compression, or a .wav file

See this thread: https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-rdx-...p-step-971819/

joeliu2003

dcmod

Then you really don't know what you are missing ..
Here's a spoiler : The best audio experience in a car beating the Mark Levinson, JBL, Bang & Olufsen and even Bose, hands down

Stew4HD

Honestly, once you have the software and then you do a couple of times, it's a matter of routine. I ripped all of my blurays and DVD'A's over a few hours. I have about 30-40 of them.

They do sound really good, no comparison to streaming audio.... but then again, I do like to hear the different channels jump out at me.