USB Stick or MP3 Player

[catdaddy]

Like most of you, I am waiting impatiently for my Camaro to come in. In the mean time, I am thinking of all the things I want to get for it. The first thing I am gonna get is either a USB stick or an MP3 player to dedicate to the car. I know the radio can control both, and I know if will recognize the ID3 tag on the file but I wondering if it will recognize playlists on an MP3 player and allow you to play them or will it just dump all your songs into on list.

If it will, I will buy a small MP3 player and use that, otherwise I can get a USB stick for much cheaper.

I tried searching the threads for an answer to this question but couldn't find one. Sorry if I missed it.

Thanks.

[2SSJIM]

I'll connect my iphone up.... let it charge while I liten to music on it!

[Xmicro_SS]

Plus you can hide the USB Stick and if it gets stolen they cost like $10. Stick for sure!

[UCF w00t]

USB flash drive for sure.

http://www.camaro5.com/forums/showth...604#post448604

[HTWLSS]

I spent about 8 hours transferring my CD's to a USB stick yesterday in anticipation of our 5th Gen. I hope I did it correctly!

What is going to prevent stuff stored in the console of the car from banging against the USB stick, causing it to loosen up or break off?

[trudawg660]

Originally Posted by HTWLSS

I spent about 8 hours transferring my CD's to a USB stick yesterday in anticipation of our 5th Gen. I hope I did it correctly!

What is going to prevent stuff stored in the console of the car from banging against the USB stick, causing it to loosen up or break off?

A usb Extension cord look it up

[CWI]

Why not USB hard drive? Much more music.

[trudawg660]

camaro can only index 10,000 songs and it wont read hard drives.

[codeman71]

Originally Posted by catdaddy

Like most of you, I am waiting impatiently for my Camaro to come in. In the mean time, I am thinking of all the things I want to get for it. The first thing I am gonna get is either a USB stick or an MP3 player to dedicate to the car. I know the radio can control both, and I know if will recognize the ID3 tag on the file but I wondering if it will recognize playlists on an MP3 player and allow you to play them or will it just dump all your songs into on list.

If it will, I will buy a small MP3 player and use that, otherwise I can get a USB stick for much cheaper.

I tried searching the threads for an answer to this question but couldn't find one. Sorry if I missed it.

Thanks.

I personally think a USB drive is definitely the way to go. You can still do playlists even on a USB drive, so you don't need an MP3 player. The one thing that you might want to consider is the amount of music you have. As has been stated elsewhere, the Camaro can only index 10,000 songs (due to memory limitations). You should still be able to browse all of your music using the 'Folder View' option in the menu, but it won't be indexed by Artist, Album, etc. If you do have a lot of music and need it indexed, you should get an iPod. The iPod does the indexing and stores the index on its hard drive (or flash memory), so there are no song index limits with an iPod.

[MontyCarlo]

Hey Codeman. Will the Camaro dig through subfolders while it's indexing songs? When I transfer music from my PS3 onto a thumb drive, it always goes into a "/Music/Artist_Album" type folder, like "/Music/Metallica_Reload." Is that going to work fine for the Camaro, or do I need to move all the mp3's from all the albums into one big folder?

[HTWLSS]

Originally Posted by trudawg660

A usb Extension cord look it up

An extension cable leaves even more in the console to get tangled up. What will keep something in the console from bumping against whatever is plugged into the USB port from getting hit?

[UCF w00t]

Originally Posted by HTWLSS

I spent about 8 hours transferring my CD's to a USB stick yesterday in anticipation of our 5th Gen. I hope I did it correctly!

What is going to prevent stuff stored in the console of the car from banging against the USB stick, causing it to loosen up or break off?

Did you make them MP3s or WMAs (only those will work)? If you used iTunes to rip them, make sure you changed the default setting to rip to MP3 instead of AAC!

Originally Posted by codeman71

I personally think a USB drive is definitely the way to go. You can still do playlists even on a USB drive, so you don't need an MP3 player. The one thing that you might want to consider is the amount of music you have. As has been stated elsewhere, the Camaro can only index 10,000 songs (due to memory limitations). You should still be able to browse all of your music using the 'Folder View' option in the menu, but it won't be indexed by Artist, Album, etc. If you do have a lot of music and need it indexed, you should get an iPod. The iPod does the indexing and stores the index on its hard drive (or flash memory), so there are no song index limits with an iPod.

What about with a Zune? When I hooked my Zune up to the Camaro it had to "index" for a minute or two. Will it have this limitation?

Oh and thanks for supporting non-iPods. The Apple haters among us appreciate it greatly.

[Crowley]

Originally Posted by HTWLSS

I spent about 8 hours transferring my CD's to a USB stick yesterday in anticipation of our 5th Gen. I hope I did it correctly!

What is going to prevent stuff stored in the console of the car from banging against the USB stick, causing it to loosen up or break off?

Not sure how different it is than the USB connection in my 135i, but I have not had any issues with this for over a year now .....

I think you'll be good to go ..

Crowley

[trudawg660]

Originally Posted by HTWLSS

An extension cable leaves even more in the console to get tangled up. What will keep something in the console from bumping against whatever is plugged into the USB port from getting hit?

well here you go
http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-Flex...p_ob_e_title_1

[codeman71]

Originally Posted by MontyCarlo

Hey Codeman. Will the Camaro dig through subfolders while it's indexing songs? When I transfer music from my PS3 onto a thumb drive, it always goes into a "/Music/Artist_Album" type folder, like "/Music/Metallica_Reload." Is that going to work fine for the Camaro, or do I need to move all the mp3's from all the albums into one big folder?

Yeah it'll go through subfolders to find the files. I think there was a limit to how many folders deep it can go, but as long as you aren't burying them under 10 levels or something crazy like that it should be fine.

[codeman71]

Originally Posted by UCF w00t

What about with a Zune? When I hooked my Zune up to the Camaro it had to "index" for a minute or two. Will it have this limitation?

Oh and thanks for supporting non-iPods. The Apple haters among us appreciate it greatly.

The Zune will unfortunately have the same limitation as a USB drive. It will only be able to index that 10,000 limit, because the Zune does not store the index on its drive. So, it will go through this indexing process after we do our handshake with the device, but once the limit is reached, we won't be able to see any more songs. I know this stinks, but that's just the way Microsoft wanted to design this connection...

Yeah, I'm really glad that we are able to support the many types of devices that we can. You can pretty much plug in anything and it'll show up and work.

[MontyCarlo]

Awesome. Thanks Codeman.

[HTWLSS]

Originally Posted by UCF w00t

Did you make them MP3s or WMAs (only those will work)? If you used iTunes to rip them, make sure you changed the default setting to rip to MP3 instead of AAC!

They automatically copied into wma format from what I can see. I wouldn't know what to do with iTunes, since I don't have an iPod.

I'll have to check out Maggie's Camaro #4005, now that it's delivered, to see how safe the USB port is from getting bumped by other things in the console.

[xEzekial]

is there a size limit on the camaro as well? 10,000 songs at 4 mb a piece is 40gb. i was told by someone you can only use up to a 16gb usb drive

[UCF w00t]

Originally Posted by xEzekial

is there a size limit on the camaro as well? 10,000 songs at 4 mb a piece is 40gb. i was told by someone you can only use up to a 16gb usb drive

If you have the new PDIM hardware/software you can do up to 10,000 songs, no matter the size (there are bit rate limitations though). The original only allowed up to 2500 songs so at 4MB/song, that's only 10GB, hence a 16GB drive would've been plenty.

[n2hcky]

The indexing everytime you start the car and it NOT remembering to RANDOM was driving me nuts....SO
I just bought a "broken" 5th gen Ipod classic on ebay for $32.
Seller said it wouldn't play thru the headphone jack or in a docking station but I just took a chance that all the Camaro needed was the fact that it stored the files.
I was right
Works like a charm and was cheap. Playlist work fine....straight from media monkey, but winamp seems better for moving files.
Just don't buy one with the sad face error.....that means hard drive most of the time.

[BarsnTone]

I hooked up my Iphone, but I'm really thinking about getting a USB stick also and just leaving it in there.

[Black_2SS]

I use a 4gb usb stick. It was like $10 and I just leave it in all the time. Its perfect and who cares if it gets broken off. I've had it in there a year w/ no issues so far. Mine on indexes again if I remove it, otherwise its up as soon as I turn on the car. I gotta say, its an awesome option!

Codeman71.....so cool that you worked on this interface! I was curious though, in another thread I was told that you can't take use of the "Info" button unless its on a CD source. Can you confirm that? I've love to add tag info on my mp3's on a usb drive and then be able to see that custom info.

[airos4]

http://www.angledcables.com/usb-20-e...gled-a-si.html

Works great, not long enough to tangle, and it makes the part plugged in to the actual usb port flush with the back of the box.

[SS Drifter]

Originally Posted by HTWLSS

An extension cable leaves even more in the console to get tangled up. What will keep something in the console from bumping against whatever is plugged into the USB port from getting hit?

You can always remove the rear cover from the console, unplug the usb cable and extend it to a new location. The console compartment is a bad place for USB ports, charge connectors, etc. I got around the problem with a small usb stick but I don't use that location at all with the new system.