Is the ipod the only device that does the indexing for you?
 

But let's you control what's played from the receiver?

I have never owned an ipod, I just put mp3s on a stick and use them. But annoyances with indexing lack of persistent shuffle, and space limitations have made me curious.

What other mp3 players can be plugged in with the same functionality as the ipod (car control, but no indexing)? zune? off-brands? etc? I want something cheap more than anything else.

Well I can tell you from experience that with the zune, the car indexes every time you start it.

I have a Zune as well....and YES, a Zune will index each time and you can use the controls.

I've had no issue with a 4 gig USB stick. Indexes on start up, and the GM default is to play in order when using the stick. Simply select shuffle from the menu. But if you are making 10 stops a day, then I'm sure manually selecting shuffle may get annoying.

well i used to use an 8gb stick, and hated it. everytimes i started the car up it would index for at least 5 mins, it would still start up on the song i left off at but once that was over would start up at the very beginning again. now i just started using and older ipod to see if it works better, no more indexing song song stays on whatever i have left it at and does not start at the beginning once that one is over. i keep it on shuffle at all times and it remembers this selection unlike the stick where i had to put it on random everytime after it stopped indexing. so i would definettely recommend using an ipod over anything else

yeah but ipods are too expensive lol, it's kind of ridiculous honestly.

There are a few things you can try, depending on your device there are different types of sw to make your phone/device act like an ipod in how it handles music. I'm not sure what triggers the indexing feature, but it's probably related to how the music is stored/organized , determined by software not hardware. I've wanted to play around with a few different droid apps but haven't had the time.

Hmm.. I have an iPod somewhere - have to try this. I use a 4GB USB stick and it works great except that whenever I start the car, it plays songs in alpha order (I think) rather than the order that was dictated by the selected folder before the car was shut down. It's seriously annoying. Sometimes you just don't want Morphine after Little Dragon. Anyway.. :) But mine only indexes when I connect the USB - not at every start... I think... Have to check.

I have an old NANO and works and indexes great.
-bobby

yeah it is a bunch of horse shit.

It shouldn't have to re-index... hell it shouldn't index at all.

iPod's plug in and are immediately accessible. Zune/iPod both work this way on M$ Sync systems so there is no reason GM can't do it... but I digress.

My zune always indexed everytime I started the car and it takes 15 min or so... which made it utterly useless. I bought a used ipod just so I could actually use the USB port I paid for.

My 5thGen Nano indexes just about everytime on startup and I have a 2011 2SS/RS...

The reason the nano's index is cuz the car sees it just like a thumb drive. This is the same reason when u plug one into your computer it shows up as a regular drive u can copy file to by drag&drop. The iPod touch/iPhone don't show up as USB drives and the only way to access data is through the API. Iaasume that zune's also show up as drives and thus have to index. This is just the way GM chose to access those devices. If it must index it should at least be smart about it and save a cache of the index results so it docent have to do it every time, only when there is new data.

It has to do that apple uses a form of flash to index itself within the device

it has problems with my iphone, ipod works great