USB Flash Drive recommendations for car, non surround/surround.

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Hi There,

Some comments on experiments on my end:

- I have spent some time working around the 'standard' Toyota limitations (stereo; FAT formatted hard drives; 256 files per folder; something like 9999 files maximum).

- I use "EaseUS Partition Master" to format larger drives (eg. 500GB; 2TB) to FAT32 (as Windows does not like to do it).

- I recently discovered the free program "DriveSort" which does a magnificent job of fooling the car into sorting the files as wanted (in my case, alphabetically).

- If you happen to be an 'albums person', as I suspect a lot of us, there's a nice workaround. In foobar, you can 'convert' to combine all tracks in an album to one track. So each album is just one file/track. This changes the game: I can have up to 9999 *albums* instead of 9999 *songs* :)

- No FLAC support in the Toyota so I just have to live with 320kbps mp3 in the car for now.

I have speculated on ways to get a better setup but this is working for now... will see what everyone else is doing when I get the time...

I'm about to drive 1000km each way to rock out so this stuff matters!

Cheers
 
Last edited:
Oh just great! I have those also. It was a PITA because I had to go into iTunes and convert every song from an ALAC to AAC because the bloody JBL "Premium" Audio System in my car won't recognize anything other than MP3 and AAC. So you are telling us that the SanDisks are going to fail? At least I have them all backed up on a second thumb drive.

Sadly, all of mine except the current 32GB one has went rogue. In fairness, I'm talking about failure after years and years of use so I have had my money's worth :)
 
- I recently discovered the free program "DriveSort" which does a magnificent job of fooling the car into sorting the files as wanted (in my case, alphabetically).

I use DriveSort also. I mentioned it in my previous post without actually mentioning the actual name of the program.

I then load that onto a 500GB SSD meant for a computer (internal drive) and use this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011M8YACM
31LZ1r13PJL._SL500_SS125_.jpg


to connect to my usb interface on my head unit.
 
Good to know the Fords will play FLAC. Will your Ford play gapless too?

When you get an answer on playing higher res FLAC files, let us know.
Good news bad news with my 2017 Ford Escape. I loaded different rates of DSF (SACD) files and no go, wouldn't even recognize them as non playable.
However It did play my one FLAC file Supertramps Crime of the Century, 2.0 Blu Ray in 24/96 and it sounded great.
So this gives me a ton of music to play in car most importantly FLAC files that I purchased from HDTracks and I don't own any hard copys.
I still need to do some experimenting, need to try a FLAC surround file and see if it plays in stereo and will it play as surround. There is a surround choice in my settings but I do believe it is for a faux surround. All this is good news but bad news for my ears as I think most of my hearing loss has come from cranked up tunes in my car, 50 years of it.
 
I use a Samsung T-5. Lots of storage and it's pretty small and does not need external power.

View attachment 45878
I've got the 2Tb on the right, and I love it (not for my car, just for my surround playlist of "ultimate surround tracks")... so much faster than when i used to use a standard external hard drive
 
This does look pretty nice, $159.00 but tons of storage whereas my current little stick will only hold about 6 CD's and I am frequently loading and unloading.
Looks like the body is a little bigger but it has a nice cord that goes into the USB port so it is very flexible. I think I am gonna get it after I finish experimenting with all my different FLAC files, would love to get some DVD-a's in there.
51+kH3KQS4L._AC_SL1000_.jpg
 
This does look pretty nice, $159.00 but tons of storage whereas my current little stick will only hold about 6 CD's and I am frequently loading and unloading.
Looks like the body is a little bigger but it has a nice cord that goes into the USB port so it is very flexible. I think I am gonna get it after I finish experimenting with all my different FLAC files, would love to get some DVD-a's in there.
View attachment 45894
I love these things, since prices have dropped the last few years, I always go for the 2TB model. They work great in the front USB input on the oppos also.
 
Good news bad news with my 2017 Ford Escape. I loaded different rates of DSF (SACD) files and no go, wouldn't even recognize them as non playable.
However It did play my one FLAC file Supertramps Crime of the Century, 2.0 Blu Ray in 24/96 and it sounded great.
So this gives me a ton of music to play in car most importantly FLAC files that I purchased from HDTracks and I don't own any hard copys.
I still need to do some experimenting, need to try a FLAC surround file and see if it plays in stereo and will it play as surround. There is a surround choice in my settings but I do believe it is for a faux surround. All this is good news but bad news for my ears as I think most of my hearing loss has come from cranked up tunes in my car, 50 years of it.
Foobar2000 with a plugin can convert those dsf files to flac or wave, might also check with Garry, his software may do that as well (not sure.) More work for ya Mark :p
 
They just expect you are going to play MP3s from a USB drive or your phone via (gasp...) Bluetooth.

I love using my 'phone via bluetooth in the car! I've no idea what the data rate for streaming across is, but it's fine for car use and the 'phone seems to play whatever format I stick on it, whereas the car stereos we use can be more limited with what they'll accept.
 
Well, a bunch of good news and even though it was under my nose for two years 75,000 miles, better late than never.
My 2017 Ford Escape Titanuim Edition 10 speaker sound system plays all FLAC, stereo and surround. This morning I played the BD-A 24/96 FLAC surround album of The Band. There is a stereo mode and a surround mode that I thought was fake surround, however when the music started playing it was discrete surround, albeit a little different, sounded to me heavy front left and rear right. I will need to play with fade and balance to tweak it out. Not near as good as home rig but something new and enjoyable. How I knew it was surround and discrete was when I switched from the surround mode to stereo mode it was definitely stereo.
Now that I am excited to find this gem under my nose and thanks to this thread I purchased two Samsung drives at 1T. The reason I purchased two was I wanted one for stereo and one for surround as it is hard to change settings on the fly when driving and this way I also know for sure that I am supposed to be listening in stereo or surround.
The funny thing is when you open up the Ford Escape owners book for audio it mentions nothing of these capabilities and doesn't even mention that it has a surround setting, very basic info, balance, fade, etc.
I also noticed my current little thumb drive gets very hot when copying/transferring files between hard drive and the small thumb drive, so I am hoping with the new Samsung it will be less stressful when copying music files.
I am still doing experiments on this subject but happy to move forward. This will really open up my listening experience being able to listen to quality recordings as I only listen to music at my home about 6 hours a week and can double that in the car. Just don't want to further wreck my ears with excitement and high volume.
A question for Jon Urban I have, Jon when you are in your car I have to imagine it doesn't compare to your home rig? Also any tips off the top of your head for fade and balance?
 
I use a Fiio X3ii DAP to play files in the car, using coax from the player to the car (other models support Bluetooth). The DAP then doubles for portable playback at the gym, garage stereo, and so forth. The X3 supports a single 256gb card, so I have to swap cards depending on my musical mood.

s-l1600.jpg
 
Building my Samsung SSD T5, first the FLAC stereo, little bit of a chore to separate the FLAC only, not trying to get the DSF files as they won't play in the Ford Escape.
I am a force of nature almost every day, kind of nice to be sick today with the common cold and have fun relaxing with my hobby.
 
Back
Top