I have been trying to use a USB memory stick for Audio Playback on my 2012, 987 PCM system.
I have tried both a 64-GB stick and a 128-GB stick. I am using WAV formatted files at un-compressed CD bit rates.
And it works fine - in the garage. It also works great when I'm driving - but only for some random period of time after which it stops working and the USB option disappears from source list on the touch screen.
Sometimes the USB will reappear by itself and resume playing where it stopped. Other times it will start over at the first song in the first folder. Other times I have unplug the USB and plug it back in to get the car to see it.
It acts like a flakey USB connection. I've tried, as I said, two different USB sticks and I have also experimented with little USB pigtail extension cords for strain relief. I also tried it with some lower bit rate MP3 files. No difference.
Maybe I need to use a lower capacity stick - 16- or 32-GB.
Has any else tried to use a USB stick and had this problem? Is this a flakey connection in the USB connector in the car that can be repaired?
BTW, I want to do this to get better quality sound. If I use my
iPhone
connected to this port, I am using the cheap D to A converter in the phone. It sounds kinda ratty to me, but would be fine for voice / audio books.
If I use a memory stick, I am using the D to A converter in the car, which sounds much better to me.
Bluetooth from the phone might be an answer since it would also use the car's D to A converter but I suspect Bluetooth adds compression and would not support full CD quality sound.
Not sure if this is the right place to post this as them may either be a how-to question or a car-broken question depending on what's causing the problem.
Thanks,
I have a 16gb that I use and experience no issues at all, it's actually a micro card in a USB adapter.
Is it possible that the flash drive has a feature to power off at a certain amount of inactivity? I know some USB external drives do this.
Hey Terry, Im not 100% sure, but I dont think our Crocs stream music through bluetooth, I tried and couldn't, later I was told by member that the protocol for that was not included by
Porsche
.
I believe that bluetooth audio became available for PCM 3.1.
yes, no bt streaming available on our 987. Only phone pairing and maybe data transfer for the chrono pack. Not sure about this one, but if i remember correctly i saw it somewhere but never tried.
Back to the issue, my usb is working just fine. Never tried 64 or 128 gb sticks, only 16.
Did you try a smaller stick? As you say it could be a bad connection of the connector, but it's easier to try a smaller stick. Maybe 32+ gb could become hot after heavy use and have problems.
The extension cord connector and the stick seems to be well seated into the port?
I have a 128Gb stick that now plays fine but had the same problems as Terry before. Fix is simple - erase any non-audio files from the stick.
Just confirmed that - no BT streaming. (Was confused since the Lexus supports that.)
Thanks
I have hope!
I just finished getting rid of the non-audio files from the USB stick. Was not simple, though, as the Mac writes all kinds of hidden stuff and in particular spotlight search indexes and ".Trashes". It took a little Google research and the UNIX terminal to find and irradiate all the weird files.
I managed to do that and the car still recognizes the folders as play lists and plays the audio files, at least in a 1-minute garage test. I am taking a long trip tomorrow, so that will be the final test of this fix: to see if it plays indefinitely.
BTW, in the 1-minute garage test, I also tried to use a little pigtail USB extension cable so that the USB stick does not stick straight out into the bin but instead can lay over on the side more out of the way. But the extension cable provided a flakey physical connection, so that thought is out (until I find a better extension) and the USB stick will be mounted directly on the port for this long trip.
Thanks!
