andyville

I just bought a 2015 LS 460 Crafted Line with the Mark Levinson audio system. I'm finding that when I plug a flash drive into the USB port, it takes an extremely long time for it to load or recognize the songs on the USB, and furthermore, a large percentage (maybe 50%) of the songs don't even show up when browsing or playing.

I've used this very same flash drive in four other cars and have had no issues like this at all. Any known issues with using the USB port that you are aware of? Or any tricks to make it work properly?

jayemko

via USB for Music

I also made sure there were no spaces in the file names, or special characters other than a hyphen, underscore, or a period. Drive will load fast once your file structure is fixed.

andyville

Thanks - makes sense based on what I've seen so far. Appreciate the help!

andyville

well, after continuing to battle this issue for several weeks, I think the top of my head is about ready to explode!

I started with a USB flash drive loaded with 70 albums which I'd previously used in these cars with no problems whatsoever:
2008 BMW 550i
2008 Corvette
2010 Ford Escape
2011 Ford Taurus SHO
2013 BMW M5
2013 Corvette Grand Sport

The Lexus won't recognize / show / play about 55 of the 70 albums - they just don't show up at all. Per the previous suggestion, I did go in and delete all the "._" files, because they were indeed showing up. At least they are now gone. I was hopeful that would improve the situation but it hasn't at all.

So, I completely reformatted the USB flash drive (FAT32) and reloaded the albums, re-deleted the "._" files which showed up again, and still got the same results.

So, I got a different flash drive,thinking maybe the flash drive itself had some problems, formatted it, loaded just a few albums, and some would show up and some wouldn't... Decided to load the rest, and after doing so, still only getting about 15 or so albums that show up...

This is really getting ridiculous - shouldn't be this tough - especially after knowing other makes/models of cars recognized everything on the drive with no problem...

Any other thoughts or recommendations? These issues, on top of the fact that the ML audio system is really lousy sounding, has me experiencing some serious buyer's remorse with this car!!!

jayemko

The Lexus system doesn't recognize MP3 audio with frequencies greater than 44.1kHz. If those 15 tracks are encoded at 48kHz, they wont appear at all. Use a converter to convert the tracks to 44.1kHz, then don't forget to re-remove the dotfiles created ("." and "._"). I keep a separate directory for my car MP3s just because of this. I use XLD on the Mac to convert these.

MP3 Audio will make a good audio system sound bad. Use an old iPod instead, fill it with ALAC (Apple Lossless) CD rips, and it will literally sound 4.41 times better. Best MP3 quality is 320kps, while best CD quality (16bit, 44.1kHz) is 1411kps. If you don't have an old iPod, buy a broken one of eBay. I picked up a 160GB with broken front controls for $40. Night and day difference on my non-ML system.

andyville

Thanks for all the info... all these were loaded into iTunes from CDs, bitrate between 260-320K. Not sure if they are 48kHz or not - can't see that when looking at the files on my Windows PC - it does show on my Mac at home - will check when I get home, but I think they were all 44.1...
they all have .m4a extensions...

Your point is correct regarding mp3's not sounding as good as CDs... I've played CDs in this car and they do sound better, but not to the point that I'm not still disappointed in the ML overall sound...

friedmike

Not sure if anyone is still experiencing issues with USB load time and cover art, but I can share my experience. I have a 2014 IS and the infotainment system has been extremely frustrating. there are multiple known issues:

Cover Art - Lexus display doesn't like any cover art over 16k in size or 150x150 in pixels. This means any cover art from normal iTunes purchases or other music services that you've put on a USB drive generally will not display. You'll see the terrible clip art of Gracenote artwork, even if the gracenote is turned off in the settings and cover art is turned on. You need to use a MP# tag editor like Zortam or Bliss and resize all of the cover art to the specs i shared. Then it will display.

USB Speed - This is another issue. However, it isn't related to the size of USB drive or the brand. It is related to how the files are tagged. When MP3 files are written they include tags (ID3v1 and ID3v2). Lexus has a very difficult time reading and processing ID3v2 tags. Most MP3s come embedded with both. If i have 1GB of songs with version 2 tags, it will take about 2-3 minutes for the car to scan and index the drive. Until then, I cannot switch tracks, switch folders, or use other functions like random and repeat. Sometimes it will even take longer. Once it is done, I have access to all the functions until I stop the car overnight and it is no longer in its local memory cache. But for driving around town, it generally remembers what it has indexed. If your files only have version 1 tags, then your speed is very normal and starts right away. again, with a tag editor you can go in and batch remove all the version 2 tags. Then your music will play fast again.

This is a tremendous pain. It was also a problem in the ES and GS models, but has been corrected in both for 2016. Not sure if the IS has been corrected, but I'm assuming so. There is no firmware update available that fixes it either. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. If wanted, I can send you an mp3 with the tags and without the tags so you can see the difference and how it plays.

friedmike

Not sure if anyone is still experiencing issues with USB load time and cover art, but I can share my experience. I have a 2014 IS and the infotainment system has been extremely frustrating. there are multiple known issues:

Cover Art - Lexus display doesn't like any cover art over 16k in size or 150x150 in pixels. This means any cover art from normal iTunes purchases or other music services that you've put on a USB drive generally will not display. You'll see the terrible clip art of Gracenote artwork, even if the gracenote is turned off in the settings and cover art is turned on. You need to use a MP# tag editor like Zortam or Bliss and resize all of the cover art to the specs i shared. Then it will display.

USB Speed - This is another issue. However, it isn't related to the size of USB drive or the brand. It is related to how the files are tagged. When MP3 files are written they include tags (ID3v1 and ID3v2). Lexus has a very difficult time reading and processing ID3v2 tags. Most MP3s come embedded with both. If i have 1GB of songs with version 2 tags, it will take about 2-3 minutes for the car to scan and index the drive. Until then, I cannot switch tracks, switch folders, or use other functions like random and repeat. Sometimes it will even take longer. Once it is done, I have access to all the functions until I stop the car overnight and it is no longer in its local memory cache. But for driving around town, it generally remembers what it has indexed. If your files only have version 1 tags, then your speed is very normal and starts right away. again, with a tag editor you can go in and batch remove all the version 2 tags. Then your music will play fast again.

This is a tremendous pain. It was also a problem in the ES and GS models, but has been corrected in both for 2016. Not sure if the IS has been corrected, but I'm assuming so. There is no firmware update available that fixes it either. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. If wanted, I can send you an mp3 with the tags and without the tags so you can see the difference and how it plays.

lightbay

I bough ta new RX350 2016 and lo-behold. USB port will not recognize MP3 music from any origin. All these files worked on varieties of computers, cars, MP3 players, iOs and Android etc. Playing with file names to remove any spececial characters did not help. Reformating uSB drive was also of no use.USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 did not matter either as both will not work on some USB drives. FAT32 or FAT format did not matter. I finally tried some very old USB stick that I had - one of 512MB (a free be in trade show, probably USB 2.0) formated with FAT format. All the files worked. Then I tried a Patriot 8GB drive formated with FAT32 format (USB 2.0) . Again same files worked fine.While Sandisk USB 2.0 Cruzer Force 8.0GB will not work. Nor Netac 32GB USB 3.0 There does not seem to be any logic of what works. I suspect older slow USB drives work.

kolokmee

Just picked up a '16 RX recently. After getting seriously annoyed with the default and very random Gracenotes thumbnails with my USB drive, I dug around into the embedded jpegs on my mp3 collection to try and figure out why some 1500x1500 jpegs were displaying, but other 500x500 pictures were not.

I've narrowed it down to the embedded jpegs requiring EXIF data. Doesn't matter what the size of the jpegs are. I haven't had the patience to figure out which particular EXIF tag it keys on, but I suspect it's the resolution. A lot of mp3/m4a files out there with embedded cover/album art don't have EXIF data since they are usually stripped out before being embedded (privacy reasons, etc).

My not-so-quick and dirty solution has been to just copy the EXIF tags from another jpg with the same resolution (since I've resized most of my embedded album art to 500x500 or 600x600); and then reimporting the jpg back. Tools used are exiftool and mp3tag. Probably others out there that can be used; but "exiftool -TagsFromFile goodjpegfile.jpg badjpegfile.jpg" works wonders.

End result - I can finally get the proper album art displayed while my song collection is playing. No more gracenotes. Woohoo.

On another note; if Lexus can ever increase that tiny 1" x 1" excuse of an album art display, that would be great. On my old BMW with iDrive, the album art could take half the display.

rc350faud

I have a 2015 Lexus RC350F with the mark levinson radio. My thumb drive has over 1,000 songs and the radio will only recognize 255 songs. I read the manual and around page 363 it even states that is all it will recognize is 255 songs unless they are in other folders. There are no instructions on how they want the folder structure or names of the other folder. Hopefully someone can advise. Also my old ipod doesn't work on this car but on page 360 it lists the ipods that are compatible. Unfortunately my ipod is not listed as compatible. Strange that an upgraded audio system is so limited.

typocl

you should be able to just create folders as you wish. I don't think it works with nested folders (never tested), so each folder I have is in the root of the thumbdrive. How you name them is up to you, but shorter names are always better. My issue is that the genius who wrote the code for RANDOM shuffle was on something at the time. It's not random, you'll hear the same song several times in a short cycle, and some songs you may almost never hear. (I can predict the stupid pattern too).

rc350faud

I figured how to make it work. You can not have sub folders...also only up to 255 songs per folder...so now I have to figure out how to search by song or artist on several folders while I drive. I didn't think it would be this difficult. Is there a quick way to search all folders by song?

BrennanH

Hey guys...

I am bumping this because I cant figure out a problem with why my music is sorting weird via the USB.

After loading up some music for test, I presumed (and found this was true) that Lexus didn't read and sort the CD's by title, it used ID3 tags. So I used MusicBrainz Picard to tag all my music... no big deal I have done this before with all my FLAC files, of which I have way more than MP3's. So, this is done, for ~15gb of music... I will add more later.

However, here comes the question: 90% of my files are in the correct order, except any artist that starts with 'A'. My library in the car starts at 'B' and goes through the alphabet until it gets to the end, then lists my artists starting at 'A'. So weird...


Any ideas? I didnt find anything by googling.

BrennanH

Buuuuuump...