Rockysc

After we got our 2010 Lexus RX350 I had to decide how to use our music library with the car. I had a choice of mp3 CDs, Auxiliary jack for MP3 player, USB for iPod/iPhone or a USB Memory Stick. A friend has a Lexus SC430 with supposedly higher quality parts but yet his CD changer has had to be replaced three times over the years because the CD changer is a mechanical device and his constant use of it wore it out. He was out of warranty on the last one and because the CD player is part of the radio it cost him $1600 to replace it.

Since our Lexus has optional music inputs we decided to put our favorite songs on the six CDs as mp3 songs and to only use them as a backup. An analog CD has 24 songs max where a digital mp3 CD can have 160 songs. On vacations we can download a talking book in mp3 format and burn it to a CD. In iTunes/Podcasts you can find talking books in mp3 format; each track is a chapter in the book. It is much easier to pop in a book CD than accessing the deep center console USB port. We decided not to have the iPhone/iPad cable coming out of the deep console because it is unsightly and if a cop sees you fiddling with your smartphone/mp3 player while driving you can get a ticket.

We went with a 16 GB USB Memory Stick because it has no moving parts. It will hold our favorite songs with a folder for each genre. Most song artists only have one hit song we like or at the most a few. We have their songs by genre like Pop, Rock, Country but other artists, like the Beach Boys, have dozens of favorite songs so we have a folder just for them. Likewise most Broadway shows only have one showstopper song, like Memory from Cats, but other shows like Les Miserables has 52 great songs so they are in their own folder.

All our songs are in iTunes. I learned the hard way not to buy any songs from iTunes because it is not mp3 and will not play on our TV or cars USB ports. We normally buy from Amazon/mp3 because it will download automatically into iTunes. In an iTunes playlist you can click and drag the songs in the order you wish to hear them played. For Broadway Shows we wanted to hear the songs played in the same sequence you would hear them sung during the show.

I highlighted in iTunes the 52 Les Miserables songs and clicked and dragged them over to copy them to the USB memory stick in my PC. But when I put the memory stick in our RX350 and played the Les Miserables folder it did not play them in sequence. I wrote down the song names and found out they were sorted by date and time. Apparently when my PC copies a block of songs it mixes them up.

To fix the problem, I erased the songs in the folder and copied them again on the PC to the USB memory stick doing one song at a time. This put the correct date and time on them and they all played in the correct sequence in the car.

Rockysc

billy44bo

It is a pain to set up a usb. Stick but once you do get it the way you want it it is slow reading the titles in the car.

JenBowes

I just leave an AUX cable plugged in all the time and connect my Itouch to that when i want to play my ipod. The USBs there to charge it when i need more power, and it's just easier to control whats playing from my Itouch directly vs messing with the nav screen and the cables hide nicely in the compartment bin. I never thought about a USB stick for anything other than the rear ent system. Wonder which system works better... Do alot of ppl use the sticks? Interested to see other responses

sightdev

I have also recently replaced iPod with USB stick. hit-miss with navigating the folders. sometimes the scrolling works and sometimes it doesn't. Sound quality is not as good as iPod. when you buy music from iTune, all you have to do is rename the extension to .mp3 from .mp4. Now I buy all the music from Walmart.com and they have lowest price for exact same download from others. after two years of using the remote joy stick, this isn't what I want in next purchase so hope Lexus improve the user experience or get rid of it in favor of touch/roller types.

vazquecj

Although the Lexus' interface has a "Folders >" button, the tracks are not recognized by this orientation. I've changed the "genre" and "folder" name to genre. However, while I only have 5 genres (and therefore five folders) the system still reads 100+ folders.

Has anyone had success compartmentalizing tracks by genre using a USB connection?

Droid13

I've gotta say, forget the USB stick thing. I started out with that, but when my son cracked the screen on his old iPod (that still worked), he got a new one and I took it the old one to connect instead of the USB stick. The iPod integration is so, so, so, so, so much better. If, for any other reason, you can still navigate the playlists while moving, something the car won't do with a USB stick, plus you get access to the PlayLists so you can do multiple sorts of your music library. I'm not an Apple guy, give me a Nexus or Samsung phone anyday over an iPhone, but because the Lexus USB interface sucks so badly, save yourself the grief, go find a lousy old iPod in a junk drawer somewhere and it'll be 100X better than the stick.

dwlink

+1

USB sticks and on board hard drives are a pain. We just use my wife's old ipod touch to play songs and use the interface on the ipod as its much better than you'll find in any automaker's interface.

kmar

Any issues with USB memory stick (flash drive) playback in the 2015 RX 350? I'm thinking of buying a new RX 350 and don't have an iPod or any Apple products so I prefer using a USB flash drive for my music.

Rockysc

I forgot to mention in my last post about my 2010 RX350 that the folders on the USB memory stick can NOT have more than 255 songs in each folder. It will hang up or skip playback if you exceed that limit. The warning is in the Owner's Manual.

Also some Memory Stick USB brands will not work. I had a 32Gb PNY that did not work; it skipped songs. I currently am using a 32Gb Sony USB Memory Stick and used the format it came with. I did not reformat the memory stick.

I have 768 songs of the Pop genre and just as many Rock. This is what I did on my computer:

1. Take USB memory stick out of the car and put into home computer.
2. Made a folder on stick called Pop.
3. In My Computer I copied from iTunes all my Pop songs into the stick folder.
4. I listed the stick songs alphabetically and starting from the first song counted finding the end of the first letter of the song under the count of 255.
5. I made a new folder on the stick called "Pop A-J" and moved to songs to that folder.
6. I then counted the next group and moved them to new folder "Pop K-S".
7. I put the remaining songs in new folder "Pop T-Z".
8. I deleted the Pop folder and put the memory stick back into the RX350's USB port.

I did the same for all my Rock songs. They all work fine now.

These are my folder Playlist names:

Broadway
Cheer Me Up
Church
Country
Easy Listening
Favorites
Instrumentals
Overtures
Pop A-J
Pop K-S
Pop T-Z
Rock A-M
Rock N-Z
Stereo Effects