I sure hope I don't have this problem when my car arrives!
This is exactly the same problem that Genesis users have been facing for years!
I prepared a USB flash stick for my mom's Genesis and had to go through all these hoops to get it to work. Took hours!
And that was just to play the songs in one folder in the right order.

 

Agree! Having the option of a USB drive was one of the things I was looking forward to when I bought the car, so not happy with some of the "nanny" stuff Lexus put in place.

 

When test driving different cars/brands I had a USB drive with my favorite best recorded FLAC's to test the Audio Systems. Same as you, I had a USB drive organized and ready to plug-in on my new 300h. But having used wireless Android Auto with PowerAmp/VLC there's no way I go back to the USB drive.

If you don't plan to use Car Play or Android Auto then I can understand the USB route. But if you plan to use CP or AA than you should definitely consider moving your MP3 library to the phone. It's much more seamless and user friendly.

 

Thanks scubapr.
I'm going to start out with fingers crossed hoping that the USB route will work OK.
If it doesn't I'll have no choice but to plug in my phone and get some decent Android apps for it. Is Android Auto an app you recommend?
Will it read nested folders?

 

I don't think you will notice much of a difference on the base system. The base system is pretty good itself. But the ML is a little more Hi-Fi (revealing) than the base system. So when using a low quality recording on the ML some audiophile people will notice the difference in quality.

I really don't know how to explain this; and it really depends on your ears and the perception of sound. 5-6 years ago I would not have noticed any difference between a low quality and a high quality MP3 recording; and I would never have paid more than $200 for a single speaker. But since building my home theater and having bought decent high quality bookshelf speakers. I have developed the ability to better appreciate music, instruments, and a good quality recording. Although I don't consider myself an audiophile I can sometimes notice the difference in quality and hi-fi systems.

 

Are you an iPhone or Android user? iPhone = Car Play / Android = Android Auto.

I don't know about Apple, but in Android you could use the free VLC player to play and organize your library. The one I prefer is PowerAmp (One-Time paid App). but you could also use Spotify, Amazon Music, etc. with the offline download so it doesn't depend on cellular signal when traveling.

I have the 12-inch infotainment system which has a the ability to connect wireless. I'm not sure if the smaller screen has the wireless feature, but I think it does.Having the phone connected to the infotainment it's a completely enhanced experience. With AA or CP you can use Google Maps or Waze instead of the default Lexus Nav. Phone and messaging integration is much more seamless.

 

Android Auto is a system which adds to the Lexus Interface system the ability to display your Android smart phone's display and run and control Android Auto compatible apps on your Android smart phone. Get started with Android Auto is one place to start on understanding the workings of Android Auto. Android Auto, as well as Apple CarPlay, support is built into the Lexus Interface multimedia system and Android Auto is a standard feature of most, if not all, current Android smart phones so the only thing you may need to do is to install a Android Auto compatible MP3 musc play app on your Android smart phone.

PowerAmp and VLC that scubapr mentioned are Android Auto compatible apps that if installed on your Android smart phone can be used to play music/sound files through your ES's audio system while your phone is connected up to your ES using the Android Auto system.

If you want to see how Android Auto works in a 2023/2024 Lexus ES with the "new" Lexus Interface system, Northside Lexus's Melissa O'Connell's "2023 Lexus ES Full Tutorial - Deep Dive"Youtube video starting at the 1:31:18 time mark briefly shows the Android Auto operation basics:

Although the demonstration is using a slightly older version of the Lexus multimedia system, she also has a more extensive "Android Auto How To - Voice Commands, Apps & More - Tech Tip Tuesday" where she goes into more detail on using map, text, and phone apps:

 

Maybe it's Apple CP or the player I'm using on my phone, but playing music wirelessly from my phone doesn't seem quite as good as playing the same files on USB. It's more full on the USB, bass notes are bigger and highs, like cymbals, have more nuance.

 

This is my AA screen with Google Maps in dark mode + PowerAmp running my main playlist in shuffle mode.

 

While it may not be discernible to most ears, the difference may be due to CarPlay only supports lossless audio over a wired USB connect to a vehicle's multimedia system. Whereas, Wi-Fi wireless CarPlay uses lossy AAC-LC for audio media transmitted to a vehicle's multimedia system. See my 2023 Audio System Improvement post #4 where I go into the details along with reference sources.

So, if you have a 24-bit/192 kHz ALAC [Apple's lossless CODEC] music file on your iPhone it'll be transmitted as is over a wired USB connection to the multimedia unit's CarPlay subsystem (which will be in turn down-converted to 48 kHz/24 bit or 96 kHz /24 bit depending upon the model year's multimedia system); whereas, your iPhone will run the file through an AAC-LC encoder before transmitting it over the Wi-Fi connection to the multimedia unit's CarPlay subsystem.

 

Thanks grp52; that makes perfect sense. It would be nice to use the iPhone interface for music, but I can get by with the USB drive.

 

I use the USB all the time despite the nearly useless user interface. What I ended up doing was using the Windows program mp3tag to change the file names (or tags). Tags are things like album name, artist, track#, genre. In your case it's probably best to have it convert the tags to a file name so the file will look like "07 The Cranberries - Linger.mp3" and the system will play them in the order of the album tracks. If you just listen to a bunch of songs maybe that doesn't matter so much. But since the system doesn't pay attention to the tags when in file/folder mode, the screen will show the file name, not the tags, so it will look like what I just typed.

When using the tags it insists on playing one album at a time, even if you only have one track from that album. What I ended up doing was using mp3tag to change all the songs to be on an "album" called "Car Mix". It will still have the individual artists and album art, just not the album. If you had a bunch of songs that you usually like to play together, you could use a different contrived album name for each bunch.

It's been frustrating that this user interface is such a major downgrade from what my 2010 Ford had.

 

I finally tried loading FLAC files on the flash drive - oh what a difference at least with the ML system. Now I need to re-rip my entire library

 

Many of my mp3s are obscure so I doubt its ID3 metadata algorithm would be able to figure out the artist/album.
In fact I'd bet a pretty dollar it couldn't do it.

What’s your music? Mine are R & B from 1950’s. Very obscure but all organized and playing beautifully via Apple iPhone and Apple Car Play with wireless adapter.

 

I personally use .wav files. Although they are large files. Here is quote from internet on quality. "Sound Quality FLAC files are compressed but still lossless, meaning they don't lose any audio quality during the compression process. When played back, FLAC files sound identical to the original, uncompressed file. However, WAV files offer the purest sound quality since they're completely uncompressed. Nov 28, 2023" At my age I am sure I probably would not tell any difference unless I put it on oscilloscope.