I purchased a 2019 ES350 last month will less than 9K under CPO program. I thought I got a steal of a car that was barely ever driven. But I've had a bit of drama over the vehicle. I'll share the rest of my experiences with it another time. But the issue that is currently driving me crazy is the USB audio has been going haywire when the car is in motion. Tracks keep playing. The head Unit never shuts down. But navigation of the audio files becomes almost impossible. Under my browsing menu, clicking any option - artist- album-song-individual genres, ect, brings me to the first song the system sees in the file tree, under that search category. The ability to scroll and jump around between albums, artists, and genres becomes non existent. I can still skip through all of the files and they move from artists a to z, and play the tracks as numbered in formatting. The speech function is able to find the files I have that are correctly labeled. But its difficult to skip through 1k worth of tracks to find what you are looking for. When I put in in park and power cycle the car, it operates as normal. Until the car starts moving again. I have the Mark Levinson system and Im an audio fanatic. Bluetooth is reliable but sounds horrible. my 3.5 on my phone makes tracks artificially muddy. The USB tracks sound fantastic. When I can access them with ease. As an android user Im almost ready to insult myself and by and iPhone just for Carplay. My wife's iPhone works seamlessly and the audio is acceptable. What does this.... Any Suggestions....

 

The short version is that the ES has a very odd and obsolete way of sorting tracks, and your car is behaving normally.

The long version can be found in a number of existing threads on this forum, including a very recent one right on the same page as your post.

My advice as someone who doesn't want to fiddle with the contents of his USB drive as a hobby is, source your music from a wired connection to your phone instead. There's a nearby phone slot right in the console for it, and it's a lot less hassle to find what you want.

 

That's correct. The explanation is all in that thread. You need to edit your mp3 tags to get it to play your music in the correct order.

.Agreed. About 3 months after I bought my ES, I got an iPhone and use Amazon HD music and Google Maps. Since then, I no longer use my USB stick or the Lexus infotainment system.

 

I just bought a 2021 ES 300h, and am in the same boat. Music browsing by artist/album/genre works fine while parked but not while moving. While moving it flashed "reading audio information" (or something to that effect) then plays the first track. You'd think that if they disabled music browsing for safety reasons, they'd gray out the options like the do on the bluetooth menu or other menus. This seems like a bug, I was hoping there'd be a software switch somewhere to turn that feature on - since passengers can select music safely. Has anyone spoken to Lexus about this?

 

I wonder, has anyone tried browsing music with a passenger in the front seat? I wonder if it works then? I couold have sworn it worked once...

 

@LexFinally and @DavidZ, the problem isn't in the browse order, @shock and I are seeing the same behavior with a failure in selecting media while driving. It'd be helpful if someone could try to reproduce the behavior, as I'm going to call tech support for guidance. What I'd appreciate someone doing is:

1. Take a 32GB or smaller USB stick meeting the media limits (FAT32 format, < 3000 folders, < 9999 files) and insert it into a USB slot.
2. Select the USB drive as a source.
3. Select an artist, genre, or album using the screen while stopped. You should see a media selection screen and be able to select one of the artist, genres or albums and play them.
4. Begin to select an artist, genre, or album using the screen while stopped, then without selecting one, begin to drive. The selections should gray out. You cannot select media.
5. While driving, try to select an artist, genre, or album. The screen will flash something about reading the device, then begin playing one of the first songs on the USB stick without going to the media selection screen.

#5 should reasonably follow the behavior of #4 - and it does inconsistently.

If anyone else can recreate #4, please let me know. Thanks!

 

Could it be that the 2021 version intentionally disables controlling the operation of the USB while driving? I haven't noticed any such limitation on my 2023.

 

It took me a while to figure out how the Lexus reads the files and folders. Sometimes it uses the file names, and sometimes the titles in the metadata.
MP3 files have lots of slots for metadata, and after I learned a few of the basics, the organization on my USB drive became easier to use and pretty predictable. There are a lot of free programs out there that will show you the metadata fields and let you enter names, dates, artists, track numbers, and all kinds of other stuff, including "cover art" which is a jpeg image that pops up on the screen when that track is playing.
Try adding metadata names (and numbers) to your files, and this might solve many of your problems.

 

I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how my system orders the tracks in a folder. I have never been able to order the tracks by the titles or the track number; it is always ultimately based the file name. My best understanding is that folders and tracks are ordered by the time they were written to the USB, which is in turn determined by the file name when writing several files at once (at least on my system). The earlier in time, the higher in the order in which they are displayed.

Can you provide a procedure where the metadata titles are used for the order in which they are displayed? I use Mp3tag to change the metadata such as the cover art displayed on the screen.

 

If you mean browsing songs, artists etc, that function is absolutely disabled/grayed out while driving in my 19.

 

I think you are correct in that the file name is the displayed sort order, as is the folder name.
What I found out is that adding the metadata allows for searches by artist or album or date, etc. (I'm pretty sure.)
And adding the cover art is a nice touch.
From the posts, I gather that some older cars present the files in a different order from the way newer models present them. I don't know why that would be, but who has the time to worry about that?
I just know that it took a while and many trips from my garage to my computer to get it to a point where it works pretty well for me in my current car (2024ES350).

 

In a general sense I agree. More specifically, it is the sort order used by the program on the computer writing to the USB. The order the files were written to the USB.

I hear that one. Since I can't get my computer to simulate how the Lexus will display the USB contents, it is a huge hinderance to have to shuttle back and forth. I tried bringing my laptop into the car, but that was awkward too. Now, if I want to make adjustments/updates to files, it generally works to do the adjustments on the computer and then delete the entire folder to be updated from the USB and rewrite the whole folder from the computer to the USB. Otherwise, if I update a file and save the updated version to the USB, it will be moved to the last file in the folder, since it was the most recently written one.

 

The Lexus definitely does disable some controls when driving - browsing through Bluetooth commands, for example, gives you a subset of controls until you come to a stop, at which point all of the options are available.

Ditto, if you start the selection process to pick a song, album or artist, then start driving, the options are disabled.

It's when you try selecting while driving that instead of disabling the options, it plays the first song on the USB stick. THAT behavior feels like a bug - it should just grey out the options until you come to a stop.

 

I think I recall that while driving and the USB browsing commands are disabled on the screen, it is possible to use a voice command to play a track on the USB, if you know its name and don't mispronounce it too badly.
I tried this once about a year ago and I think it worked, but I'm not sure.
Can anybody report on this; if it can be done, it would be nice to have the format of the command that does this.

 

There are workarounds. You can use voice commands select a band or genre, and use the navigation arrows on the "Now Playing" screen, along with the buttons on the steering wheel to control the song.

I fill in the ID3 information on all of my music files and usually I'll say "play genre XYZ", then sort through the albums using the method above. That way, if I'm in the mood for jazz, I can sort through the jazz artists, and so forth.

If the USB browsing commands were disabled, that would make sense - what I'm seeing is the browse process ending and the media player playing one of the first albums/songs on the USB stick.