I have a walkman mp3 player that I cant get to play in my 17 GS FSport (or my 18 IS FSport). When I connect the usb the icon lights
up and the unit indicates that it is playing, yes volume is up. Same thing with the IS. The Lexus tech couldnt get it to play either. Any similar
experiences or suggestions to get it to play. Input appreciated.

 

I don't have an MP3 player but I do have a USB thumb drive with a few gigs of songs on it that works just fine. It often takes about 30 seconds for it to scan when I first start the car as I have it all in the root for random everything.

When you select media on the display, do you see song titles? I do with my USB thumb drive.

Hmm, now I'm wondering what will happen if I connect my 300G external USB drive!

 

Connect it via Aux until you fix it.

 

connected it and waited, still nothing, no song titles. In fact unit goes blank when I connect usb, dont remember it doing that before. Thanks for the response, I appreciate your help.

 

I would try that, but now when I connect the usb the walkman goes blank, something new I think. I would think the unit (walkman)
was defective, but I connected it to a Porsche Macan I had and it worked perfectly. Im going to push Lexus dealer to
fix this. Thanks so much for your input.

 

If you can copy a few songs to the root of a thumb drive, see if that will play. Divide and conquer.

 

Usually the software on an mp3 isn't compatible to the software on a car, at least in my experience. Walkmans don't act as thumbdrives unless plugged into a computer/mac, so unless there's a setting in the Lexus UI that allows the mp3 to be seen as a thumb drive, it won't play the music off your mp3 because it's an unrecognized device.

Back in the day when iPod and Mp3 were the way to go, an aux cable was the method to go to.

 

that would explain my problem, basically walkmen just arent compatible with a Lexus. It did work
on my Porsche though. Different system I guess. Thanks for your input.

 

Just put a cheap thumb drive in it. I got 3 days worth of music on mine.

 

Just use a iPod. Works flawlessly. Great sound quality too.

 

Yeah, iPod works really well and they're cheap now too.

 

Some are cheap. I use the older iPod Classic 5th Gen Enhanced with the Wolfson DAC. A while back you could find them for like $50 or less. But not anymore. They sound Audiophile.

 

They sounded better too. AUX outputs were considerably more powerful on earlier smartphones/iPods so you could feed a good signal to your head unit. Nowadays we're stuck on a much crappier albeit more convenient standard (Bluetooth).


OP: Might be a long shot but can you format the Walkman's filesystem to FAT32 or NTFS? It might be worth trying both. For what it's worth, I just plug my iPhone 12 Pro Max in the USB port and it gets detected as an iPod. None of the browsing functionality works but I think it's a good way to feed bit-perfect data into the Mark Levinson's DAC other than using a CD.

 

No doubt, a direct connection will always yield superior results than wireless. However, the biggest difference comes down to audio system quality, as well as the file type. I'm no audiophile, I'm happy with my mp3 streaming over bluetooth, but I have heard a high quality sound system with direct connection and .WAV (though might've been AAC), and there was a difference. The higher quality+direct setup sounded much more crisp and less muddled. Since it's not as compressed, that's exactly what it sounded like.

 

It would depend on how the storage on the walkman is formatted and the setting on the walkman. I know on android based MP3 players, you have to allow usb audio/file transfer enable. I believe this is per device per vehicle. The audio system in any Lexus should pickup any FAT32 formatted devices.