Ok, I read about this in the manual and I am using a USB to play my music. I have a little over 700 MP3 on the USB device formatted per the manual.

When I initiate Voice Commands (VC) I get a response that indicates that I have too much music to do what is asked. VC: "Play Song Cliffs of Dover" or "Play Artist Eric Johnson". Each MP3 file has the artist name and song name clearly indicated.

I then read that because I have all the MPS in the root folder that could be the reason as it doesn't know what to do, so again looking at the manual it indicates I should implement folders, which I do for the different types of music I have. I have no more that 255 MP3 per folder, per the manual, and change to that folder. I again try to use the VC of "Play Song Cliffs of Dover" or "Play Artist Eric Johnson", and once again I get "Because of the volume the music must be cataloged, please try again later", but the problem is that later never occurs as every time I try it afterwards I get the same basic response.

Any help from the guru's would be greatly appreciated?

 

UPDATE:

I put 5 songs on a different USB device and put it into the car. I then used VC, and asked it to play a song and got the great response of "Pardon". I then tried play Artist and got the same stupid response. Then, like a miracle it started to work as advertised. It took the system over 3 minutes to catalog 5 songs, and how the heck long is it going to take to catalog 800? Yes, I can do the math, but it should be a lot faster.

According to the manual you can't have more that 8 main folders on a USB device with the Root folder being one of the 8. So that means 7 main folders. Still working on finding out how the VC is supposed to work with that.

The USB info is on page 364 of the owners manual.
Items related to standards and limitations are as follows:

• Maximum directory hierarchy: 8 levels
• Maximum number of folders in a device: 3000 (including the root)
• Maximum number of files in a device: 9999
• Maximum number of files per folder: 255

Random selection when using USB device: When Random is selected twice then the system will randomly play a song from each folder on the USB device and FLD.RAND will appear on the screen.

Selecting Random only once will randomly play songs that are currently in the folder you are in. This is on Page 222 of the Navigation manual.

Anyone try this besides myself, and if you did how did you get it to work?

 

After speaking with Lexus Customer Service for stereos I was basically told to use Bluetooth from my phone. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

On another note I transferred all my music from a USB to my iPod Nano 4th Gen. and lo and behold every freaking thing works like it should. Voice commands all work correctly.

The only reason I didn't want to use my iPod in the first place was in case the car was ever broken into I wouldn't lose my iPod and only a $15 USB drive.

If anyone ever finds out how to make a USB flash drive work let me know.

 

I'm waiting for my RCF to come in and I check these forums almost every day. I'm sorry to hear that you are having issues with your USB stick and voice commands. I have been using a USB stick myself in my Honda Accord. It doesn't have voice command. I was looking forward to having the voice command feature in my new car---I use a 64 gig stick which has almost 1000 complete albums on it. I'm not sure if it would make a difference in your case, but to get it to be able to list all my artists in alphabetical order, I had to do a minor adjustment to my file structure. I have it set up where the first folder is the artist name and then a folder for each album inside. To get it to work properly I needed to take one song from that artist and place it inside the the artist folder. Just to clarify--if I open the artist folder I see all the albums for that artist PLUS one song. So as to save space, I always pick the shortest song. It's worth a try

 

Thanks. I'll give it a try. I really wanted the RC F, but I knew if I got it I would lose my license in a matter of weeks.

 

Let me know if that worked. My music is very important to me so for both our sakes, I hope it does. My RCF is supposed to arrive in March. I ordered it about 6 weeks ago, so the time seems to be dragging!

 

GH - how are you connecting your iPod to the ML? USB cable?

 

That's what I use and it works flawlessly. All features with voice control work too.

 

Using the Apple/USB cable that came with the iPod.

 

Thanks guys.

 

Now that I've been using the iPod for a while I thought I would give an update. If you like to use playlists create them on your iPod, and put the songs that you want into them. The VC works for Play Song (name), Play Artist (name) , Play Album (name), and Play Playlist (name).

Pretty sweet.

 

And no luck getting the USB stick to work?

 

When I tested it with only four songs it worked, but I still think it has a folder limit of 255, which for me is way to few songs as I have over 900. I haven't tested it further.

 

That's 255/folder--plenty! You can have many folders with 255 songs in each. Most of the folders I have on my stick have a maximum of maybe 20 songs in each---representing those songs in the album. In any event, was the voice command working ---that's what I'm most interested in.

 

I had 7 folders from the root, and multiple folders under each one. The voice command did not work, hence the move to the iPod.