I've been finally putting all my music onto one huge (1 TB) external hard drive in the house (in uncompressed .wav format). I'm never going to have to touch a CD again, re-rip them into different formats, etc. I send them digitally (optically) to my amplifier which uses it's own DA converter to play them through my awesome speakers.

So, since I want a second copy (in case the hard drive fails) I bought a second drive and figured I could store that in the RX350 hooked up to the USB and have all my music in perfect format. Not so fast! Here's what I learned.

My 750 GB USB drive (Western Digital My Passport in this case) does not have an extra power source (only the USB cable). That's o.k. (I've heard others say it won't have enough power from the USB on the car - that doesn't seem to be a problem for me).

I did have to format the drive in FAT32 (not NTFS or exFAT). I had to use a second party free-ware to do this since Windows will not format anything over 32GB with FAT32. The drive would not be recognized at all in NTFS or exFAT (the drive light came on, but the USB tab on the Nav system didn't light up). As soon as I formatted the drive FAT32 the drive was immediately recognized and I could select USB as a source on the Nav system.

Unfortunately, the folders with .wav files in them are not seen! The Lexus thought I had no folders on the drive. I made one folder with .mp3 files in it, that folder was seen, and the music plays. Interestingly, I have music on my iPod in .wav format, and that will play. But I was hoping this would work because 1) I need a duplicate hard drive for all my music anyway, and 2) a 750 GB hard drive is 1/2 the cost of a 160 GB iPod.

Hopefully this helps some of you. Any advice about the music? Does anyone have a way to get the lexus to play .wav? Or at least suggestions for software that could bulk replicate a directory tree of .wavs into .mp3s?

 

the system only decodes mp3 files, not .wav, so it won't play, it's two different formats

when using ipod, your ipod is the one decoding the songs, not the factory system. it's a totally different story. plus, i am not 100%, but i think when you load songs up in itune (mp3, wav, etc...), they are all converted into mpa format (or something like that) when stored in the ipod

 

I don't think you're quite right on that. The iPod stores whatever format you put on there - .mp3, .aac, .wav. Otherwise, people who have a preference for listening to one format or the other (because of real or perceived sound differences) wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Certainly, the .wav files take up the space of .wav files.

Secondly, since the iPod is hooked up by USB to the car's audio system, it must be sending digital information (1's and 0's). There's no way to send analog information through a USB cable. Therefore, the car's audio system must be converting .mp3 digital information into analog. So, why can't the car's system convert .wav digitial information into analog, especially since that's the format of music on CDs (which the car's audio system reads just fine!)? Now, if you use the headphone jack on the iPod and the aux input in the car, then you are using the DA converter inside the iPod and sending analog info to the car. And obviously, a hard drive isn't going to have a DA converter in it.

So, the solution is for Lexus to change the software so that files coming through the USB can be read from .wav in addition to .mp3 (and .wma) formats.

 

As an alternative to *.wav, you can also encode the wav files into lossless mp3's, which are much larger than normal mp3s and smaller in size than WAV files.

 

There's no such thing as a lossless .mp3 I think. Anyway, the real idea is to have everything on this other drive in .wav format since it'll be the backup of my other drive. (unless I buy a third drive, which will be a pain in the butt).

 

Thanks for the info, I wasn't sure what the maximum capacity USB drive the RX would recognize. I have about 40gb of music so it looks like I can get all of it to be seen in my car.

 

You'll want this to format a drive bigger than 32GB into FAT32 (Windows won't let you do it). Remember, you lose any data on the disc:

http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

Worked beautifully for me and took only a minute or so.

 

Thanks I'll give it a go

 

Did download, but only got file converter program. Did not see anyway to format USB. Can you help?

 

I know the thread is old but make sure you format to an MBR partition and not GPT. Sometimes you use an old installer USB and even after partitioning and formatting if its GPT the drive will never be seen.

 

What is the largest USB drive we can use in our RX for music? In my '13 RX I currently use a 32 GB SanDisk Cruzer flash drive and almost maxed it out. I don't know if 64GB is allowed. Has anyone tried 64GB or 128GB?

 

Yes, 64GB usb drive works ... I have it in my 10RX...