keynes

Trying to play music from a USB. PCM just skips from song to song like its loading them but never plays anything (it sees the tracks). I followed the manual instructions step by step and did a search here, but no joy. Any ideas?, thanks in advance.

Bruce In Philly

Most likely it is the file format. What are the file extensions? Your manual denotes file types it will play.

Some stuff here:

https://rennlist.com/forums/997-foru...usb-drive.html
https://rennlist.com/forums/997-foru...-and-pcm3.html
https://rennlist.com/forums/997-foru...c2s-flaky.html

I found it can be flaky so try reformatting the drive FAT32, then copying the music. Constant deleting, moving etc.. files on the drive makes the PCM a bit stupid.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

F308gt4

keynes

Well, no dice on the music I bought from Amazon prime. Formatted the drive to fat32, still skipped through the songs. Converted the (mp3) files to mp3 format again and it just locked up the PCM with everything greyed out.
What did work was downloading songs from another site. Seems like Amazon songs won't play at all through the PCM (they play fine on my computer). I'll just have to download everything over again from another site.
I do have a bigger thumb drive on order, may visit this Amazon issue again at a later date. Thanks for the tips, I learned more about windows 10 today than in the last couple months.

Bruce In Philly

Very interesting about Amazon downloads.... hmmm.... I will have to try this just 'cause I am a geek. I still buy CDs through Amazon and they give downloads of the same as part of the price. I don't do their downloads because the MP3 format is a lossy one and I am into high fidelity for home use.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

CARnoisseur

Is this still an issue for you? I remembered this thread today and thought I'd check it out. I tried this today with non Amazon mp3 and everthing worked fine. I also checked my PCM version and I'm the initial version for a 2010 C4S. When I tried with an NTFS formatted thumbdrive it failed. Did a normal (non quick) format of the thumb drive to FAT32 and it worked. I used 128 and 192 bitrates (if memory serves).

The thing I didn't like about playing through the thumdrive is that you don't get folders as playlist... at least I couldn't get them to play that way. Everything plays linear through the PCM's selected order.

What's the bitrate on the Amazon MP3?

keynes

I still can't get Amazon sourced MP3 files to play. Otherwise everything is good. I followed Bruce in Philly's advice to format single volume and FAT32 on my 256GB thumb drive and my youtube albums are playing ok. A few are clearly not high fidelity (and it would be nice to replace them) but I can live with it since the focus here is the car and not sitting there just listening to the stereo.

Bruce In Philly

Mine plays folders no problem... hmmm..... If I remember, I will take a picture of my PCM screen this evening. On my USB stick, I have a folder for every artist, then a subfolder for each of their albums, then the song names are preceded by a number (I use EAC to rip bit perfect Wavs, then convert to high quality MP3 using a LAME encoder set on highest quality, non-variable bit rate)). The system will play in folder order (alphabetical), then subfolder order (alphabetical) then song order (alphabetical), when done, is marches up the folder chain, then back down..... in other words, it plays as I think it should play.

Example of folder and song structure:
- Rolling Stones


(Sorry, indenting isn't working for me)

On my PCM display, I see a list of the highest level folders only... the artists..... click on one, then I see their albums etc.

On my steering wheel, I have the wheel as a select button, and the "reverse" button go up a folder.... works well. Actually way better than an Alpine unit I had installed temporarily... the Alpine's manual said it would play in the order the files were stored on the drive, in other words, it was a mess!!!


Peace
Bruce in Philly

max540i

I had the same problem. Per @F308gt4 post from above, i had to convert (down sample) each amazon-sourced 256Kbps MP3 file to an MP3 file at lower bit rate (i used 128Kbps). BTW, if you're mac-based you can use Itunes to do that.