Multiple USB Devices

supratachophobia · Jul 20, 2015

Just wanted to share with everyone a bit of a new discovery for me. I've been using an SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure for about 2 months now and it's done really great. No heat issues or power issues to speak of. I've always been severely disappointed in the media player app; admittedly I'm a little spoiled after using an Empeg in every car for the last 14 years though.

As a work-around for not being able to build playlists, I partitioned the hard drive into 4 logical drives, each with a different set of genres. I basically tried to get genres together that I would want to hear from in a playlist form if I played all the songs from that device. It's worked out really well for music, and it's super-nice to have books on their own partition and out of the way. I emailed Tesla as a feature request because I'm content for now, but I'd like the media app to read the partition volume name instead of giving in a random USB# designation. If I refresh the sources, they get mixed up and it's cumbersome now that I have 8 sources.

That's right, I am using the SSD with 4 partitions, and then a USB 4-port hub so that I can play a source without having to fiddle around with plugging and unplugging devices. This begs the question, can you do more? But I'm content with this so far. It fits well and does what I need it to do.

pmoa · Jul 20, 2015

I was just about to install this in my 70d. Pics to come.

kuttakamina · Jul 20, 2015

FWIW, the manual says clearly not to attach USB hubs.

jlucero · Jul 20, 2015

supratachophobia said:
Just wanted to share with everyone a bit of a new discovery for me. I've been using an SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure for about 2 months now and it's done really great. No heat issues or power issues to speak of. I've always been severely disappointed in the media player app; admittedly I'm a little spoiled after using an Empeg in every car for the last 14 years though.

As a work-around for not being able to build playlists, I partitioned the hard drive into 4 logical drives, each with a different set of genres. I basically tried to get genres together that I would want to hear from in a playlist form if I played all the songs from that device. It's worked out really well for music, and it's super-nice to have books on their own partition and out of the way. I emailed Tesla as a feature request because I'm content for now, but I'd like the media app to read the partition volume name instead of giving in a random USB# designation. If I refresh the sources, they get mixed up and it's cumbersome now that I have 8 sources.

That's right, I am using the SSD with 4 partitions, and then a USB 4-port hub so that I can play a source without having to fiddle around with plugging and unplugging devices. This begs the question, can you do more? But I'm content with this so far. It fits well and does what I need it to do.

View attachment 88127 View attachment 88128

what are you listening to? is all that music? or other media?

supratachophobia · Jul 21, 2015

kuttakamina said:
FWIW, the manual says clearly not to attach USB hubs.

To be sure, it does. Because of the possible risks to drawing to much power. So I did the math, each stick takes about 25mw of power at idle, and just under 100 when being accessed. Since none of them are accessed at the same time thanks to the sequential scanning of devices, the total draw on the port is only a couple hundred mW when in use. Tech specs claim that each port can to 1000mw @ 5v conservativly.

It would be nice to have playlist support and not take this route FWIW.

- - - Updated - - -

jlucero said:
what are you listening to? is all that music? or other media?

Mostly music, but I have a lot of books on mp3 to keep me company on long drives. In practice I never have more than 2 USB sticks plugged in. One for new music that hang been added to the main collection on the SSD and the other for books of the same.

My empeg would let you build a playlist on the fly / reorganize an existing playlist for "most recently added", " least often played", "most often played", so that would have eliminated the need for extra sticks. Oh well.

MsElectric · Jul 21, 2015

supratachophobia said:
To be sure, it does. Because of the possible risks to drawing to much power. So I did the math, each stick takes about 25mw of power at idle, and just under 100 when being accessed. Since none of them are accessed at the same time thanks to the sequential scanning of devices, the total draw on the port is only a couple hundred mW when in use. Tech specs claim that each port can to 1000mw @ 5v conservativly.

It would be nice to have playlist support and not take this route FWIW.

Playlist support seems really basic. Do you have your USB media in a lossless format for best quality?

supratachophobia · Jul 21, 2015

MsElectric said:
Playlist support seems really basic. Do you have your USB media in a lossless format for best quality?

Playlist support is non existent. You can play a group by alphabetical title, genre, album, or artist. But only one at a time. I've mentioned in other threads, you should be able to un-shuffle on an artist or album, continue with similar artist album, and then either bounce out to the next album/artist or shuffle back into the title playlist. As it stands now, each of those above requires a minimum of five button pushes and considerable scrolling which is a huge distraction to driving.

For example, let's say you want to listen to more Katy Perry, you should be able to turn off shuffle and have it just play more of that album or artist. Then, when you like, press the shuffle button again to go back to the shuffled list of music by title. Better yet, The Empeg has a "similar artist", "similar album", "similar genre" button where you could press it once or many times, and it would queue up the next song into the playlist meeting those requirements without having to start a new playlist or go hunting for it in the directory.

And don't even get me started on the equalizer, 20 bands, configurable 20 x 1, 10 x 2, or 5 x 4 channel.....

Regarding the encoding, It's a mix. The older it is, the less likely it's lossless. But everything recent/new is either in lossless or 320.

Audio books I try to keep at least 128, preferably 192. Jim Dale's voice needs to come across as rich, sultry, and clear.

MsElectric · Jul 21, 2015

supratachophobia said:
It's a mix; the older it is, the likely it's lossless. But everything recent/new is either in lossless or 320.

Audio books I try to keep at least 128, preferably 192. Jim Dale's voice needs to come across as rich and clear.

Which lossless format do you use? Have you tried WMA Lossless?

supratachophobia · Jul 21, 2015

MsElectric said:
Which lossless format do you use? Have you tried WMA Lossless?

No one does WMA lossless.... There was a guy at Microsoft who used it once for a CD rip, but that was it.

FLAC all the way, forget that DRM apple weak sauce.

amosnomor · Jun 13, 2017

Have you used duplicate copies of audio files as a playlist workaround? If so, what kind of conventions have you used (or would recommend) in rewriting the tags of the duplicate files to make them work least annoyingly in the car's UI?

I have the following USB SSD device (great write performance compared to the USB thumb drives):

Amazon.com: Samsung T3 Portable SSD - 250GB - USB 3.1 External SSD (MU-PT250B/AM): Computers & Accessories

set up with two Linux ext4 partitions (which works fine in my 2016 refresh Model S running 17.17.4). One partition has the normal artist/album/music_files layout, while in the other partition I am going to duplicate files to make playlists.

I briefly experimented with file system links as a playlist mechanism, and found that hard links work, symbolic links don't. But this leads to the tags mess, which lead me to thinking about the duplicate copy solution.

supratachophobia · Jun 13, 2017

amosnomor said:
Have you used duplicate copies of audio files as a playlist workaround? If so, what kind of conventions have you used (or would recommend) in rewriting the tags of the duplicate files to make them work least annoyingly in the car's UI?

I have the following USB SSD device (great write performance compared to the USB thumb drives):

Amazon.com: Samsung T3 Portable SSD - 250GB - USB 3.1 External SSD (MU-PT250B/AM): Computers & Accessories

set up with two Linux ext4 partitions (which works fine in my 2016 refresh Model S running 17.17.4). One partition has the normal artist/album/music_files layout, while in the other partition I am going to duplicate files to make playlists.

I briefly experimented with file system links as a playlist mechanism, and found that hard links work, symbolic links don't. But this leads to the tags mess, which lead me to thinking about the duplicate copy solution.

I've used duplicate copies at one point to simulate "playlists".

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Multiple USB Devices

supratachophobia

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pmoa

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supratachophobia

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supratachophobia

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