Another iTunes, iPod, Bluetooth, music question for Model S new owner

[ualdriver]

Let me start off by saying that I searched the forum FIRST and read several different threads on this topic. I think I just need a little help to get me the final mile. This is what I understand from reading these threads (correct me if I'm wrong):

Model S can't interface via USB with iPod
Model S CAN interface via Bluetooth with iPod
If iPod is connected to Model S via Bluetooth playing music, my non-iPhone cellphone cannot be connected at same time and used as a phone through the Model S
Model S only plays .mp3 or .m4a music/podcast files from USB drive
USB drive must be formatted to FAT32

Armed with that knowledge, assuming it's correct, I have a USB drive that is formatted as a FAT32 file system (Windows 7 right click on drive-> properties.....check)
All of my podcasts and music in iTunes on my computer hard drive appear to be .mp3 or .m4a (check)

So all I have to do (?) is drag my "Music" folder and my "Podcasts" folder from my computer hard drive to my USB drive, plug my USB drive into my Model S, and then I will be able to play the songs in my "Music" folder and my "Podcasts" folder through the Model S interface........?

Please note that I would do the above if I could on my own and get it working by trian and error, but my car is a couple thousand miles away from home so I can't play with it. I'd like to have my music and podcasts to listen to as I drive my car home, hence this question, with possibly one or two more to follow. Thanks!

 

[HankLloydRight]

Yes but know that there's no "shuffle mode" when using the USB drive.

 

[ualdriver]

Yes but know that there's no "shuffle mode" when using the USB drive.

OK thanks..........Follow up question......

iTunes has a "Music" folder and a "Podcast" folder. Within the Music folder, for example, there's an artist folder. Within the artist folder, there are album folders. Within the album folders, there are the individual songs that I have purchased.

Considering these layers of folders, if I have one song in an artist/album folder, and the S plays that song and finishes, what happens then? Does it go looking for the next folder with a song in it (alphabetical?), or does it just stop and I have to go search for the next song in those layers of folders? Just wondering if I should be dragging individual songs onto my USB drive (hard), or just dragging the "Music" folder(easy). I don't want to have to select each individual song when one finishes.

 

[kirkp]

OK thanks..........Follow up question......

iTunes has a "Music" folder and a "Podcast" folder. Within the Music folder, for example, there's an artist folder. Within the artist folder, there are album folders. Within the album folders, there are the individual songs that I have purchased.

Considering these layers of folders, if I have one song in an artist/album folder, and the S plays that song and finishes, what happens then? Does it go looking for the next folder with a song in it (alphabetical?), or does it just stop and I have to go search for the next song in those layers of folders? Just wondering if I should be dragging individual songs onto my USB drive (hard), or just dragging the "Music" folder(easy). I don't want to have to select each individual song when one finishes.

It all spends upon the Play mode. The Model S currently has only an extremely basic USB play mechanism. If you access your USB by Artists, and choose All Songs, you can play All Songs by that Artist. If you choose By Album, then you obviously only get the songs from that album. If you All Songs on the entire USB drive, it'll play everything, but without any programmable (playlist) order.

To answer your specific question, if you play an album By Folder, it only plays the songs within that folder, whether 1 or 100, and then it repeats the song(s) forever when done.

The Model S interface usually identifies a music track properly regardless of the USB directory folder structure. The Album Art comes from Internet sources and might be incorrect. Depending on the current Play mode of the Model S Media Player, the song details, album art, etc., may be presented differently or incompletely.

 

[cgiGuy]

Model S only plays .mp3 or .m4a music/podcast files from USB drive

FLAC (lossless) will also play.

 

[patn]

Despite some reliability problems with bluetooth connections I have found that it is a reasonable way to listen to music and podcasts from my iPhone. When I first got my car I was concerned that audio quality might suffer and so I initially used the USB stick for music but a) I decided I couldn't really hear the difference on most stuff and b) having to keep a USB stick up to date is impractical if you listen to podcasts.

I find that the best way to use the phone is to map the right steering wheel scroll wheel to the Media Selector so that when you get into the car you can quickly zip down and select your phone if needed. I say "if needed" because in theory of you got out of your car while playing something and your iPhone still has it paused in the background then the car can reconnect and start playing again on its own. This is neat but doesn't really work reliably for two reasons: 1) It will be your natural reaction to pause the music / podcast before you get out of the car, which will defeat this. 2) At least on my phone any other audio I play in the interim kills the background audio pause so it's not ready when you return to the car. Podcast players also eventually gets pushed out of the background mode under some circumstances.

More generally, my (slightly less than positive) experience with bluetooth in the car goes like this: I get in and after backing out of the garage I scroll down to select my phone as audio input. Then I wait a couple of seconds to see if it's going to start playing on its own... 30% of the time it does start when selected, 30% of the time I have to hit play (on the other scroll wheel, dash, or phone), 30% of the time it starts to play on its own just as I hit the button and I end up actually *pausing* it and having to hit play again... which is frustrating, and 10% of the time I realize I have no connection at all and I have to mess with turning BT off and on on my phone or dash to get it to connect.

Honestly as lame as it sounds if the Tesla had an analog audio input I would probably just put a phone cradle in the car as I had with my old car... I often plug my phone in in the car anyway.

I'm hopeful that someday Tesla will give us CarPlay and it will solve all of these problems...

 

[ualdriver]

It all spends upon the Play mode. The Model S currently has only an extremely basic USB play mechanism. If you access your USB by Artists, and choose All Songs, you can play All Songs by that Artist. If you choose By Album, then you obviously only get the songs from that album. If you All Songs on the entire USB drive, it'll play everything, but without any programmable (playlist) order.

To answer your specific question, if you play an album By Folder, it only plays the songs within that folder, whether 1 or 100, and then it repeats the song(s) forever when done.

The Model S interface usually identifies a music track properly regardless of the USB directory folder structure. The Album Art comes from Internet sources and might be incorrect. Depending on the current Play mode of the Model S Media Player, the song details, album art, etc., may be presented differently or incompletely.

Ok, so it sounds like that if I want to the S to play a list of songs (the order of which I can't control), I shouldn't just drag the "Music" folder over, because I'll have to select a specific folder in the "Music" main folder, and when it's done with the songs in that particularly selected folder, it will just repeat the same song until I manually select the next folder.

It sounds like the best thing to do would be to drag the individual songs onto the USB drive, put them all in one folder, select that one folder, and then let the S play all the songs in that folder in whatever order (don't care about the order) it just does, which if I remember correctly from one of the threads I read, alphabetically. That way, it can go through all of my songs without me having to manually select each album or artist.

Does that make sense?

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks. I saw that FLAC looks like a desirable wrapper for these songs, but unfortunately I don't have the time to figure out how to convert from the format they're in now to FLAC. A project for another day perhaps

- - - Updated - - -

Despite some reliability problems with bluetooth connections I have found that it is a reasonable way to listen to music and podcasts from my iPhone. When I first got my car I was concerned that audio quality might suffer and so I initially used the USB stick for music but a) I decided I couldn't really hear the difference on most stuff and b) having to keep a USB stick up to date is impractical if you listen to podcasts.

That does sound like a better solution- doing the bluetooth thing. The only problem is that I have a Galaxy S5, and it won't have my songs on it. I'd prefer to have my Galaxy S5 connected via bluetooth to the Model S for talking on the phone, and my understanding is that I can only have one bluetooth connection on the Model S, correct?

If I put all of my songs on my Galaxy S5 then connected the Galaxy S5 to the Model S via bluetooth, would that allow me to listen to my songs AND use the bluetooth connection for phone conversations as you describe with your iPhone? If it would, that does sound like the ideal solution.

 

[patn]

If I put all of my songs on my Galaxy S5 then connected the Galaxy S5 to the Model S via bluetooth, would that allow me to listen to my songs AND use the bluetooth connection for phone conversations as you describe with your iPhone? If it would, that does sound like the ideal solution.

That is the way it works on the iPhone and I believe it's supposed to work that way on any BT capable phone. The BT connection can handle both audio and phone connections (as well as some data like the Calendar stuff now). When it's all working properly I can be listening to music or a podcast and an incoming call will simply interrupt it, then resume when the call is over.

 

[ualdriver]

That is the way it works on the iPhone and I believe it's supposed to work that way on any BT capable phone. The BT connection can handle both audio and phone connections (as well as some data like the Calendar stuff now). When it's all working properly I can be listening to music or a podcast and an incoming call will simply interrupt it, then resume when the call is over.

Hmmm.....perhaps I need to get a big, fat miniSD card for my Galaxy and go that route. Thanks for that info.

 

[kirkp]

It sounds like the best thing to do would be to drag the individual songs onto the USB drive, put them all in one folder, select that one folder, and then let the S play all the songs in that folder in whatever order (don't care about the order) it just does, which if I remember correctly from one of the threads I read, alphabetically. That way, it can go through all of my songs without me having to manually select each album or artist.

If you want to listen to a collection of songs by different artists, then yes, that is the best solution. That is the closest thing to a playlist that the Tesla currently supports.

 

[HankLloydRight]

I do believe that when you insert an USB drive, that the Model S scans all songs on the drive (regardless of folder layout) and builds its own index based on artist/album/genre, etc. So you can just copy your "music" folder, and still navigate via artist without navigating your folder structure. That said, there is an option to "browser by folder" which will allow you do to that instead of using the index that the MS builds itself. You'll notice that when you plug in a USB drive, it takes a minute or two to scan the drive and build the browse index.

 

[JohnQ]

I do believe that when you insert an USB drive, that the Model S scans all songs on the drive (regardless of folder layout) and builds its own index based on artist/album/genre, etc. So you can just copy your "music" folder, and still navigate via artist without navigating your folder structure. That said, there is an option to "browser by folder" which will allow you do to that instead of using the index that the MS builds itself. You'll notice that when you plug in a USB drive, it takes a minute or two to scan the drive and build the browse index.

Yes, that's correct. It builds that index based on the file metadata. And the folder structure comes in handy when playing certain compilations or albums with "featured artists" that mess up the structure.

 

[ualdriver]

Follow up question now that I'm at my Model S.....

I put two folders on a 32GB USB drive. One folder has "music" and one folder has "podcasts."

Problem 1: The Model S is recognizing the songs, but it won't play some of them. It shows the name, title, but the little music progress meter just sits at 0:00, and when I try to force it to play, it does nothing. The progress meter just sits at 0:00. Why does it do this with some songs?

 

[iadbound]

Are any of these songs old iTunes downloads that still have DRM? Also, you might check for unusual characters in the name just in case the Model S is having difficulty with it. I noticed some strange behavior when I first put my flash drive in. Seemed to have resolved itself after inserting and reinserting the drive periodically over a couple of days.

 

[andykellr]

Considering these layers of folders, if I have one song in an artist/album folder, and the S plays that song and finishes, what happens then? Does it go looking for the next folder with a song in it (alphabetical?), or does it just stop and I have to go search for the next song in those layers of folders? Just wondering if I should be dragging individual songs onto my USB drive (hard), or just dragging the "Music" folder(easy). I don't want to have to select each individual song when one finishes.

Of course, after you drag your Music folder, you can fake random playlists with a tool I wrote:

Music Randomizer

There are some limitations, but it's better than waiting and hoping that 7.0 will add shuffle.