USB music random behaviour

[Drew57]

I like to make the most of the Premium Sound system by playing predominantly FLAC files. However on many occasions when I start the car the previous playlist has stopped, the > icon is greyed out & I have to go through the rigmarole of swiping up, selecting USB, selecting folders, scrolling, choosing the folder and then a track to resume playing. It's doubly frustrating that I have to swipe up twice (then down afterwards to close) to do this with music selections showing full screen. Voice control just reverts to Spotify and any voice instruction containing 'USB' reports as not recognised.

Originally I used a single 256GB drive formatted with a Teslacam folder and a separate music folder but this sometimes tried to play the video files as music and failed.

I now have a USB hub with two devices connected - TCSUNBOW 256gb SSD for Sentry and Sandisk ultra FIT 64gb USB for music. I've also tried this with a 128GB Kingston drive containing numerous albums/folders that I used without issue in a previous car but exactly the same thing happens. Likewise using 320bit mp3 to see if the individual music files might be too large but it doesn't appear to be related to an audio buffer or similar because the result is the same.

On the Sandisc drive I've tried creating separate folders per album, folders per artist containing multiple albums, per artist with all tracks from numerous albums in a single folder and also a single folder called music with separate albums in that. Unfortunately all (mis)behave the same.

On some occasions after finding > greyed out, music not playing and not bothering to faff about, the next time I get in the car and/or select drive, > is no longer greyed out & music resumes from two drives ago.

Please can anyone else advise whether their car manages to consistently resume playing USB music and if so what configuration they are using. This is becoming extremely annoying, I just want to be able to use a large selection of my own music at high audio quality and for it to play continuously.

 

[Dilly]

I’ve never managed it. Back to square one every drive.
supposedly, USB can be searched by voice. Never managed that either. Searches Spotify every time!

 

[MrBadger]

Searches Spotify every time!

Even when Spotify is de-selected - at least on the few occasions that I have tried hoping things will have changed.

 

[Horatio Alger]

This mirrors my experience exactly. The frustration of having music resume after several drives of silence drives me mad. Nothing I've tried makes a difference - 2 different drives, both USB ports. It seems like it takes a variable length of time for the USB ports to become active on start up, and if it's too slow music doesn't play till the drive's contents are browsed from the top level. Grrr.

 

[Durzel]

Following in case you find a resolution.. unfortunately I don't have any info that can help.

Like you I have a partition on my SSD that is almost entirely FLAC, and want to make the best use out of the sound system. As has been previously said searching for tracks by voice seems to only work with Spotify (although it does work well, in my experience).

 

[Drew57]

The quality of the premium sound system is so good that I find myself sitting on the drive before any substantial journey fiddling around to resume what I last listened to. The same music via Spotify sounds quite inferior, as does via bluetooth from the phone (naturally)

It's such a frustrating and unnecessary waste of time. Surely far more actual Tesla drivers mostly listen to music & don't want games whereas I suppose the juvenile programmers do the opposite & few of us would want to listen to their music anyway.

 

[Keeta29]

My question is why is everyone using the same USB connector for Sentry and music? Partitioning seems to be too complicated in the sense that there are other USB ports in the car (I have a 2021 so I have two USB-C ports in the center compartment). Using a USB-C thumb drive, it will remember where I left off about 9 out of 10 times. To me, using the same connector for Sentry and music is looking for issues. Also it looks like you all are using SSD, which says to me that you have thousands of songs on there. Every time the car is started, the drive needs to be scanned, so if you have 10,000 songs, you will have to wait. Personally, I use a 64 gig stick, and I put around 800 songs on it. I usually just run through from top to bottom, and when I am done, I do back and add/remove songs for the next batch. I am a former nightclub DJ, so moving music around from my computer to USB stick is just something I am used to doing every couple of months.

 

[Dilly]

My question is why is everyone using the same USB connector for Sentry and music? Partitioning seems to be too complicated in the sense that there are other USB ports in the car (I have a 2021 so I have two USB-C ports in the center compartment). Using a USB-C thumb drive, it will remember where I left off about 9 out of 10 times. To me, using the same connector for Sentry and music is looking for issues. Also it looks like you all are using SSD, which says to me that you have thousands of songs on there. Every time the car is started, the drive needs to be scanned, so if you have 10,000 songs, you will have to wait. Personally, I use a 64 gig stick, and I put around 800 songs on it. I usually just run through from top to bottom, and when I am done, I do back and add/remove songs for the next batch. I am a former nightclub DJ, so moving music around from my computer to USB stick is just something I am used to doing every couple of months.

Out of interest, In doing it the way you have, can you search your USB by voice command?

 

[Neilman]

I have the 2020 LR with one USB-A socket and one USB-C socket and an AliExpress splitter box with a 128GB mini SSD in the 'hidden compartment'.
Went to the trouble of partitioning the drive and putting music on half and the other half for TeslaCam.
Had an eCall problem which went back to Winchester service for fixing during which they factory reset the car and reformatted my SSD back to a single partition and TeslaCam only usage.
Perhaps I'll get round to putting a second thumb drive in for music - most of my journeys aren't long enough to need travel music.

 

[Horatio Alger]

My question is why is everyone using the same USB connector for Sentry and music?

I also use a dedicated drive in one of the USB-C ports in the console and it'll resume play about 1 time in 4. Currently, I have a 256GB stick but had the same problem with a 64GB one. I also tried NTFS and EXT4 formats to no avail.

There are around 2,500 tracks on the current drive, so maybe your better success rate is down to fewer tracks, if the MCU is re-indexing at start up. I'll try the old drive with just one album on it to see what happens.

 

[Keeta29]

Out of interest, In doing it the way you have, can you search your USB by voice command?

I do not think voice command works for USB. I tried several different commands and it always looks for the internet based radio stations or podcasts.

 

[Drew57]

My question is why is everyone using the same USB connector for Sentry and music? Partitioning seems to be too complicated in the sense that there are other USB ports in the car (I have a 2021 so I have two USB-C ports in the center compartment). Using a USB-C thumb drive, it will remember where I left off about 9 out of 10 times. To me, using the same connector for Sentry and music is looking for issues. Also it looks like you all are using SSD, which says to me that you have thousands of songs on there. Every time the car is started, the drive needs to be scanned, so if you have 10,000 songs, you will have to wait. Personally, I use a 64 gig stick, and I put around 800 songs on it. I usually just run through from top to bottom, and when I am done, I do back and add/remove songs for the next batch. I am a former nightclub DJ, so moving music around from my computer to USB stick is just something I am used to doing every couple of months.

I am only using SSD for Sentry & a separate drive for music - this currently contains 1,248 songs. Never resumes on next drive, occasionally on the one after that & mostly not at all so overall 0/10.

When I disconnect the drive to add/remove music via a laptop the car re-scans and this takes less than a minute so if it does this every time the car is started it is still quite fast and should not be causing this issue.

I do use a single USB port via a hub so I will try the alternative setup as suggested.

 

[Drew57]

I looked at the cable arrangement to the two USB ports & realised that my phone charging pad needs power from both so I cannot simply plug my drives into these (one cable direct to the port, the second via a USB hub which also holds the SSD and USB drives).

So trying something else on Tuesday, via a laptop I've changed the root name of the Sandisk drive containing all album files to 'Music' and whether coincidence of not, anything playing when I locked the car has continued when I next unlocked/opened the door and on every consecutive occasion.

I've also discovered that if music is off & even if I turn on Spotify or Radio first, once I press the scroll wheel and say "Turn on USB" then it switches across & continues where I last left off. The phrases "Pause USB" and "Resume USB" also work but every other phrase that I've tried containing the word 'USB' or 'music' didn't work.

Of course being Tesla, this could be random behaviour or just related to my particular car but it does seem like progress!

 

[Adopado]

My question is why is everyone using the same USB connector for Sentry and music? Partitioning seems to be too complicated in the sense that there are other USB ports in the car (I have a 2021 so I have two USB-C ports in the center compartment). Using a USB-C thumb drive, it will remember where I left off about 9 out of 10 times. To me, using the same connector for Sentry and music is looking for issues. Also it looks like you all are using SSD, which says to me that you have thousands of songs on there. Every time the car is started, the drive needs to be scanned, so if you have 10,000 songs, you will have to wait. Personally, I use a 64 gig stick, and I put around 800 songs on it. I usually just run through from top to bottom, and when I am done, I do back and add/remove songs for the next batch. I am a former nightclub DJ, so moving music around from my computer to USB stick is just something I am used to doing every couple of months.

A partitioned drive should be no more technically complicated than 2 drives in different sockets .. probably less so ... and having an earlier car I don't have any spare so would have to use a hub. I'm not aware of the full scan happening every time the car is started, and I've got a large drive with thousands of tracks on it. I think it only re-scans after a car re-boot or after it has been removed and plugged back in.

 

[MrBadger]

I'm not aware of the full scan happening every time the car is started, and I've got a large drive with thousands of tracks on it. I think it only re-scans after a car re-boot or after it has been removed and plugged back in.

Yep. The only time that I have seen a scan occurring is when the media is first inserted. It might be easy to check if the media card has an activity light - ours doesn't although when I did use one that did I cannot recall seeing it active except when I expected it to.

 

[Adopado]

Yep. The only time that I have seen a scan occurring is when the media is first inserted. It might be easy to check if the media card has an activity light - ours doesn't although when I did use one that did I cannot recall seeing it active except when I expected it to.

It usually comes up at the bottom of the screen showing a percentage and progress bar ... infrequent though. It's worth me mentioning that seeing frequent re-scans of the drive can be indicative of a poor mechanical USB connection. Going over a bump can be enough to jog the connection briefly if things are not seated properly.

 

[tarheeldan]

If the car thinks you left and came back, it'll cycle again and resume usb playback. So you open the door, lift your butt off the seat, close the door. After the screens go black, sit back down and playback resumes.

I'm thing to try that "turn on usb" voice command though, that would be way better.

2017 Model S

 

[Dilly]

I looked at the cable arrangement to the two USB ports & realised that my phone charging pad needs power from both so I cannot simply plug my drives into these (one cable direct to the port, the second via a USB hub which also holds the SSD and USB drives).

So trying something else on Tuesday, via a laptop I've changed the root name of the Sandisk drive containing all album files to 'Music' and whether coincidence of not, anything playing when I locked the car has continued when I next unlocked/opened the door and on every consecutive occasion.

I've also discovered that if music is off & even if I turn on Spotify or Radio first, once I press the scroll wheel and say "Turn on USB" then it switches across & continues where I last left off. The phrases "Pause USB" and "Resume USB" also work but every other phrase that I've tried containing the word 'USB' or 'music' didn't work.

Of course being Tesla, this could be random behaviour or just related to my particular car but it does seem like progress!

Thanks for that. I never found a command to turn on USB that worked. ‘Turn on USB” does
tried turn on radio said it was and didn’t:-(

 

[Drew57]

tried turn on radio said it was and didn’t:-(

Yes, I tried “Turn on radio”, “Turn on DAB radio” & various others but the best I got was ‘AM radio’ starting (but it didn’t). Never mind, it’s USB I wanted & it now works even if I still can’t search.

 

[noneuronz]

Thanks for that. I never found a command to turn on USB that worked. ‘Turn on USB” does
tried turn on radio said it was and didn’t:-(

I looked at the cable arrangement to the two USB ports & realised that my phone charging pad needs power from both so I cannot simply plug my drives into these (one cable direct to the port, the second via a USB hub which also holds the SSD and USB drives).

So trying something else on Tuesday, via a laptop I've changed the root name of the Sandisk drive containing all album files to 'Music' and whether coincidence of not, anything playing when I locked the car has continued when I next unlocked/opened the door and on every consecutive occasion.

I've also discovered that if music is off & even if I turn on Spotify or Radio first, once I press the scroll wheel and say "Turn on USB" then it switches across & continues where I last left off. The phrases "Pause USB" and "Resume USB" also work but every other phrase that I've tried containing the word 'USB' or 'music' didn't work.

Of course being Tesla, this could be random behaviour or just related to my particular car but it does seem like progress!

2019 M3 I tried renaming the root to "Music", but win10 changes that to "MUSIC". Any way, now the USB music resumes where I last exited the car - {Most of the time}, even though the display always defaults to Spotify.
I also have a charging pad but plugged into a 12v to dual usb adapter.