Comprehensive USB Bug List

[BertL]

Aha. I’m FLAC and they all restart. Weird that logic would be unique for format.

Tesla’s (or is that Elon’s) priority is definitely with streaming sources, and Tesla Owners that care about listening to their own private music are almost an after-thought. Initial Model 3 shipments have streaming with no USB or even FM support, which are both rumored to be given to the Mod 3 some day, but from what I’ve read will never have AM (which blows me away since the world still uses AM for not only normal content, but posted traffic conditions and event/parking parking situations in everyday use. I’m all for pushing forward, but not getting too far ahead that features owners want and use TODAY are forgotten or simply deprioritized. That’s what frustrates me the most with my Tesla Infotainment System.)

 

[f-stop]

For me with 100% MP3s, every one of my tracks will "auto pause" upon exit of my MS, and start exactly where it left off upon reentry. My former 100% FLACs all started playing upon entry at the beginning of the track, no matter where they were at the point I exited my MS.

I’ve been testing a newly configured USB flash key containing 100% MP3 - converted via dbPoweramp as suggested by @BertL - and also recently updated to 2017.34 2448cfc. An old problem I’d not seen in many many months seems to have resurfaced. After leaving the car then returning some time later, the audio source sometimes switches to A.M. radio when getting back in the car, instead of the previously selected source.

And BTW, playing .M4A / AAC tracks on USB still invites frequent Loading Errors - but that previously reported problem is still avoided by playing only MP3s (no change after the recent update)

 

[BertL]

I’ve been testing a newly configured USB flash key containing 100% MP3 - converted via dbPoweramp as suggested by @BertL - and also recently updated to 2017.34 2448cfc. An old problem I’d not seen in many many months seems to have resurfaced. After leaving the car then returning some time later, the audio source sometimes switches to A.M. radio when getting back in the car, instead of the previously selected source.

And BTW, playing .M4A / AAC tracks on USB still invites frequent Loading Errors - but that previously reported problem is still avoided by playing only MP3s (no change after the recent update)

Glad the MP3 workaround appears to be helping your situation. Sorry to hear I have the old "wrong source" problem to look forward to again, after getting my MS back from it's 2-year service and firmware update later this week.

 

[Joe F]

Many thanks to those in this thread, especially @BertL for leading the way.

I loaded about 3K tracks of M4A lossless, before finding this thread a month or so ago, and never got it to work. I had been using a smaller device with a couple hundred MP3’s which worked, however they were heavily compressed.

After finding out that Apple lossless was a show stopper, I converted one track on the larger M4A stick to FLAC, only to have the one track stutter every few seconds. Okay, great, what now...

Yanked the stick, deleted all but the FLAC track, and it played fine. So I’m thinking any track with unacceptable content Tesla doesn’t like will cause problems at some point.

Sure wish there was definitive documentation from Tesla on what’s supported.

 

[tomas]

Many thanks to those in this thread, especially @BertL for leading the way.

I loaded about 3K tracks of M4A lossless, before finding this thread a month or so ago, and never got it to work. I had been using a smaller device with a couple hundred MP3’s which worked, however they were heavily compressed.

After finding out that Apple lossless was a show stopper, I converted one track on the larger M4A stick to FLAC, only to have the one track stutter every few seconds. Okay, great, what now...

Yanked the stick, deleted all but the FLAC track, and it played fine. So I’m thinking any track with unacceptable content Tesla doesn’t like will cause problems at some point.

Sure wish there was definitive documentation from Tesla on what’s supported.

I have thousands of FLAC tracks as do many others. Works fine, never ever had a stutter. Suggest you try again. Nobody should feel they have to live with MP3 quality.

 

[Joe F]

I have thousands of FLAC tracks as do many others. Works fine, never ever had a stutter. Suggest you try again. Nobody should feel they have to live with MP3 quality.

Sorry, it appears you missed the point. That single FLAC stuttering was due the the thousands of M4A lossless files on the device. No doubt the MP attempting to scan ahead, while that FLAC was playing, and playing badly. Deleting all of the M4A lossless files, leaving that lone FLAC on the device allowed it to play fine.

I have no doubt had I converted all of the M4A files to FLAC, they too would have played fine, too. It was my plan to do so with VLC, but was just easier to use iTunes and convert to the same specs BertL used.

 

[aesculus]

What filetypes are you using?

100% FLAC

 

[f-stop]

Glad the MP3 workaround appears to be helping your situation. Sorry to hear I have the old "wrong source" problem to look forward to again, after getting my MS back from it's 2-year service and firmware update later this week.

Further update to the apparent return of the wrong source problem I mentioned after latest update (still 17.34 2448cfc)

Haven’t seen it randomly switch to AM after leaving/returning to l the car lately, but seeing another likely related symptom:

sometimes upon returning to the car the media player screen is showing some other source eg phone and not playing anything (was playing USB before I left the car.) Then when I select USB, the USB pane does NOT show my USB drive (as if it’s not inserted). Just shows that dummy “EFI” entry.

However unlike last year’s problem where it would have to randomly rescan the USB, and take many minutes to do so for a nearly full 64GB device, the MP player doesn’t seem to want to or try to rescan the USB. But if I select a Slacker channel to start playing, then switch back to USB, my USB device immediately reappears - NO rescan required. Playing songs from the USB is then possible again. Of course removing then reinserting the USB drive will cause a (lengthy) rescan, but no rescan when this “wrong source” thing happens.

If I first let many minutes pass waiting on the USB screen, my USB device never reappears and audio remains silent. But as soon as I select a streaming source and then return to USB, it reappears immediately without rescan. Again this is with a 64GB device, maybe 80% full. Never seen this before but now happening every few days and seems repeatable.

 

[aesculus]

The other day between stops it kept displaying Loading Error on any track. Had to reboot the center console to get it to reset and rescan the USB drive. First time I ever encountered that.

 

[thecloud]

I've been on 2017.36 since the last week of September. After 3 weeks of using the media player with this particular update, I'm cautiously optimistic that I may have found a way to get random tracks to play, without hearing the same sequences of songs over and over.

What I used to do was one of the following:
1) start at USB > Songs and manually select a starting song, -or-
2) press the Play icon (or left scroll wheel) if a USB song was already selected.

Both of those methods always resulted in recognizable sequences of "random" songs after the initial track, repeating themselves after the car was turned off and back on. Sadly, this part is still true with the 2017.36 update. Of course, about half the time, no USB song is even selected when I return to the car. The media player will have auto-selected the Bluetooth pane showing my phone, so I would then proceed to step 1.

However, a little over a week ago, I stumbled onto a new method:
3) press the "Songs" item in the Recents list. (This is the sideways-scrolling list of Favorites and Recents at the bottom of the media player.) I don't recall this item being present in prior updates, but I hadn't really used Recents often enough to be sure. Presumably it gets added when you select USB > Songs.

If I play this "Songs" item, it always begins playing the same song (first song alphabetically in the list.) BUT, when I hit the Next button, the resulting random sequence is something I haven't heard before.

Again, I will stress that this is cautious optimism. It's a workaround that seems to work for me so far.

 

[BertL]

...However, a little over a week ago, I stumbled onto a new method:
3) press the "Songs" item in the Recents list. (This is the sideways-scrolling list of Favorites and Recents at the bottom of the media player.) I don't recall this item being present in prior updates, but I hadn't really used Recents often enough to be sure. Presumably it gets added when you select USB > Songs.

If I play this "Songs" item, it always begins playing the same song (first song alphabetically in the list.) BUT, when I hit the Next button, the resulting random sequence is something I haven't heard before.

Again, I will stress that this is cautious optimism. It's a workaround that seems to work for me so far.

I concur with your observation and have been having the same result for several weeks now across the last couple firmware releases my MS has received, up through 2017.40.1.e29b97f. Random seems to work for me with Songs, Albums, and Artists that I've focused on. It is important as I suggested upthread a couple weeks ago though to NEVER turn on REPEAT at the same time, or "random" won't be as random especially on smaller number of tracks in one's selection list.

FWIW: I suspect because I was a programmer many years ago and have become hyper-sensitive with Tesla's problematic MP over the past 2 years, I would say that MP's random seed is far improved from what it was -- and now very usable -- but could still use improvement by a diligent software engineer. Besides the REPEAT anomaly, it's strange to me that when I play my Songs list on random (which contains nearly 7K tracks), MP has this tendency to play different songs in some of the same albums (of which there are hundreds) over relatively short periods of time ...enough that I notice it running relatively short errands around town. It's likely in part because of the seed Tesla uses which is somehow related with file naming. I use ALBUM - ALBUMARTIST - DISCNUMBER - TRACKNUMBER - TRACKTITLE to keep tracks on my USB SSD organized.

 

[BertL]

Further update to the apparent return of the wrong source problem I mentioned after latest update (still 17.34 2448cfc)...

FWIW as a comparative data point: I was on 2017.32 9ea02cb for almost two months, then last week received 2017.40.1 e29b97f from my SvC. During that time, I've not encountered this old "wrong source" problem playing USB music 99.9% of the time (on random!), even though I've got my paired iPhone in my pocket 100% of the time I'm in my MS. Perhaps it's an anomaly with 17.34 2448cfc that may have been corrected in later releases. I hope so for all our sake, and that I don't have the bug come back on me as well. (Unfortunately, while MP USB is doing better for me in combo with my track workarounds, I've developed random Auto Homelink problems since 9ea02cb. I never had an issue or needed to change those settings since the function became available well over a year ago, and the SvC could find no HW issues with Homelink. That's for another thread, but this firmware stuff seems to both fix and break something for someone, somewhere, much of the time. )

 

[iffatall]

... I would say that MP's random seed is far improved from what it was...

To me, this is a little disheartening. It was not as bad to imagine someone messed up when they introduced shuffle. But if someone revisited it with an intention to fix it, and still shuffle is in this state, that looks like incompetence. Most programmers can write a good enough shuffle within an hour or two, given everything else is already there, and only the core algo needs to be fixed.

 

[RichardL]

However, a little over a week ago, I stumbled onto a new method:
3) press the "Songs" item in the Recents list. (This is the sideways-scrolling list of Favorites and Recents at the bottom of the media player.) I don't recall this item being present in prior updates, but I hadn't really used Recents often enough to be sure. Presumably it gets added when you select USB > Songs.

I am just on 2017.40.1
I just tried this - initially I had nothing in the Recent/Fav list. Of course the USB was doing yet another rescan, as usual. When done I got an item that was the name of the USB stick. I selected it and it gave me the LAST song alphabetically in Songs and hence Next would not work!

So slightly different behavior

 

[BertL]

FWIW as a comparative data point: I was on 2017.32 9ea02cb for almost two months, then last week received 2017.40.1 e29b97f from my SvC. During that time, I've not encountered this old "wrong source" problem...

Well, it took weeks to happen, but yesterday after having listened to USB music for weeks without a major Tesla Twilight Zone experience, I came back to my MS that had been sitting for a couple hours while running errands, and FM was playing. I manually switched back to USB and all was well again. Later that same day, I got back in my MS and the USB track was stalled: Album art and all controls were there except PLAY was greyed-out, and all visible controls for the track were unresponsive including from the steering wheel. I quickly used the old trick switching to FM and back to USB, where I selected a track to play and USB music began to play once again.

Move over, @f-stop, I'm joining you back in the "Wrong Source Bug" camp. It appears some old bugs are definitely back -- even if Shuffle seems to be better than it was. Sighhh.

(FWIW, my mom's new $20K 2018 Honda HR-V plays USB MP3 & AAC (lossy) just fine -- random too. There is documentation of what's supported by the Honda MP and how to operate the controls in the owner's manual. The UI isn't the most intuitive, but we've had no hiccups thus far switching between CD, FM, AM, USB, iPod wired connectivity, bluetooth, and streaming via a paired phone (e.g. Pandora). I've not yet tried standard built-in voice control, or standard Siri Eyes Free with the Honda MP. So, it just proves that full-functioned Media Players are possible -- even in mass marketed non-luxury vehicles -- when a company cares to focus on owner conveniences. )

 

[f-stop]

Move over, @f-stop, I'm joining you back in the "Wrong Source Bug" camp. It appears some old bugs are definitely back -- even if Shuffle seems to be better than it was. Sighhh.
[...]

Hey @BertL don’t feel bad I’ve not had a reoccurrence of that same “wrong source” bug since my last post, but... several times now in the past week I’ve noticed the exact same sequence of songs playing a couple days apart. I’ve been just leaving the USB player going on shuffle and “randomly” (haha, the irony) after a couple days a familiar sequence starts replaying, out of the 7000 or so songs on the USB. Never had this happen before on its own - previously only ever noticed non-randomness when manually re-selecting a song that played already and that causing a known sequence. I’m still on 17.34 2448cfc

While trying to figure out this new/not-new broken shuffle, I accidentally stumbled on what appears to be another strange bug with the media player (well, at least the first time I've noticed it). It is entirely repeatable, across reboots, and with different USB drives. In summary, if you press and hold one of the left steering wheel buttons wihle playing music, weirdness ensues... there are several cases:

1. press and HOLD the NEXT button (top button, left side of steering wheel) while a USB song is playing, and the media player unexpectedly switches to radio! You can't get back to the USB player from here unless you manually reselect the USB player on the 17" screen and pick a song. Basically I stumbled upon this while trying to FFWD through some songs, but accidentally held the button down too long
2. press and hold the NEXT button while a Bluetooth-connected phone is playing and the media player likewise switches to radio
3. press and hold the NEXT button while the media player is already on radio, or Slacker, or TuneIn, and it does what you'd expect, i.e. same as simply pressing NEXT, it goes to the next preset or selection within that source

slightly different strange things happen with the BACK button (bottom button, left side of steering wheel):
4. press and hold the BACK button while a USB song is playing always causes the media player to switch to the 1st song on your USB's Favorite list.
4a. Press and hold the BACK button again while that Favorite song is playing and the source will switch to TuneIn. From there, each successive press and hold of BACK button goes back through the previous selections in TuneIn
5. Similarly, press and hold the BACK button while a Bluetooth-connected phone is playing, and the first song on USB Favorites list always starts playing. Press and hold BACK again then it switches to Tunein, etc etc
6. press and hold the BACK button while the media player is already on radio, or Slacker, or TuneIn, and it does what you'd expect, i.e. same as simply pressing BACK, it goes to the previous preset or selection within that source

perhaps it's just some strange vestige of the long-ago-deleted useful feature to switch media player source from the steering wheel controls? Or more likely just another sign of the general sloppiness of Tesla's code for the media player.

 

[BertL]

Hey @BertL don’t feel bad I’ve not had a reoccurrence of that same “wrong source” bug since my last post, but...

Yeah, I've had the odd switching to FM or to one of my Slacker Favorites happen a couple times since the last update.

I have also noticed in the past few days again that something isn't right with random on longer lists of tracks: it's just too strange in my case to have nearly 7K tracks playing "Songs" via Shuffle, and to hear the same tracks within a few days, and tracks from the same albums in short periods of time. With all my road trip testing, I didn't find the problem playing shorter lists of tracks, but I've also been updated to another firmware release since those tests, so it's hard to say when the new anomaly came into being. Tesla just needs to use date/time as part of their random seed to help make random more random.

...and yes, I couldn't agree more:

...Or more likely just another sign of the general sloppiness of Tesla's code for the media player.

 

[X Fan]

2017.42 a88c8d5
Haven't tried my USB stick yet (left it out during upgrade) but for first time I can see XM categories.....so, some focus by Tesla on fixing Entertainment issues.....

 

[Joe F]

Well I had a prophetic experience recently while washing the car.

Moody Blues "Nights in White Satin" was playing off the USB. Every time I opened a door to wash a sill or jamb, I had to laugh as the song restarted from the beginning:

Nights in white satin
Never reaching the end...

Over and over and over.

 

[f-stop]

I have also noticed in the past few days again that something isn't right with random on longer lists of tracks: it's just too strange in my case to have nearly 7K tracks playing "Songs" via Shuffle, and to hear the same tracks within a few days, and tracks from the same albums in short periods of time. With all my road trip testing, I didn't find the problem playing shorter lists of tracks, but I've also been updated to another firmware release since those tests, so it's hard to say when the new anomaly came into being. Tesla just needs to use date/time as part of their random seed to help make random more random.

Yeah in my post just above, seems the new non-randomness for me is happening under same circumstances as you - playing “Songs”, shuffle enabled, USB with ~7k tracks. On more than one day an identical sequence of songs played that had played on an earlier day. I’m not talking songs on the same album, I mean exactly same sequence of songs, more than once. At several points I even manually picked another song out of the long USB list to try to break the chain but on a later drive that same sequence came up again. Never seen this before my latest update (17.34 2448cfc)