Connecting an iPod Classic to the Model 3

[tmheffer]

I have an old iPod classic that contains most of my music. I went through the trouble of modding it with a larger flash drive so it can pretty much hold my entire library. What is the best way to play the content on my iPod classic on my Model 3? There is no traditional Aux port and it will not read the media over the USB port. I tried a Blue tooth adapter, however the Model 3 would recognize it. Even if it did, I wouldn't want to disconnect my phone to make it happen.

I'm pretty sure I could purchase one of those FM transmitter than plug into my iPod's headphone jack. However, I was wondering if there is a more elegant solution.

Thanks!

 

[ecarfan]

I am not aware of a solution to the issue you describe other than transferring your music from the iPod to a USB drive and inserting that drive into one of the ports in the center console.

 

[alexGS]

I am not aware of a solution to the issue you describe other than transferring your music from the iPod to a USB drive and inserting that drive into one of the ports in the center console.

Thanks for clarifying I also have an iPod - so, for the benefit of those of us waiting for our Model 3 to arrive, what happens with music stored on USB:
1- does it cope with thousands of tracks?
2- does it allow selection by artist, album, playlist? I imagine you’d have to create playlists in the player as it wouldn’t read iTunes playlists?
3- is there album artwork?
4- is it reasonably fast to respond when scrolling through songs, playing any song within a few seconds?
5- any other perks? Voice control?

Sorry for all the questions but I’m genuinely trying to guess whether this is a workable solution or whether the future is streaming audio (given that my regular driving environment won’t include Internet access for parts of the trip).

Cheers
-Alex

 

[davewill]

Thanks for clarifying I also have an iPod - so, for the benefit of those of us waiting for our Model 3 to arrive, what happens with music stored on USB:
1- does it cope with thousands of tracks?
2- does it allow selection by artist, album, playlist? I imagine you’d have to create playlists in the player as it wouldn’t read iTunes playlists?
3- is there album artwork?
4- is it reasonably fast to respond when scrolling through songs, playing any song within a few seconds?
5- any other perks? Voice control?

Sorry for all the questions but I’m genuinely trying to guess whether this is a workable solution or whether the future is streaming audio (given that my regular driving environment won’t include Internet access for parts of the trip).

Cheers
-Alex

I've found it quite good. This is the first car I've had where the USB music is actually usable. On most cars it's too slow, doesn't remember where you left off, and shows too few items on each page. I've got almost 30,000 tracks on my drive, and the system handles it just fine. I can browse by song, artist, album, etc... It has artwork. Scrolling speed is decent. You can search for music using voice, but I haven't found an efficient way to do that yet. I keep ending up on a search screen that shows results rather than the system just playing what I asked for. I also haven't figured out playlists, yet.

 

[alexGS]

I've found it quite usable. This is the first car I've had where the USB music is actually usable. On most cars it's too slow, doesn't remember where you left off, and shows too few items on each page. I've got almost 30,000 tracks on my drive, and the system handles it just fine.

That’s really helpful to know - thanks it sounds like it works better than the USB-music-player capability of other cars I’ve experienced. My library size is about 4000 tracks and in some cars/stereos, the practical limit was about 200 tracks as it would struggle to ‘build a media library’ every time the key went on. And, as you inferred, I think I’ve listened to Ed Sheeran’s The A Team thousands of times when driving off.

-Alex

 

[mbp11]

Hi, I have a similar situation that you have, I took at 160 GB Ipod classic and upgraded it to an 240 gb hard drive and then plugged my iPod into the UCB port and of course, it is not recognized. What I did to get it to work is to command iTunes to enable hard drive use, and then erase the drive and the manually drop in all of my music until it was filled up. Since each AAC or MP3 has metadata encoded, the iPod keeps track of that and when you plug it into the USB connector (at least in the model X, the front USB drive, which are data enabled) the music shows up and you can sort by album, artist, song, genre, and other data. It works pretty well but I have not figured out how to do a playlist on it yet.

Mike P

 

[grankin]

A very slight variation on the inquiry, and directed to those now on V10:

About to take delivery of my 3, and wish to avoid using my phone via bluetooth to hear the many gig of music stashed on it. I use iTunes as my main storage system, load individual playlists onto my iPhone. So I bought a stubby little 128 GB flash drive to transfer my several playlists onto. So the questions:

1. If one has different playlists, is it best to separate them each into its own folder? Does the music 'button' on the touchscreen allow this, and then to play the contents of that folder?
2. Does the metadata (album art, song title) display?
3. Does the car's music 'app' enable shuffling tunes randomly, or does one simply use the steering wheel controls to switch tunes?

ANY advice/comments/.observations from folks who have used a flash drive to substitute as a music storage medium for what they otherwise would have on their phone is welcome & desired.

 

[sduck]

Playlists don't work currently via usb. You'll need to transfer your music folders onto your drive. Then you can select one of the various folders from the car's interface and play it, and yes you can shuffle the contents. You can also use the song, artist, or albums selection methods. Some metadata is displayed - embedded album art, song titles, artist, album, but nothing else. Once you start using this method, you'll figure out how it works and it's limitations, and adjust your usage accordingly.

Note that not all music formats are supported. MP3, flac, and m4as are currently supported (and possibly a few more), and the drive needs to be formatted as fat32 or ext4. Tesla hasn't published actual specs, so it's hard to know details about these.

 

[grankin]

Been struggling with putting tunes on flash drive. As my pc is on W7, iTunes runs less smoothly than I suppose it does on a Mac, and 'manually' moving tunes from a playlist to a folder on the flash drive (as AAC audio) is messy, difficult, and inconsistent. So I had a look at the 'export' function on iTunes, and it quite happily exports my several playlists as xml files, allegedly the sort of files that someone else's iTunes will equally happily accept.

Which raises the Big Question: does the Tesla music function 'see' tunes encoded that way on a flash drive? Does it also see the metadata as well? And if you can answer 'yes', does that mean that you've done it and it actually worked?

Thanks in advance!

 

[sduck]

Playlist xml (or m3u or whatever) files won't work. You want m4a, mp3 or flac files. You need to understand what playlists are - just lists of files that you want to played together. The model 3 doesn't support playlists. You want to collect the actual music files that your playlists are pointing to into folders, and put those folders onto your drive. Use file explorer and navigate to where itunes is storing the actual music files, and look to see if they're supported first, then make some new folders, collecting what you want into them, then move those folders onto your drive for the car.