Is there a quick way to change the audio source? Wish USB Media Player worked...

[DCEV]

The biggest usability issue I have with my Model S has to do with how awful the USB Media Player is

I just wish it worked consistently and simply resumed playback where it left off but sometimes when I get in the car, USB media playback is simply disabled or for some reason it insists on scanning my entire music library -- which takes about 3 to 5 minutes.

So by the time the USB Media Player is ready to play music, I'm oftentimes driving in heavy traffic, and I need to now open the media player, make it larger so I can select sources, select USB as a source, and then select what I want to listen to For all the UI faults of every other car I've owned, USB music playback would begin instantly when I get in the car.

I wish there was a quicker way to change the audio source. Is it possible to change the audio source using a steering wheel button or voice command?

For all the fun and games they take the time to add, I just wish they could be focused on the media player and fix some of the long standing media playback issues that far greatly affect the usability of the car. Do we at least have any evidence that they are at least working on fixing the media player, even at a snail's pace?

I hope one day they add playlist support. Tesla likely has the only media player software in the world that does not support playlists

 

[Need]

I think it is left button (push right/left and hold for a second). If you just push just once, it changes track, but if you hold I think it changes audio source.

Oh wait this is the Model S thread. Not sure if it is the same on Model S... maybe try holding down the track change button.

 

[SoCal Buzz]

Unfortunately, holding down the forward/reverse buttons on left side no longer change the audio source. Even more unfortunately, Tesla inexplicably removed audio source selection from the right scroll wheel programmable options about 2 years ago.

 

[DCEV]

Unfortunately, holding down the forward/reverse buttons on left side no longer change the audio source. Even more unfortunately, Tesla inexplicably removed audio source selection from the right scroll wheel programmable options about 2 years ago.

Unfortunately I concur. Holding the buttons does not change the audio source.

So when USB media playback craps out, you have to unfortunately go through a multi step process to access audio sources, select USB audio, then select what you were previously listening to, and get USB media playback working properly again.

At the least I wish when you select USB audio, it would please kindly just resume playback with what it was previously playing...

USB audio is how I primarily listen to music in the car. How can a car this advanced be so bad at playing USB audio?

 

[PhilDavid]

What's the best way to report to Tesla the issues with USB media playback?

 

[f-stop]

USB audio is how I primarily listen to music in the car. How can a car this advanced be so bad at playing USB audio?

same here, and agreed. And yes, it's quite annoying that they took away the way to switch audio sources directly using the steering wheel buttons a couple years ago.

What's the best way to report to Tesla the issues with USB media playback?

Tesla doesn't seem to care at all about the USB media player, so I know of no "good way" to report the issues that doesn't get automatically redirected to /dev/null

if you've seen the mega thread discussing numerous USB media player bugs Comprehensive USB Bug List you'll notice that there are many longstanding problems that persist today. Over the past 3 years I've reported a number USB related bugs via various paths: via email to technical support, email to local service center, and in person during service appointment for other issues. Usually I give them detailed info on how to reproduce the problem, too. Never really any resolution - often they try to blame the fact that I have a USB device plugged in and so it must be my device's fault (!) - that is, if I get any reply from them at all...

 

[DCEV]

same here, and agreed. And yes, it's quite annoying that they took away the way to switch audio sources directly using the steering wheel buttons a couple years ago.



Tesla doesn't seem to care at all about the USB media player, so I know of no "good way" to report the issues that doesn't get automatically redirected to /dev/null

if you've seen the mega thread discussing numerous USB media player bugs Comprehensive USB Bug List you'll notice that there are many longstanding problems that persist today. Over the past 3 years I've reported a number USB related bugs via various paths: via email to technical support, email to local service center, and in person during service appointment for other issues. Usually I give them detailed info on how to reproduce the problem, too. Never really any resolution - often they try to blame the fact that I have a USB device plugged in and so it must be my device's fault (!) - that is, if I get any reply from them at all...

This is disheartening to hear because USB audio playback is a big deal for us as that's how we listen to music in the car. Right now it seems most of the time we get back in the car not only is there silence (no USB media playing back from where we left off) but USB audio playback is pretty much disabled for several minutes while it for whatever reason decides to re-index the entire drive.

Do you know if they have at least begun to address some of the long standing USB media playback issues in some of the more recent software updates?

 

[aaron0k]

Tesla doesn't seem to care at all about the USB media player,

Maybe Tesla devs are too young and hip to know what an .MP3 is... just be happy that you can stream Cardi.B and Arianna Grande (and please don't mind if they collect a little data)...

 

[PhilDavid]

The thing is it's not just music. This is how some of us catch up on podcasts that we download. Also when traveling long distances with spotty cellphone coverage, this is the only option for music as well.

They really should just fix the media player.

The media player is probably the one aspect of Tesla UI/functionality that has gotten worse with time and it really needs some love...

 

[f-stop]

This is disheartening to hear because USB audio playback is a big deal for us as that's how we listen to music in the car. Right now it seems most of the time we get back in the car not only is there silence (no USB media playing back from where we left off) but USB audio playback is pretty much disabled for several minutes while it for whatever reason decides to re-index the entire drive.

Do you know if they have at least begun to address some of the long standing USB media playback issues in some of the more recent software updates?

I don't recall the details since it's been quite a few software updates since I've noticed any major USB related improvements, but in a word "no".

As I said, I really don't think Tesla cares at all about USB media playback, and if you ask me sometimes I think they accidentally fix (or break) things in the USB when addressing some other issue because the code is just inherently buggy with how they handle the USB interface and the MCU memory management. Once, in response to some USB bug I reported to service, I was told that there was limited memory/CPU resources in the MCU, as well as limited engineering resources so there's no guarantee that Tesla could even fit in the code fix even if they figured it out the cause. And of course some time later we get easter egg Atari games added to the code, so you see where the priorities are.

You mentioned the USB deciding to re-index the entire drive - actually this was a constant problem for me and others quite some time ago, IIRC maybe in an early v8 release, but then at some point (I forget exactly when), it finally seemed to go away - at least for me, I've not had this problem for a while now (presently, on v9 2018.50.6) - knock on wood.

there was one other recent problem they introduced with v9 - that is, some extreme lagginess in the USB UI - but that got fixed in the 2nd or 3rd v9 update after that. So there's that "improvement" after they broke things with v9 intro.

actually, to prove to myself that other unrelated UI and non-USB music player bugs are not caused by a USB device plugged in (as Tesla service would have you believe), lately I've been leaving my USB unplugged and listening to Slacker streaming audio. And as I fully expected, certain music player bugs still happen even without USB plugged in. For example, when you get out of the car and back in, Slacker starts the song again from the beginning instead of resuming where it left off. This is something that was broken, then they fixed it, and then several software versions later the problem is happening again now. USB playback had similar issue in the past (that reminds me I haven't checked lately to see if they broke that again for USB)

you would think that programming a decent MP3 player (like those in existence, what, >15 years ago??) or providing basic features like playlist suport wouldn't be rocket science, right? But I guess it is, and those guys are busy over at Space X ...

 

[bob_p]

Tesla has had USB player issues since the Model S was introduced in 2012, with promises periodically to fix the issues - and which turned out to primarily be user interface "improvements" changing how the media player is displayed, often with loss of functionality.

Changing sources used to be possible from the steering wheel - but now can only be done by displaying the media player on the console and then selecting the new source.

The software has long had problems remembering the currently selected source, USB media file and position - often losing this information when the vehicle returns from sleep, and because sleep mode is now triggered more often (and there is no longer any way to completely disable it), this happens more frequently. Because of the media player loses current state, that eliminates using USB for listening to audiobooks or podcasts.

The only workaround to many of these issues is to bypass the media player completely and use your smartphone. While the smartphone will not lose current media/status, there are limited controls from the media player side for the smartphone app, requiring some interactions to be done on the smartphone, which is not recommended while driving.

Tesla has promised improvements to the media player and also screen mirroring - but we're still waiting. Compared to other functionality (such as getting the Model 3 software to work without a dashboard and with a landscape monitor), the media player hasn't seen many improvements.

And when media player changes are made, they seem to be a step backward - such as when they temporarily removed the first letter scroll bar to help in navigating media lists.

The lack of screen mirroring (Apple CarPlay, Android Auto or alternative) is clearly a hole in Tesla's software capabilities - and something they should address soon, as more competing EVs hit the market - all with better media players and screen mirroring.

 

[PhilDavid]

Changing the media source seems like such a basic and useful feature. Too bad this feature was removed

This makes it harder to resume USB media playback when you get it in the car and whatever you were listening to the last time is no longer playing.

 

[DCEV]

Is there at least anything I can do to prevent the USB media player from scanning the media drive most times I get back in my car?

The scanning seems to take 3-5 minutes each time and I can't listen to music while it is scanning.

 

[BerTX]

Is there at least anything I can do to prevent the USB media player from scanning the media drive most times I get back in my car?

The scanning seems to take 3-5 minutes each time and I can't listen to music while it is scanning.

I only use USB if I have no service. My USB never scans that I have noticed. Perhaps it is something about the size of the drive or configuration of the files, but I don't know enough about it. But I would say yes, there is a way, but I don't know what it is. Just that mine doesn't do that.

 

[powaking]

I think I've only seen the USB drive scan done when entering the car a few times, certainly not every time though. How big is your music library and by that I mean how many tracks do you have? Have you tried using the voice command to say 'play track xxxx on USB' or something to that effect?

I would very much wish they would support multichannel FLAC files. I have an album with that in mind and it won't play the rear channels yet they can add in a fart app to do just that. Technically its totally doable. Playlist is another feature I wish they supported.

 

[DCEV]

Okay so I did some experimenting and this is what I found out.

If you long press the previous track button, the media source turns to Streaming Audio. From there, you can continue to long press to switch between Streaming Channels that you have marked as favorites. This is actually quite useful and a great feature!

But alas, no matter what I did, I could not figure out a way to do what I really want to do and that is to switch to USB Media playback and continue playing music where I left off.

If anyone from Tesla is listening, please give some love to the USB media player. This is the primary audio source for many of us.

 

[PhilDavid]

Okay so I figured out a way to directly play a USB Media audio track from the steering wheel but it's really not a solution that makes any sense.

If you mark a USB audio track as a "favorite," then while playing streaming music or any other audio source, if you long press the Next Track Button on the steering wheel, it will play that USB Media audio track you marked as a favorite. But you are trapped just playing that song as you can't get it t o play any other USB Audio albums or genres.

I just can't help think how not so complicated some of these bugs are to fix if they would just devote some resources... Resuming USB Media that was playing last should be so easy to do and the software does not need to insist on stopping USB media playback to scan the media drive for no reason.

And changing the audio source is just restoring functionality that was available a while back...

 

[f-stop]

Okay so I did some experimenting and this is what I found out.

If you long press the previous track button, the media source turns to Streaming Audio. From there, you can continue to long press to switch between Streaming Channels that you have marked as favorites. This is actually quite useful and a great feature!

But alas, no matter what I did, I could not figure out a way to do what I really want to do and that is to switch to USB Media playback and continue playing music where I left off.

If anyone from Tesla is listening, please give some love to the USB media player. This is the primary audio source for many of us.

some time ago, after the v8.0 update took away the very useful DIRECT way to select audio source via the right scroll wheel & menu button, I did notice that if you accidentally held the left steering wheel FFWD/next button too long, it would switch from USB to the radio. At the time, I just assumed it to be an annoying bug since it seemed there was no way to get back to USB, without taking your hand off the steering wheel.

looking at this again, and testing it a bit I now see what's happening. What happens depends on what you have designated as Favorites in the media player main view. @PhilDavid is correct, the key is you need to have some favorites selected in your USB collection, and then a tab for your USB ends up in that horizontal list of favorites, and you can in a roundabout way get back to the USB as source using the steering wheel buttons.


What happens is: with each successive long-press of the left steering wheel Next button, the audio source moves to the next Favorite to the right in the horizontal favorites list. Once it gets to the rightmost favorite, then it goes back to the leftmost favorite, and so on.

Similarly each successive long-press of the left steering wheel Previous button picks the next Favorite to the left in the horizontal list. Once at the leftmost one, the next long-press cycles back to the rightmost one. and so on.

for example, in my media player favorites, I have 4 radio stations to the left, followed by 7 or 8 of Slacker channels, followed by several Tunein podcasts, followed by one entry called "MyMusic" (my USB drive is labelled "MyMusic" and I have a lot of individual tracks favorited).

Long press the Next button enough times and eventually I can get back to the MyMusic entry which then ALWAYS plays the first song at the top of my USB favorites list. Not very useful in practice, because let's say you're playing some other random track on your USB and you accidentally long-press the Next button... in my case that gets me to the radio, and I need to long press the button more than a dozen times to eventually get back to USB. And then once I'm back it plays the first track in the favorites USB list, NOT the original USB track I was playing from elsewhere in the collection.

so yes it is possible to change audio source with the left steering wheel buttons, but I wouldn't say it's "quick" nor as easy as it was pre-v8.0. If you've got a lot of channels favorited, you CAN get back to USB but it may take a lot of button pressing.

 

[DCEV]

All this hassle could be solved if maybe double clicking on "Next Track" takes you to the next audio source.

How wonderful would that be?!

 

[PrGrPa]

The USB player is not as good as it could be. Mine stopped working with any USB stick that has the dash cam folder on it.

Most times this isn’t a problem. Either I use Spotify or Tunein. This is a problem in low signal areas. I’d have used USB in the past but I’ve moved to use the downloaded content on my iPhone.