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

[M3BlueGeorgia]

Other than the media playing indexing music when I star tthe car, I have not had an issues with TeslaCam and music being in the same drive. Just make sure both partitions are properly created FAT32 partitions.

Most of what I listen to is in the in the USB drive so the USB media player working for me is essential.

Yes, I know this is a Model S thread....

The USB music used to drive us crazy. Basically it wouldn't remember we were last using USB, nor would it remember which Genre and Track was last playing. So each time we started off from parking, we'd have to select USB and remember where we were.
Very occasionally it would remember.

This all changed with 2019.5.15. Suddenly the car remembers we were playing from USB and it remembers Genre and track, and where it was within the track, so it starts playing exactly where it left off. Instead of very rarely remembering, it now very rarely forgets.
Now on 2019.8.5 and it still works.

BTW: We just switched to a 128GB flash drive which I partitioned 90% for TeslaCam and 10% for music.
My wife has accumulated a library of over 900 songs, so we normally listen to USB music while driving.
On the Mac, the command was:
diskutil partitionDisk disk2 2 GPT FAT32 TESLACAM 90% FAT32 MUSIC 10%

 

[DCEV]

Yes, I know this is a Model S thread....

The USB music used to drive us crazy. Basically it wouldn't remember we were last using USB, nor would it remember which Genre and Track was last playing. So each time we started off from parking, we'd have to select USB and remember where we were.
Very occasionally it would remember.

This all changed with 2019.5.15. Suddenly the car remembers we were playing from USB and it remembers Genre and track, and where it was within the track, so it starts playing exactly where it left off. Instead of very rarely remembering, it now very rarely forgets.
Now on 2019.8.5 and it still works.

BTW: We just switched to a 128GB flash drive which I partitioned 90% for TeslaCam and 10% for music.
My wife has accumulated a library of over 900 songs, so we normally listen to USB music while driving.
On the Mac, the command was:
diskutil partitionDisk disk2 2 GPT FAT32 TESLACAM 90% FAT32 MUSIC 10%

But alas, we are on 2019.8.5 and unfortunately the experience is a bit miserable.

Most of the time it does not remember what was playing. This is especially the case if I have been away for any type of extended period of time. Worst of all, when I get in the car pretty often it insists on re-scanning and indexing my music library and that means about 4 minutes of no USB music

And when it gets done scanning. I have to open the music player, make it bigger because I always have the rear view cam on, then go to USB Music, select what I was playing all over again, and then make the USB media player smaller again so I can see the review view cam again.



I wish they would stop indexing the music for no reason and I wish the media player would remember what USB music was last playing. We listen to music by genre set to random to make our own radio stations with our music but lately it has also been forgetting that we have been listening to music in random order so we need to then also enable random mode

How happy would we be if we get a software update that improves the media player by fixing these few bugs that should be quite straightforward to fix.

 

[PhilDavid]

When I got back in the car today, not only did the USB media not resume, but the the USB play controls were missing and the car had changed the audio source to Tune In .

Everything was still working though as all I had to do was enlarge the audio screen, click on USB, go and find what I was listening to, and playback started immediately. Just wish the car remembered what was playing before and just continued playing music.

 

[PhilDavid]

Yes, I know this is a Model S thread....

The USB music used to drive us crazy. Basically it wouldn't remember we were last using USB, nor would it remember which Genre and Track was last playing. So each time we started off from parking, we'd have to select USB and remember where we were.
Very occasionally it would remember.

This all changed with 2019.5.15. Suddenly the car remembers we were playing from USB and it remembers Genre and track, and where it was within the track, so it starts playing exactly where it left off. Instead of very rarely remembering, it now very rarely forgets.
Now on 2019.8.5 and it still works.

BTW: We just switched to a 128GB flash drive which I partitioned 90% for TeslaCam and 10% for music.
My wife has accumulated a library of over 900 songs, so we normally listen to USB music while driving.
On the Mac, the command was:
diskutil partitionDisk disk2 2 GPT FAT32 TESLACAM 90% FAT32 MUSIC 10%

I wish I could say our experience has been similar. It seems to resume music playback if I return to the car right away, after a very short duration, but after any extended period of time, it seems more than likely the USB Media player would be in a weird state and not play any music when we return. We need to manually go through multiple menus to get to where we were and it's frustrating to do this on an otherwise such an advanced car.

And if it decides to index the music library again, we have to wait for that to complete before we can even go through the menus to select the music all over again.

When was the last time they fixed a USB Media player issue so that at least we know they are working on fixing these issues for us?

 

[f-stop]

When was the last time they fixed a USB Media player issue so that at least we know they are working on fixing these issues for us?

if you haven't done so already check out the currently-93-page mega thread on Comprehensive USB Bug List

Without checking I'd say its been a year or probably more since any meaningful USB bug fix, and even then just minor things. Then v9 came along a few months ago and introduced a new UI, basically fixed none of the USB bugs and maybe even introduced a few new ones. Also the fact that everybody seems to have slightly different problems with the music player and the fact that some problem were once fixed and then returned just points to how generally flakey the thing is and/or how little real direct attention it gets from Tesla engineering.

 

[P100D_Me]

I would have been happy to run with Spotify in the car except that is always hit and miss (more miss!) so I had to revert to USB for music depending on how broken Spotify is with each update.
Echoing what everyone else says, USB music is very flaky. First I had to find a USB stick that wouldn't cause skipping / glitching during a song. They must have a very small buffer when playing back a song (mine mp3's are maybe 8 - 14Mb per song in size, 320k bit rates), mind you the same memory sticks that glitched in the Tesla worked fine in other cars.

Then I still get "Loading Error" on some songs, again they play fine in other cars, I've given up trying to figure out what causes that.

Thankfully I haven't had the reoccurring indexing issue others have but it rarely remembers where it last was. And the whole way the folder hierarchy works with the back button is flawed as well. I suspect that nobody is working on the media section of Tesla's software, we are stuck with what it is forever. Opening up the media section to 3rd party apps would have been potentially awesome but I don't see it ever happening.
Rather than being pig headed and thinking their UI is the best in the business Tesla need to seriously look at incorporating smart phone screen mirroring like is almost the standard on every other car these days.
Do the engineering staff never ride in other cars to see how nice it can be done? Have a look at the new 2019 Dodge pickup infotaintment system (yeah, much cheaper vehicles), whilst it is heavily inspired it by Tesla's system they look like they've spent a lot of time in the car getting it right.

 

[Tdriver]

Why do I not have any of the above issues? A quick click left changes songs, a two second click left changes sources. It selects all sources except USB. Resume also works fine. This is on both of my M3's.

 

[DCEV]

I would have been happy to run with Spotify in the car except that is always hit and miss (more miss!) so I had to revert to USB for music depending on how broken Spotify is with each update.
Echoing what everyone else says, USB music is very flaky. First I had to find a USB stick that wouldn't cause skipping / glitching during a song. They must have a very small buffer when playing back a song (mine mp3's are maybe 8 - 14Mb per song in size, 320k bit rates), mind you the same memory sticks that glitched in the Tesla worked fine in other cars.

Then I still get "Loading Error" on some songs, again they play fine in other cars, I've given up trying to figure out what causes that.

Thankfully I haven't had the reoccurring indexing issue others have but it rarely remembers where it last was. And the whole way the folder hierarchy works with the back button is flawed as well. I suspect that nobody is working on the media section of Tesla's software, we are stuck with what it is forever. Opening up the media section to 3rd party apps would have been potentially awesome but I don't see it ever happening.
Rather than being pig headed and thinking their UI is the best in the business Tesla need to seriously look at incorporating smart phone screen mirroring like is almost the standard on every other car these days.
Do the engineering staff never ride in other cars to see how nice it can be done? Have a look at the new 2019 Dodge pickup infotaintment system (yeah, much cheaper vehicles), whilst it is heavily inspired it by Tesla's system they look like they've spent a lot of time in the car getting it right.

I was able to eliminate all loading errors by following the advice I read on this forum in ONLY having FLAC and MP3 music files. With nearly 10,000 tracks, I don't ever get any loading errors so you might want to try that.

I also don't get any reading errors by using a current generation 250 GB Samsung USB flash drive. You might want to try that as I have a pretty extensive lossless media collection with no reading errors whatsoever.

Like many others, my problems with the media player has mostly to do with not resuming music, not being able to change the audio source, and most times I get in the car needlessly scanning and indexing my music for no reason.

Honestly my issues have less to do with the US and more to do with the functionality. I mean why can't we use the steering wheel buttons to change the audio source? Imagine if double clicking forward ad backwards changes the audio source and Long Pressing within an audio source allows you to cycle between the favorites within that audio source.

And how about please implementing playlist support for the media player? Long pressing within USB media can then cycle through your playlists...

None of this stuff is hard to do but makes a night and day difference with listening to USB podcasts and music in the car.

 

[DCEV]

It selects all sources except USB.

Yeah, it's that "except USB" part that many of of us are having a awful experience with as that's how many of us listen to music, Podcasts, etc., I wish the USB media player worked by continuing to play music when I last left the car, allowed me to select USB Audio as an audio source, and didn't pause music to scan my music library half the time I get in the car.

 

[f-stop]

Why do I not have any of the above issues? A quick click left changes songs, a two second click left changes sources. It selects all sources except USB. Resume also works fine. This is on both of my M3's.

*IF* you have any USB tracks marked as Favorites, the long-press of the left steering wheel Next button *will* include the USB Favorites (but ONLY the USB favorites list) in the cycle through the audio sources.

But if you were playing some non-Favorite USB song/album/genre, you can't get back to where you started using a long-press of the button, you'll always end up back at the first song in USB Favorites. Logically you'd expect it to cycle back where you left off in USB, but no such luck. So still not as useful as a proper way to cycle through sources, like they used to support with the right menu button pre-v8.0.

that said, there was a long period of time where USB Favorites would all spontaneously disappear so one might not be able to rely on the above behaviour (they seem stable/non-disappearing right now, but the way things go with the MP, it wouldn't surprise me for that bug to reappear...)

 

[P100D_Me]

I was able to eliminate all loading errors by following the advice I read on this forum in ONLY having FLAC and MP3 music files.

So when I was initially having issues with a USB stick I just grabbed out of a draw I went and purchased a Sandisk 64Gb USB, therefore I started totally fresh with a decent brand. All my mp3's are stored on a NAS so I was able to copy them over to the USB stick, they are stored by Band as the parent folder then the sub folders under that are the albums. Each song has been tagged correctly with artwork, song titles, album etc because as I said they all reside on a NAS where I spent ages doing all that.

What I have not checked is if by chance the artwork .jpg may have ended up in the same folder as the mp3's, not that it should matter but when tagging mp3's sometimes I have to grab the artwork off the internet and the image might have been left in the folder.
If that is what the problem is then that is lame, but I haven't checked so I can't point the finger yet.

At the end of the day.....it shouldn't be this hard!

 

[DCEV]

So when I was initially having issues with a USB stick I just grabbed out of a draw I went and purchased a Sandisk 64Gb USB, therefore I started totally fresh with a decent brand. All my mp3's are stored on a NAS so I was able to copy them over to the USB stick, they are stored by Band as the parent folder then the sub folders under that are the albums. Each song has been tagged correctly with artwork, song titles, album etc because as I said they all reside on a NAS where I spent ages doing all that.

What I have not checked is if by chance the artwork .jpg may have ended up in the same folder as the mp3's, not that it should matter but when tagging mp3's sometimes I have to grab the artwork off the internet and the image might have been left in the folder.
If that is what the problem is then that is lame, but I haven't checked so I can't point the finger yet.

At the end of the day.....it shouldn't be this hard!

Based on what I have read on this forum, I had Media Monkey clean up all the music that is in the Tesla USB Media partition. I had Media Monkey embed album art whenever possible and then only allow FLAC (losleess) and MP3 (highest quality setting available). So with nearly 240 GB of music I have zero loading or playback errors.

In fact I'd say the media player works flawlessly and really brings out what the upgraded audio system can do when it is provided with a high resolution audio source.

The 3-4 bugs/issues I have posted about is really all that's keeping the Tesla media player from being the best media player I've used in a car. It's like Tesla had done 95% of the work for a great media player and dragging their feet on fixing the last 5% that's causing massive usability issues for a lot of customers

 

[P100D_Me]

Thanks for the tips, I would say 98+% of my mp3's are 320k bit rate, all tagging cleaned up and done correctly with the software mp3tag. I get that the Tesla system has issues but it is annoying those same files play fine on any other device that can play USB media.
With the last update my Spotify is working almost flawlessly so I am back on to that again, obviously the quality it's as good as putting your own high bit rate ripped files on to a USB (or FLAC) but then I'm a 'window down' driver so I'm not about to judge audio quality in that situation.

 

[DCEV]

Thanks for the tips, I would say 98+% of my mp3's are 320k bit rate, all tagging cleaned up and done correctly with the software mp3tag. I get that the Tesla system has issues but it is annoying those same files play fine on any other device that can play USB media.
With the last update my Spotify is working almost flawlessly so I am back on to that again, obviously the quality it's as good as putting your own high bit rate ripped files on to a USB (or FLAC) but then I'm a 'window down' driver so I'm not about to judge audio quality in that situation.

We all agree we shouldn't have to do these things but I just wanted you to know at the least that we have a solution for the loading errors and that is to get Media Monkey or other music manager to scrub your music library, embed album art, and only transfer FLAC and MP3 to the media partition.

Another thing I like about Media Monkey is that occasionally I can unplug the media drive, plug it in my computer and press "Sync" and it will update the media drive I use in the car with all additional, deletions, and changes to my music library.

Now if only Tesla can resume USB media where it left off and not needlessly index my library all over again...

 

[PhilDavid]

Anyone figured out a solution to USB Audio not being available when you get in the car? I have to manually go into the audio player and select what USB Audio music I was listening to earlier to resume playback.

 

[doctorwho]

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

Yes, it also happens to be the most used app so the persisting and, even worse, the recurring bugs, have a disproportionate influence on the user experience

 

[DCEV]

Yes, it also happens to be the most used app so the persisting and, even worse, the recurring bugs, have a disproportionate influence on the user experience

I agree completely. The USB media player is the one app that I use daily more than anything. I use it more than maps because I use maps online when I travel, as I'm quite familiar with where I live.

Consequently the USB music playback gives me the most angst and the ironic thing is that USB music playback is the ONE THING that other cars I've owned have performed with zero issues. I just wish the car could simply resume music playback and hopefully add support for playlists. I have some great road trip playlists I've put together that I wish I could listen to in the car...

 

[PhilDavid]

Thanks for the tips, I would say 98+% of my mp3's are 320k bit rate, all tagging cleaned up and done correctly with the software mp3tag. I get that the Tesla system has issues but it is annoying those same files play fine on any other device that can play USB media.
With the last update my Spotify is working almost flawlessly so I am back on to that again, obviously the quality it's as good as putting your own high bit rate ripped files on to a USB (or FLAC) but then I'm a 'window down' driver so I'm not about to judge audio quality in that situation.

After listening to USB music, when you get back in the after a while, does the car resume paying back music at the same place, or at least the same track?

Cleaning up that 2% of your music to be either MP3 or FLAC should fix your loading issues.

It seems now each time I get in the car after a while, USB audio does not resume There is nothing wrong with the USB audio playback capability though as I can always go and access the USB media and resume playback but I have to click through several times to find what I was listening to

 

[P100D_Me]

After listening to USB music, when you get back in the after a while, does the car resume paying back music at the same place, or at least the same track?

Yes sometimes it does, but not 100% of the time.

So what can be a plan of action to maybe prompt Tesla to fixing some of these issues? I don't see there is any point talking to the service centres, maybe Tesla think it works just fine.

 

[DCEV]

I guess they don't realize how badly the USB media player issues affect their customers?

If the media player can just resume music where it left off, that would be a massive improvement for me.