Play songs from a USB thumb drive?

erhayes

Contributor
:
2022CX5 PP
I have a number of DVD/CD disks with songs I used to play on my 2014 Mazda. If I transfer my songs to a USB drive, can I play them in my 2021 CX-5 GTR?
 
I transferred songs from a CD to my computer using the Windows Media Player. Then I picked songs I wanted and transferred them to a 64gb USB thumb drive. Works beautifully in my Mazda.
 
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Interesting how they've changed the specs on thumb drives over the years and what is recognized. On my 2021 Touring I can't go any larger than 8GB in capacity and not beyond 500 songs. The system just won't show anything beyond 500 even if they are on the drive.
 
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Playing music from USB (assuming you aren't using garbage mp3's) also sounds way better than the free streaming services. Tidal sounds good, but I'm not paying for a subscription service to listen to music I already own.
 
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Gotta say I did not know this could be done before seeing it here in these forums. I just copy and pasted the music folder from the itunes folder on my pc to the thumb drive (32g) and it works. Awesome !! Takes a while to copy over but what a cool thing to have.
 
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Hey folks, Amateur here again (everyone is a rookie at one point). Got my measly 130 or so CD's into iTunes, copied em all over to my flash drive by copying and pasting the folder out of iTunes. I noticed that some play louder than others and the quality varies as well, some are crisp and others are muddy sounding.
Is there anything I can do to Improve the quality and consistency or is it just the sound production values of the individual CD's ? When I look at individual song file properties they appear as M4A files.
Thanks
 
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Some CD's are mastered WAY better than others. Look up "The Loudness Wars" for an explanation of this.

Truthfully, you always want to rip your CD's to a lossless format, namely flac for PC, or alac for Mac. That will preserve the original bits that are contained on the CD.

When you use other lossy formats, especially mp3, you lose *a lot* of information. If you have a crappy base model 10 year old stereo playing through equally old and bad speakers, you may not be able to tell, but a stereo with even modest upgrades, and the difference becomes glaring between a quality rip and an mp3.
 
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Hey folks, Amateur here again (everyone is a rookie at one point). Got my measly 130 or so CD's into iTunes, copied em all over to my flash drive by copying and pasting the folder out of iTunes. I noticed that some play louder than others and the quality varies as well, some are crisp and others are muddy sounding.
Is there anything I can do to Improve the quality and consistency or is it just the sound production values of the individual CD's ? When I look at individual song file properties they appear as M4A files.
Thanks
At what sampling rate were these CDs ripped at?
 
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Not sure where to look up the sampling rate but I imported my cds into iTunes with the default settings, they were using AAC encoder, pull down menu shows iTunes plus settings
128kbps mono 256kbps stereo, 44100 vbr. error correction off.
Going to re-enter my collection but first am going to experiment with the import settings to see what sounds best. options to import are
AAC
AIFF
Apple Lossless
MP3
and WAV

Starting with 2 cds, Aerosmith Get a Grip which sounded good on first import and Aerosmith Rocks which was kind of muddy. starting with apple Lossless which kind of sets rates automatically but with error correction on.

Appreciate the feedback, any suggestions for this please feel free to chime in, I am using iTunes but on a PC not a Mac, not a fan of windows media player but if the sound quality would be better I would give it a shot.




UPDATE:
Ok so I tried all the options iTunes had on my test CDs, and as other members who have posted in this thread and others on this subject found certain file types do not work, others work but not well. MP3 seemed the best at making everything sound uniform. Its old tech but it works. Wav sounded better but for whatever reason the Artist and song names did not copy over or the infotainment unit could not recognize them, my unit is at ver 55 so an update may or may not fix that.
I decided that if hear a CD that is way off on sound I will update them individually rather than redo everything. At some point I need to update the unit and install the Carplay/ Android auto update. will do that myself once I order the parts and find a source for the firmware I trust.
 
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UPDATE:
Wav sounded better but for whatever reason the Artist and song names did not copy over or the infotainment unit could not recognize them

That's because WAV files are literally the same files that are stored on a CD. All CD players are simply WAV readers.

WAV, being invented in 1982, does not and cannot accept album art inside of it. It just is what it is.

You may want to put a 500x500 jpg of the album into the folder where the album is stored in WAV format. Many head units can read that and display it.

For example, say your thumb drive is the E: drive. The folder structure would look like this:
E:\Alice in Chains\Jar of Flies
And inside Jar of Flies would be the songs in WAV format, plus the jpg of the album.
 
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I got a buddy that has a 2017 CX-5. Has ALL the bells and whistle available at the time. He cannot play tunes from flash drive. Only bluetooth. His manual says the usb power outlets are for charging only and cannot be used to connect to vehicle audio system. See pic.

My other buddy's 2010 Camry Hybrid plays from flash drive flawlessly. Can even pull flash drive out, turn off car and reinsert. Picks up where left off.
 

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