USB Music Question
 

Hi, on our upcoming 2018 E400 wagon, can I load all of our music onto a USB stick and leave that in the car to play whenever we want? What about playlists? Can I create playlists on the USB stick or is that possible only by buying another iPod and leaving that in the car at all times? Thanks.

USB stick and/or SD card work fine... According to the owner's manual it will do playlists, but I've not tried it. (I'm picking up my E300 in ~2 weeks).

Definitely no reason to buy an iPod to store music in your new car.

Absolutely, I carry my entire CD collection as FLAC files on a 256meg flash drive. It can also display the files author, genre etc. Works great! Contrary to streaming players all the files are available instantly, there is no loading time involved.

Thanks guys. So no need to buy another iPod for dedicated use in the car.

but I take it you would have to create playlists in the car itself as opposed to doing it in ITunes when using an ipod?

It uses standard M3U playlists, like every device out there. If you're using iTunes (STOP -- there are far better programs out there), here's how to create playlists:
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/h...iles-in-itunes

So I create the playlist and put it on an usb stick.
then all I have to do is make sure the music on the playlist is also on the usb stick and the car system will find it and play?

You got it!

Wow, It works.. learning al the time.

And to think I recently bought a 2nd hand ipod classic for my car,
because I thought it was the only (easy ) way to have playlists.
(and those things are expensive since they don't make them anymore.)

They only "inconvenience" is that you have to export your playlists & songs manually
each time you make changes.
but if that saves me 200 eur on an ipod next time, I can live with it.

Get one if these tiny USB flash drives, stick it in one of the two USB outlets in the arm rest, and you'll literally be able to have a thousand hours of music at your beck and call without sacrificing storage space:
http://1clickurls.com/74UUTSO
The audio system can search by virtually any parameter you wish, but so far I haven't bothered with play lists.

25 usd.. I like the sound of that!

EDIT: wow on amazon france it costs 51 euro. luckily amazon US ships it to france ;-)

can you set it on shuffle and let it go?

I use one of with 256 GB for a bit less than the 128 GB USB stick. It fits in the console SD slot.

Don't forget about SD cards! You can load up the USBs AND have an SD card going as well. Many laptops have SD card slots which make this quite a simple affair.

@ua549: 256MB = ~0.256 GB... For $25 that's not a good deal.

Just curious, has anyone noticed a difference in load times between USB 3.x and USB 2 drives with COMAND? Similarly, has anyone noticed a difference between different SD Cards? I know the loaner E300s I was driving took forever to initialize with my 2TB HDD plugged into the USB port.

Sorry, I misread the label on the card. I have dozens of cards most of which are GB capacity.

I don't see why not, but I have an eclectic mix of rock, jazz, and classical music on my tiny drive, so shuffling would result in a kinda odd mix — think a Chopin Nocturne followed by Mick Jagger belting out "I Can't Quit You Baby."

blue and lonesome. always good to see a fellow stones fan!

Is anyone playing FLAC files off a USB device? Does the music have to be arranged in folders, etc to play? FLAC files are so much better than the junk from iTunes. I found a way to play FLAC off my iPod air, but it is less than ideal.

Now that is neat Thanks!

still fiddling around with this and testing before maybe getting rid of my ipod.
As far as I can judge the only advantage of the ipod over usb/memory card is that it syncs all the playlists automatically..

I'm a correct when I say that the playlists on an usb/memory card are actually stored in the car itself?

cos it seems that if you have a memory card AND an usb stick with music, the playlists on both are available
without having to access either device separately. (IE the chosen playlist will automatically access the right device to play )

my project is still ongoing, but now in final stages.
(bought an 128gb usb on ali which (of course) turned out to be fake and only 28gb....)

I'm now testing a sandisk in my car, and compared to my ipod classic I've noticed
that skipping to next song is much faster & voice control much more accurate.

Some questions:

does it matter in which USB port I plug it (the ipod dedicated or carplay dedicated) ?

it seems when exporting playlists from iTunes, I need to do it 1 by 1 ?
(exporting the complete library doesn't seem to work as the car doesn't read it of the usb)

Will a SMART playlist update itself when adding new music to the usb, or should
I export the SMART playlists each item I add new music?

and if someone can shed light on the question in my previous post..?
(IE does a playlist search in all media which connected)

No one has answered the question, if the E Class will download and store the files on an iPod or USB device?

I have finally figured out how to use my iPhone and iPod Touch in the car. It is cumbersome to find a playlist and or album using command. Voice control does not work , so I am now using Siri on the iPhone to play music when in Apple Play .
Display is unusual. The iPod will display album artwork, artist, album and song. I have learned thanks to mbworld.org how to split the screen, so I can see navi display and media display. But, when using Apple Play, there is no other display available and no artwork, it does show which playlist I am listening to. Obviously Apple and MB have not worked together to give a sensible display from both. If I plug in the iPhone and turn on Apple Play the other devices will not play in the usb connection. I have found to connect the iPhone in the center console and Apple Play is not activated. The iPhone charges and I can play my iTunes files.

You must chose between COMAND, Car Play or Android Auto because the functionality & displays are mutually exclusive. That is why I do not use Android Auto.

I'm pretty sure you'll need to export the playlists individually. Your library is basically a database that iTunes reads to play music. COMAND won't recognize that file type or the database itself.
Also, since a SMART playlist is the interaction of the current database and iTunes, it isn't "SMART" anymore without the database. So you'll have to export it repeatedly.

Regarding your last question, I think you are supposing you had three USB drives connected, would it read from all of those and play a playlist spread over several USB drives? I'm speculating, but I'd be really surprised if that works. The m3U file is very simple. One 'feature' of the m3U file is that it usually carries the whole file structure (the entire path) of the music it was created from. Here is an example of what a little one looks like made on my computer:
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...514c072ae2.png
This is an example of the 'absolute' version of an m3U file. If you used this same m3U file in an environment with a different file structure it won't find the file. You can strip this down to a 'relative' version of the m3U. Here is what it would look like:
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...f65da0c2e2.png
You can see the path is removed now, and if this m3U file was in the same directory as all the other music the files will be found. The problem may come when there are now other USB drives that are also in different locations. I betting there is not enough information to figure out where all the different files are.

Unfortunately, my E400 is on a boat over from Germany right now and I can't check any of this out directly! Hope I can be more helpful in 2-3 weeks.