USB thumb drive support to play mp3's?
 

I tried, with no luck, to plug in a usb thumb drive with mp3's on it and play them on the stereo. But the console did not recognize there was a device present. the drive was getting power 'cause the lights were blinking on it, but just can't seem to play the media on it.

Does the Z support thumb drives, or does it have to be a 'smart' device like an ipod or a zune?

As far as I know it supports ipod not sure about others probably others can inform you.

i know it supports ipod. what i'm trying to find out is if it supports usb thumb drives.

As I said not sure. It should make sure your format is really mp3 or wma.

I'm going to guess that big is onto something. Are your files actually mp3s or are they AAC files? AAC are not mp3.

well, they have an mp3 extension. do AAC files have an mp3 extension? If so, how do you tell if they're AAC?

I can verify that the stereo in the touring version (at least the one with Nav) plays mp3s from a USB drive. You have to switch to the aux inputs.

If they've got the mp3 extension, then you should be good as far a format goes.

AAC is not mp3 your going to have to convert them.

Still having no luck with mp3's. On the screen it keeps showing: "Check USB memory or iPod" Does anyone know what that means?

Means there is nothing on the thumb drive that it will play or recognize.

well, either it doesn't like mp3's or the two usb drives i tried plugging in. Probably the latter. :shakes head:

Did you try reformatting the thumb drive? Or at least checking to see what format the drive had on it.

I ran into a sort of similar problem with my Kenwood when trying to update the startup screen. The drive that I had what formatted for DOS Fat16 and wouldn't work. Even though it had worked for a navigation update. I reformatted to Fat32 and it worked fine.

It is probably the wrong format. Google a mp3 converter convert a few pieces of music and just drag and drop them onto your thumb drive and try that.

You may need to format the drive as FAT32 (if its currently NTFS) or vice versa. My kenwood deck would only recognize thumb drives formatted using a certain file system.