USB Media Guidelines and Tips!

[Fischman]

Perhaps I miss read the parameters. I somehow thought from an earlier forum conversation that 32GB was max. In any event. the Lucid techs would have informed me otherwise if a larger drive would work. At least I assume so. However, I'll take your suggestion and give it a try.

My experience is identical to yours and others and I am using a 128gb thumb drive but have also tried a microsd card both gave the same result. Less files it loaded when adding an add’l file it wouldn’t load. The same files fully loaded on the thumb drive in the past. It’s very frustrating. I had my son look at it who is a computer engineer with Apple and he gave up. It’s very frustrating. I can imagine it’s not a priority for Lucid. I guess I’ll just use CarPlay and play the same files through my phone. Car drives fantastic !

 

[Snafu]

OK, I took a beverage and my laptop out to the car this evening and gradually added folders/albums onto the 32GB USB I had, checking to see if it loaded after each batch. I managed to get about 3GB of music on it before it got stuck in the loop. This included adding about 50 songs that were single files. At about 695 songs, it seemed to cry "Uncle", and the loops/resets began. I dropped a couple songs, and it loaded properly again. I'll check again in the morning to see if all is well. This should be enough to get me through the dead spots, and I can always load a second USB for something different. Hope some other folks can get theirs working.

 

[borski]

OK, I took a beverage and my laptop out to the car this evening and gradually added folders/albums onto the 32GB USB I had, checking to see if it loaded after each batch. I managed to get about 3GB of music on it before it got stuck in the loop. This included adding about 50 songs that were single files. At about 695 songs, it seemed to cry "Uncle", and the loops/resets began. I dropped a couple songs, and it loaded properly again. I'll check again in the morning to see if all is well. This should be enough to get me through the dead spots, and I can always load a second USB for something different. Hope some other folks can get theirs working.

You know what - all of mine are FLACs. That probably means I have a much lower *number* of songs, despite having a similar *size on disk*.

So I wonder if it’s the number of tracks, not the size that matters?

 

[GoFast]

You know what - all of mine are FLACs. That probably means I have a much lower *number* of songs, despite having a similar *size on disk*.

So I wonder if it’s the number of tracks, not the size that matters?

I believe the issue is files that have no/zero tags.

Try using something like this to add tags, and see if that fixes the issue:

Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)

Mp3tag is a powerful and easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of audio files.

www.mp3tag.de

 

[borski]

I believe the issue is files that have no/zero tags.

Try using something like this to add tags, and see if that fixes the issue:

Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)

Mp3tag is a powerful and easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of audio files.

www.mp3tag.de

Ah, that might do it too - I specifically made sure all of mine were tagged.

 

[JGard18]

Does anybody know how the Lucid USB player handles album art? Because I've noticed two things in my FLAC collection regarding art that's very strange. One, I've set some custom album art pictures for some albums (like, alternatively available art) and saved them to the FLAC files metadata using MP3tag. MOST of them are fine, but I've noticed some show a different picture entirely from what I have there (and it's not even the default art image). Second, it seems to automatically pull photos for each artist when you browse by artists. I can't tell where it pulls this information from, but I do know that it's showing a picture of Ed Sheeran for the Taylor Swift folder. Kind of weird. Otherwise, I'm all in on USB audio in this car. It's so easy and sounds so much better than every other source I've tried (yes, even Tidal Atmos)

 

[treegarden]

USB Drive must be formatted to either FAT32 or VFAT
You can use this program to format your drive properly

Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd

Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd - high quality IT consultancy services

ridgecrop.co.uk

Or

Here are steps on how to format to FAT32 on Mac using Disk Utility

• First plug in your USB drive in your mac system.
• Choose “Application”.
• Then open “Utilities”.
• Click “Disk Utilities”.
• Now in the Disk Utilities, you can see all your devices in the sidebar
• Click on the USB drive you want to format to FAT32.
• Click “Erase” from the toolbar

or

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, click Drive Converter (FAT32), and then click Next.
2. In the Drives box, click the drive you want to convert to the FAT32 file system.
3. Click Next, and then click OK.
4. Click Next, click Next, and then click Next again.
5. When the conversion is complete, click Finish.

Supported Media File Formats

MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, M4A

When erasing, there's a choice of GUID Partition Map, Master Boot Record, or Apple partition map. I'm guessing the latter is not the right one, which of the other two is correct?

 

[azguy]

I'm a new Lucid owner and have been very frustrated with my inability to get music files on a USB stick to play. Digging through lots of tech stuff (I'm a Mac user) I found that a very nasty and little know problem is that as soon as a USB stick is put on a Mac, the OS puts stuff on the drive that can make it hard to mount on some other readers. This stuff is related to Spotlight, which is the very useful indexing function of the OS. The problem is those files are invisible. So digging thru all the tech junk I could find I discovered you can make those files visible by doing a command-shift on your keyboard and those nasty files will appear. (Command-shift-period gets you back to normal).

Drag them to the trash, amd your disc will work. You can also drag that disc into a window under the privacy tab in system preferences under Spotlight. Then that disc will be immune from the junk files.

I had 2 USB sticks that simply would not load.. sometimes they would go to 10% and generate an error... sometimes the error popped up right away. So, without making this any more complicated, if you formatted these USB sticks on a Mc, try this solution and I think you'll find they will work fine in your Lucid. If someone else has found this I apologize in advance for the waste of bandwidth.

Worked great for me. P.S. The USB stick should be formatted to MSDOS-FAT32 and Master Boot Record selected. Then format away, and get your music playing.

 

[azguy]

Typo alert... command-shift-period toggles the view on and off.

 

[JGard18]

Weird. I also created my drive from a Mac and I didn’t have to jump through any hoops

 

[azguy]

It's a mystery to me.... many have reported similar issues... I wish I could get more than 32GB to use... on my old model 3 I had a 2TB SSD which was great to have... I'm playing FLAC files, and for the first time I'm hearing good bass from my system. The streaming stuff sunded pretty anemic to me... maybe at some point Lucid will enhance the USB music system to hold more data.

 

[matthew-rad]

It's a mystery to me.... many have reported similar issues... I wish I could get more than 32GB to use... on my old model 3 I had a 2TB SSD which was great to have... I'm playing FLAC files, and for the first time I'm hearing good bass from my system. The streaming stuff sunded pretty anemic to me... maybe at some point Lucid will enhance the USB music system to hold more data.

I’ve been using a 1TB USB for a few years now.

 

[azguy]

What brand drive? What format and partition setup did you use? I just tried a 128 GB drive I have, set it up with Fat 32 and MBR and it sticks at 10% loading. Very frustrating. Used Disc Utility on a Mac.

 

[matthew-rad]

What brand drive? What format and partition setup did you use? I just tried a 128 GB drive I have, set it up with Fat 32 and MBR and it sticks at 10% loading. Very frustrating. Used Disc Utility on a Mac.

What brand drive? What format and partition setup did you use? I just tried a 128 GB drive I have, set it up with Fat 32 and MBR and it sticks at 10% loading. Very frustrating. Used Disc Utility on a Mac.

Hi,
Checked my setup. Using the following:
USB C hub ACASIS also connected to my TWRAPS charging pad
USB C to micro sd stick
Sandisk Ultra 1TB micro sd formatted MSDOS-FAT32
Music files are WAV, FLAC, and MP3. Some FLACs that I converted from DSD do not play—I have to try the conversion settings on them again. But 90% play just fine.
Hope you have good luck—the sound is outstanding.

 

[azguy]

i tried something similar that did work.. a Sandisk 128GB Sd card into an adaptor with a USB A plug on the end. Worked fine... after formatting. It appears some thumb drives are rather picky, and simply don't work. I'll try a 1TB drive tomorrow.. had some extras for my drone... and I must say FLACs sound a hell of a lot better than the streaming options. For the first time my AGT audio system lives up to the claims Lucid made for it.

Was quite a struggle tho.

 

[matthew-rad]

Please let me know how it goes and which memory you use. I’m about ready to make another music drive.

 

[azguy]

I've ordered a 1TB Sandisk mini SD card and it will be here tomorrow. Will use the same adaptor which has both a mini and regular SD slot. If it works, I'll be thrilled. I could even get along with the 128 gb drive that is in there now and working, but would like the added flexibility. I've gone through with a tag editor and added some album art to files where it was missing. What's missing from the Lucid is the ability to search for an album or navigate quickly to one.

Will let you know how this works out. I'm not sure why some media work and others don't. But it's clear that many USB sticks will not work.

 

[johnse]

It may have to do with the speed of the card. This article has a good description of the various speed ratings https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/personal-storage/memory-card-speed-classes

 

[DeaneG]

I also had a USB stick not work on the Air, I think because of wearout and resulting errors. Bought a new one, formatted it the same way, and it worked fine.

 

[azguy]

It may have to do with the speed of the card. This article has a good description of the various speed ratings https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/personal-storage/memory-card-speed-classes

Helpful article... thanks