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MP3 wont connect in 2012 Adv Plug in...why

Discussion in 'Gen 1 Prius Plug-in 2012-2015' started by miketeri, Mar 16, 2013.

  1. miketeri

    miketeri New Member

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    Sony MP3 player wont connect to my stereo unit in car using USB cable, it will work in wife's 2013 Prius II. Been back to dealership and 2 sales guys (one an electronic geek) played around and nothing worked. Saw a service manager and without putting on a computer in the shop, had no luck either.

    What to do before I put it in the shop for the dealer to play with. Car is brand new and 1 week used.

    Help??
     
  2. john1701a

    john1701a Prius Guru

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    Start simple.

    Plug in some USB memory, not a player, to verify the port itself works.

    If it does, that means the Sony MP3 is having trouble for some reason. If not, then it may very well be the port.

    For me, I just use one of those teeny-tiny USB memory, the 16GB you can get for $12... like this. That provides a large collection of songs without ever having to deal with a player or cable.
     
  3. retired4999

    retired4999 Prius driver since 2005

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    Yep! works great! I have 1500 songs on mine.:)
     
  4. miketeri

    miketeri New Member

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    Used a memory stick and it did work. However some of the CD's that I put on the stick will not play. They are original CD's, loaded onto my computer, then transferred to the memory stick. Why does the album/cd show up on the screen, song by song is listed on the screen, yet, when I select one of these songs, the screen will then scroll to one of the few CD's that will play.

    Again several CD's are on the stick and listed on the USB screen to play. The car player will skip many of the CD's listed and stop at just the couple that do indeed play. The sound is great but only 2 of the 7 albums actually will play.

    No what??
     
  5. lensovet

    lensovet former BP Brigade 207

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    are you sure you're trying to playback compatible files? check the display audio system manual.
     
  6. JT_Ohio

    JT_Ohio New Member

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    I had the same issue with my 16 GB USB stick, I would copy mp3s to it. The computer would play and recognize it but when in the PiP it would not. It was not the format it was the naming I gave it. In Windows, you need to give the music file a title, if you don't the PiP will NOT recognize it. Once I did this it was able to see all my files. Right click the file go to properties, then details, click Title and type the name you want to file to appear in the PiP, make sure to name the album as the name of the folder it is in too. Once I did this all those hidden MP3s appeared and i cruze with my music. Hope this helps!
     
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  7. miketeri

    miketeri New Member

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    I load music onto a 16 memory stick and the music comes from an original CD loaded into my computer. Half of the music plays and half does not. My Sony MP# player does not play at all either when connected to the USB port. Is this something I need to address with Toyota Service? This sucks and is very disappointing to say the least.

    Any other experiences or observations with this problem?
     
  8. SLOW_RR

    SLOW_RR Member

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    Regular CD's are full resolution AIFF files. The PiP for all it's greatness can't play a full resolution AAIF music file on a USB stick. Change them into crap MP3s and they will play for you if they are named correctly (see other post on that).
     
  9. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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  10. SLOW_RR

    SLOW_RR Member

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    Ah...... True! What I should have said is when you download a CD to a computer, it is most often saved (encoded) as an AIFF type of file (or as a couple other high res types I think, depending) CD's aren't really files as such. However unless the downloaded "files" are encoded as MP3s (or a couple others??) they can't be read on the PiP. In order to use the USB for music on the PiP, I had to get a App called "TNEF's Enough" for my Mac to change my AIFF files (Already saved from CDs) into MP3s.

    BTW, I owned and operated an small recording business for 15 years doing recordings for Schools and Churches primarily so I have some experience with the process...
     
  11. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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    ^^^
    Since AIFF is an Apple developed format, it's not commonly used on PCs. In the old days, I would rip CDs and store them in (lossless) .WAV format (at the proper bitrate and 16-bit depth). I'd then have to use an encoder (e.g. LAME MP3 Encoder) convert them into MP3s. In the old days, some CD-ROM drives (back when SCSI CD-ROM drives were still common) didn't even do digital audio extraction or some did it very poorly, slowly or unreliably. I remember when Plextor used to ship a utility to rip CDs to WAVs.

    For the longest time, there's been no reason to go through all these steps anymore. Long ago, that was solved by programs like Musicmatch Jukebox (great innovation was that it grabbed metadata from CDDB and put the proper tags on the MP3s). Nowadays, iTunes (and I'm sure many others) does all that for you.
     
  12. SLOW_RR

    SLOW_RR Member

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    Yep, but only when it is ripped from the CD. It can't change the file format from AAIF to MP3 internally, hence the reason I got TNEF's Enough. The other option was to burn them to a music CD and then re-import them as MP3s... This was a lot easier. The last edition of recording stuff I had was an Alesis ADAT HD 24 for the raw data, then back to analog just long enough to send it through my Mackie Onyx 1640 and to the Mac via firewire. Then I used Tracktion to do the final mix. I had several options on the HD 24 but generally just used the 16 bit 44.1 k values all the way through. I lost the use of Tracktion when I upgraded to OS Lion with the new iMac. I see it has been upgraded recently and hopefully will once again work on the Mac side.... I may get it for some odds and ends I still would like to be able to do.

    Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Hope some of this may help the OP.
     
  13. miketeri

    miketeri New Member

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    This is all great stuff but I am not computer literate beyond turning my laptop on and playing music cd's on it. Is there a plain and simple way for me to correct my problem with the music not playing from my memory stick in my prius?
    This is insane.
     
  14. mmmodem

    mmmodem Senior Taste Tester

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    You need to rip those cd's again into a format the Prius will recognize. See post #8.

    As to your sony mp3 player, your wife's Prius has a different audio system than your PiP Advanced. Either there is something wrong with your PiP or the sony mp3 player is not compatible with the PiP. I think it's probably the latter. You will need the dealer to verify.
     
  15. lensovet

    lensovet former BP Brigade 207

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    Actually, iTunes will gladly convert any file in your library into the format specified in your preferences.
    Also, AAC files will give you better audio fidelity at the same bitrate.