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USB thumb drives wont play music bought from Amazon

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by lettcco, Feb 27, 2011.

  1. lettcco

    lettcco New Member

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    I have tried out a few albums that I ripped and placed in the thumb drive, and they all played fine. Recently I bought a few albums using amazon service. I know they works cause I have played it on my PC, and I have transfer it on my phone and they played fine too. But when I placed it in my thumb drive the headunit just won't play those songs, and as it attempts to skip over to the next one, it will look like it's frozen as it won't response to any screen input. The amazon MP3s are 256kb rate, all my other music are 128 or 160. I know I can fix it if I re-encode them, but it's such a pain. Anyone has similar experiences?
     
    #1 lettcco, Feb 27, 2011
  2. johalareewi

    johalareewi Member

    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2009
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    Location:
    uk
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    N/A
    Only with lossless WMA files. My 256k MP3s play fine.
     
    #2 johalareewi, Feb 28, 2011
  3. rokibler

    rokibler Member

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    Location:
    Cabin John, Md.
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    III
    Yes. I just bought an mp3 album from Amazon and it plays fine on my laptop (Windows Media Player), iTunes, and iPhone, but none of the tracks play from a thumb drive in the Prius. They have bit rates higher than 160 kbps (e.g. 236 (VBR)), and the encoder is LAME3.97. I have over 2000 other songs that play from this thumb drive, so I know I have everything else correct.

    Any ideas?
     
    #3 rokibler, May 31, 2013
  4. Gjeschik

    Gjeschik New Member

    Joined:
    Jun 5, 2013
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    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    III
    Okay, after some work and research I've solved this exact problem with my player.

    To be clear, the problem originally (for me) was that MP3 files from Amazon Cloud (downloaded) would not play in the JBL player when they were on a USB flash drive, however all other MP3 files on the drive from my own computer ripped locally would play fine.
    I tried different qualities, but that never made a difference, plus I checked the manual and everything was supported.

    I figured it was something in the ID3 tag, so I downloaded the program Mp3tag from this (can not include link due to not having enough posts yet, but search for Mp3tag on Google, you'll find it) site which is a simple program for editing ID tags recommended by Amazon.

    It works very well. The first thing that I noticed was some small differences in the TRACK, DISC, and COMMENT fields from Amazon, however what eventually made the difference was to remove the album cover art embedded in the tag. This program lets you easily select as many files as you'd like and remove all of the album arts, but keep everything else (including filename and other ID tag information) in tact.

    I then plugged the USB drive back into my car and all of the files play perfectly, with no problems.
     
    #4 Gjeschik, Jun 5, 2013
    cliffy1203 and rokibler like this.
  5. rokibler

    rokibler Member

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    Cabin John, Md.
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    III
    Gjeschik,

    You are a genius! Thanks for figuring this out.
     
    #5 rokibler, Jun 6, 2013
  6. ElmoBob

    ElmoBob Junior Member

    Joined:
    Feb 18, 2012
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    Location:
    Yonkers, NY
    Vehicle:
    2005 Prius
    Model:
    Two
    Thanks! so now in 2017 your response helped me with a 2010 Lexus ES350 having the same issue playing back certain MP3s (ex prius owner, now 1st gen Volt owner btw)

    Thanks again
     
    #6 ElmoBob, Feb 27, 2017
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