USB Flash Drives

[Kenny4]

Will the Uconnect 8.4 play music from a usb flash drive. I'm thinking I don't want to deal with Pandora and the likes. I'd rather have my cds copied to a flash drive and just have a few of them with me if that will work. Thanks

 

[piening2150]

Yes

 

[BigD]

Yes, of course. My 2013 Ram played USB flash drives !

 

[jimchi]

Here's the manual section on USB mode:

https://msmownerassets.z13.web.core.windows.net/assets/publications/en-us/Ram/2021/1500_DT/P117762_21_DT_OM_EN_USC_t_DIGITAL.pdf

Here's some info on formats from a Renegade forum:

UConnect USB Mass Storage formats allowed

www.jeeprenegadeforum.com

 

[Kenny4]

Thanks for the references. In the Renegade link the conversation is mostly using 32-64gb flash drives. I'd prefer to buy a package of 10 color coded 2gb drives and just put 3 music cds on each one. That way I could just pop them in and out as I pleased the same as a cd. Even the 2gb would seem an overkill for just 3 cds. Anything wrong with this route, Thanks

 

[BobK]

I havent tried any USB drives that small, but today you can get a 10 pack of 32gb drives for like $29. You would have to search around hard to even find 2GB drives (Assuming you dont already have them) so they are cheap enough to just get 32gb and be safe. Dont worry about all that extra space.

 

[brian42]

Thanks for the references. In the Renegade link the conversation is mostly using 32-64gb flash drives. I'd prefer to buy a package of 10 color coded 2gb drives and just put 3 music cds on each one. That way I could just pop them in and out as I pleased the same as a cd. Even the 2gb would seem an overkill for just 3 cds. Anything wrong with this route, Thanks

Nothing wrong with that. You just can't go over 64GB for any one thumb drive.

I spent $10 for a tiny 16GB thumb drive that my phone won't bump when I have it in the holder. It has both USB-A and USB-C connections.

I only have a few hundred songs on it as that's more than enough for me to shuffle through when I drive.

 

[Kenny4]

This is what I was looking at. The Sandex chart says 125 songs on 2gb.

https://www.amazon.com/Drives-Memory-JBOS-Digital-Storage/dp/B07G6P4N13/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=R4Q1E8FG7HCN4JSBE7H6

 

[Quint]

The number of songs depends on the file size. The file size depends on the length of song, the file format (flac, mp3, etc.), and the sound quality the music was ripped at. In .wav format each song would be 50-75MB but an mp3 is typically 2-5MB.

I've been using a 256GB thumb drive in my truck. It works well as long as I don't try to fit more than 64GB of music on there. I'm now thinking about a set of 64GB drives on a keychain hoop so that I can have all of my music available.

 

[SzaboTx]

I too have a 256gb thumb drive with both USB and USB-C ...I love it! Sound quality is much better than anything streaming and there is no delay at start up. Only issue I have run into is that I have a lot of music and it cuts off files over a certain amount (sounds like 64gb) in no particular order. I have all my music on my computer arranged by genre, band, album and song, which is how I transferred it to the thumb drive. I just kept cutting back until it looked like it all showed on the radio.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DW33DNN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[MayhemMOORE]

I went back through and made sure all my old cd's were ripped to my computer and then organized everything and put it all on one of those tiny 64GB drives that you can barely even see in the port. I did have to run a couple of scripts to get all the album art to show and re-embed it in the tracks (apple's new music app stores it elsewhere). The sound quality is so much better than satellite or coming from the phone. I just take it inside and update it periodically if I download something new.

 

[Tarheel14]

I went back through and made sure all my old cd's were ripped to my computer and then organized everything and put it all on one of those tiny 64GB drives that you can barely even see in the port. I did have to run a couple of scripts to get all the album art to show and re-embed it in the tracks (apple's new music app stores it elsewhere). The sound quality is so much better than satellite or coming from the phone. I just take it inside and update it periodically if I download something new.

So Im guessing you have to Rip the music from the CD onto the flash drive or to the computer then to the FD and put it into another format that the truck will read? The CD music cant be copied and pasted to the thumbdrive?

 

[brian42]

So Im guessing you have to Rip the music from the CD onto the flash drive or to the computer then to the FD and put it into another format that the truck will read? The CD music cant be copied and pasted to the thumbdrive?

"Ripping" is copying files from a music CD.

I believe they are .wav files but you can convert them to other formats when you copy them. I'm not sure how a music CD is set up but they aren't files in a folder that you can just copy and paste.

There are plenty of free programs that will rip your CDs into various music formats.

 

[MayhemMOORE]

So Im guessing you have to Rip the music from the CD onto the flash drive or to the computer then to the FD and put it into another format that the truck will read? The CD music cant be copied and pasted to the thumbdrive?

As @brian42 mentioned, you can't just copy and paste the cd, as the tracks aren't organized in a way that the truck will read them. I used apple music and just imported them all as .mp3 files, but there are other programs to do the same thing.

 

[Appyfan]

I went back through and made sure all my old cd's were ripped to my computer and then organized everything and put it all on one of those tiny 64GB drives that you can barely even see in the port. I did have to run a couple of scripts to get all the album art to show and re-embed it in the tracks (apple's new music app stores it elsewhere). The sound quality is so much better than satellite or coming from the phone. I just take it inside and update it periodically if I download something new.

What scripts did you run for the album art? My flash drive showed some art in my 2016, but doesn’t in my 2021.

 

[MayhemMOORE]

What scripts did you run for the album art? My flash drive showed some art in my 2016, but doesn’t in my 2021.

If you are using apple, check out "dougscripts". There are a ton of scripts you can download and run in itunes/apple music. I used two....one was to save album artwork to album folder, since it isn't stored there by default anymore. The other was to re-embed the album artwork in each track.

 

[Appyfan]

If you are using apple, check out "dougscripts". There are a ton of scripts you can download and run in itunes/apple music. I used two....one was to save album artwork to album folder, since it isn't stored there by default anymore. The other was to re-embed the album artwork in each track.

Thanks so much! I will give that a try.

 

[Tarheel14]

Im using Windows media player to rip the music into MP3 format. Do you put it on the computer first? or can I just rip it directly to the flash drive?

 

[Tarheel14]

Will the Ram read this if the music is in a folder? About to go find out. Haahaa

 

[Tarheel14]

Update....... It works...finally. If you rip the music from the CD directly to the flashdrive it will put it in folders.. Then it is accessible via folders inside the Ram. It gives you the option to open the folder and organize the music etc.. Also allows you to play ALL or shuffle play. Im so excited. I do have the CD player but this allows you to listen to a huge variety and its super cool. Ill take some pics of the 12" screen and show what it can do. Awesome.