Music on an USB
 

New stereo on the boat has a USB input.
I tried drag and drop CD's to a USB and it didn't work.
Anyone have an easy method?

the songs will probably have to be mp3 format. Do you have them in MP3 format? If not, you'll have to rip them to mp3.

And the format supported will probably depend upon the stereo, but if it's new, I can't imagine it not supporting MP3.

I'm just drag and dropping, so I guess the answer is no to ripping to mp3.

Try an old iPod. My stereo with usb does carplay and can play my music over bluetooth.

Drag and drop will never work. Yea, you need to RIP the songs to MP3 or WAV or a lot of other formats. I ripped all 120+ CDs I own to MP3 and have them on a 16 Gig thumb drive. I have one in both of my cars. I put the stereo in random mode, and let it play. I never know what song is up next. If it is one that I am not in the mood for, punch skip, and it is on to the next song.

With road and engine and wind noise of 1980s era cars it is "close enough for rock and roll" for sure.

Right, I believe the standard format for a purchased music cd is "CDA" and those are huge (per song) by comparison to mp3. You could fit hundreds of songs in MP3 format on a CD where you are otherwise limited to somewhere between 12 and 20 songs in CDA formate.

There are probably a ton of good free programs to rip CDs to MP3. What version of Windows are you running (or MAC or whatever)?

Are you doing this from a Windows machine?
If so follow this, report back.
Use Windows Media Player, the icon with the orange and white play button in your task bar.

https://www.library.kent.edu/files/SMS_WMP_RIP.pdf

Thanks! You rock! lol
I'm on Window 10 Pro.
I managed to rip a CD to MP3 to a folder on my desktop and then dropped them on to my USB stick. It created a folder with the band name and then a sub folder with the album name. In that folder is the songs. Can I keep the folders or does it just have to be the songs on my USB?

You should be able to keep the folders. I do just to keep the albums separate. With my 16 gig thumb drive if I am tired of one album or save it for later, I zip all the MP3 songs into a zip file, delete the Mp3 and they are still there if I want to hear them later, but they will not be played.

If you just put your player in pay in order it will start with AC/DC and end with ZZ Top. I did that once and after 8 hours of driving I was real sick of AC/DC and happy to get to Aerosmith. It was going to be months before I got to hear ZZ Top. That is a good reason to use the random play. The Beatles can take many days to get through all their albums.

There are a bunch of different sound file formats.
Some Mac. Some Windows. Some both.
Free Audacity https://www.audacityteam.org/ will probably be able to export most of them.

A 2.0 vs a 3.0 ripping port 'might' cause this but probably not.
On my computers I have both types, which made some USB sticks un-reable.
Make sure to try both.

Formatting the USB stick to the incorrect format can also cause issues.
NTSF is old style.
Probably use FAT32 or better yet exFAT for modern electronics.

You should be able to play at least one type of music file on the system.
Else the radio is DRM garbage and bricked itself.
(And post the brand name here so others will not make the same mistake.)

I keep 4000 mp3 songs on my phone so I can plug into any USB sound system and play anything from my library anywhere.

If you don't separate the songs by album and only have one folder with hundreds of songs, you might run the risk of your head unit playing through them all by track number, or alphabetically by filename.... not ideal.

The test went well. I only ripped 1 CD to my USB using windows media player.
The unit does have folder options, so I'll see if that works. I ripping to a folder on my desktop first so I can change thing later if the folders don't work properly.
Sounds like most go for the blue tooth from their phone, but I'd rather not.
Here is the unit.
https://www.crutchfield.ca/p_020GR10BT/Clarion-GR10BT.html?awcr=77240795924251&awdv=c&awkw=clario n+marine+audio&awmt=e&awnw=o&awat=&awug=

You could probably also put the music on your cell phone (assuming you've got the space) and use that as your "USB" drive which would also keep your phone charged.

Or you can use the USB drive and have your phone plugged in playing music from the USB drive and keeping your phone charged from the stereo.

I have a ton of MP3 music files. Most are in folders but some alone as a single file.

I try to keep them all in a external hard drive.

This way it doesn't eat up space on my main drive. Also I can drag them to whatever flash drive I want and I don't lose them, if that makes sense.

I have 4 different receivers that use flash drives plus a bunch of rechargeable portable speakers. I find it a very handy way to listen to tunes.

This is the model I'm using:

https://www.parts-express.com/Data/D...-2648_HR_0.jpg