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Audio Flash Drives?


Jack Stoner

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On a computer forum, audio flash drives replacing audio CD's was mentioned.  I had thought about that, but how are they formatted?  Is it just the wav song files are copied to a flash drive? or is there some sort of formatting?  Could or should both wav and MP3 files be put on the drive?

Inquiring mind wants to know.

Jack

 

 

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3 hours ago, Bapu said:

My 2005 Honda Odessey  does not have a USB port. 😞 

Hmmm I found an aftermarket add on able to allow a USB port. $30 (and probably countless hours of connecting it properly, fnar fnar). Arrives 5 Jan.

Edited by Bapu
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I rip my own CDs to WAV files and put them on a drive.

I put them in album folders and keep the track numbers first, so I can listen to an album with the tunes in order. I use the format 01, 02, 03, etc. so if there is more than 10 tracks, they still play in order. For a 2 CD set I put them in the same folder and start the second CD with the next track number available after the first one is ripped.

My old car doesn't have a USB port, but it does have an aux jack. I have a digital Walkman with over 10,000 tones on it ripped from my CD collection. For the car I use mp3 files since there is so much road noise that super hi-fidelity is a waste. I drive a mini-van because doing one-nighters for a living, I need it to haul the PA, guitars, saxes, and synths around.

Insights and incites by Notes

 

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This is tmi, but i subscribe to you tube. $15 a month for the family. I can ask to listen to almost anything and it will play it from you tube. It will also generate playlists for me. I put music I'm working on on my phone and it plays through my car stereo. I don't have to use the usb drives.

The YouTube subscription seems silly, but we don't have to watch commercials. That really helps my daughter.

Have you ever noticed guitar pedal coolness seems proportional to guitar pedal weight? Right.. Off topic.

Edited by Gswitz
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6 hours ago, craigb said:

Or you could add the AdBlock Plus extension and have no commercials for free.

I did use a free dns for a while. It was internal.. Meaning it ran in my house on a raspberry pi..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-hole

We let it go. It annoyed my wife and daughter to face occasional issues with things needing to be unblocked.

 

Edited by Gswitz
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The flash drives being used for commercial distribution are generally just plain vanilla USB drives with no special "audio" formatting, although they can be "customized" so that the exterior has the artist or album name etc. on them. Usually the music files are MP3 or WAV files, although they can include any other kind of data in addition to the music, like lyrics, photo's or promotional videos. The files are playable or readable in any device that can...well read them, like a computer many video disc players or car stereo systems with USB inputs. Unlike a CD. the audio can be in any format that the player device can interpret, so insane levels of sampling or bit depth can be distributed, and the capacity of a large drive will hold the lifes's work of most artists. On the other hand people are unlikely to keep a box full of thumb drives next to their stereo, so in practice most of these drives are going to be used to transfer the songs to a hard drive or upload to the cloud, where they can more easily be accessed. 

For your own use just copy the music to a blank drive as WAV or MP3. If you know the way the playback device organizes songs by artist, album, song, etc. you can pre-package the folders so that it makes sense to the device. Some devices will handle album cover art as well. 

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On 12/31/2020 at 6:08 AM, Jack Stoner said:

Tried a flash drive with just wav song files copied to it and it works in my 15 Flex.  Guess that answers my own question, with the help of this site.

Happy New Year

 

But if you dont' format the files properly the meta data tags won't show the song names, album title, artist, etc.

 

This is easier to do with MP3 than it is for WAV files.  But it can be done of course.

This becomes much more relevant for anyone that is selling these things, or giving them out than it is for personal use where you know your own work.

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28 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

But if you dont' format the files properly the meta data tags won't show the song names, album title, artist, etc.

 

This is easier to do with MP3 than it is for WAV files.  But it can be done of course.

This becomes much more relevant for anyone that is selling these things, or giving them out than it is for personal use where you know your own work.

The wav files have the song titles.  They show on my car system.  I don't use MP3's unless an absolute must.  MP3's are "something less than full fidelity".  

 

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