External Hard Drives In Your Vehicles??

Just checking to see who else uses an external hard drive in their vehicle for listening to music? Reason I am posting is to share what I have found (at least in our 2014 Pathfinder) The factory system will not play FLAC files but sees MP3's just fine. I am building a small library for my wife to listen to and compared to SIRUS XM, the MP3's just sound so much better, so definatly canceling that waste of money. Just wishing the Pathfinder would read FLAC as it would be easier just to transfer files from my crazy library to the hard drive and be done with it. Anyone???????
"if it's not fun, it's not worth it & remember folks, "It's All About The Music"!!
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Comments

  • stevep
    stevep Posts: 327
    How big of an external device will the Pathfinder support?

    If I was going to use a harddrive form factor I'd use an SSD so it wasn't impacted by vibration or the temp. If your "small library" would fix on a big USB stick I'd go that route for cost and reliability.

    Our Tiguan has both SD and USB. A 64GB SD card full of MP3's holds quite a few hours of music.
  • EndersShadow
    EndersShadow Posts: 17,517
    edited November 2017
    Johnny:

    Just a thought, but rather than doing that, why not use a iPhone connected to the headunit (guessing you can do that).

    I installed the Plex Server program (free) on my HTPC, and have my music (on a external NAS like you) mapped to the server app. Then I use the Plex app (costs like 4 bucks) on my iPhone (can also be used with a android phone), connected via lightning bolt to my Murano's headunit to play my music.

    I just open up the PLEX app on my phone (which connects to the Plex server program containing my library on my HTPC at my house) and stream from the iphone to the car.

    I can access ALL my music, and ANY playlist I've already created for myself at home.

    The Plex Server software converts the file from FLAC to MP3 on the fly, so I only have a single file on the hard drives, and dont have to have any extra external drives to carry around.

    The ONLY downfall is that you ARE using some of your phone's data plan. I don't think its that much as a MP3 is fairly small file size, but that does matter.

    On my 30 minute drive into Indy I use it everyday and its quite nice. I don't have any issues with signal drop but once in a blue moon, and its mainly the music stops for a brief second then picks up.

    In my case (car specific) because my phone is connected to the car, I can use the controls on my wheel to skip tracks, etc.

    Might be something to look into because then you can build the playlist and she can listen to it at home, at work, in the car etc (and so can you). It also makes it easy to update it as you add new music to it.

    I should also mention that the PLEX app can be installed on any phone, tablet, or computer out there. I use it to stream music on ALL our iPhones, my daughters tablets, Roku's (to different rooms of my house), and my computer.

    Its super easy to use and I like it A LOT.
    "....not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." William Bruce Cameron, Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking (1963)