Playing Zip with car speakers

My new car (Toyota Corolla) has a USB port, so I promptly ordered a Sandisk Clip Zip. It’s great, except…it won’t work with the car. I plug it in and get a message that says “no music”; according to the Toyota handbook and customer service rep, that means that “no MP3/WMA files are included in the USB memory”. But it’s holding 400 songs, and my computer says they’re ALL MP3.  (It plays fine with heaphones, in my apartment!) The car’s handbook lists certain “device formats”/“communication formats” that will work with it, and says “MP3 and WMA files written in any other format will not play”. But my computer’s documents folder only shows that they’re MP3 files, nothing else about the files or they’re format! How do you tell? What do I do? (I’m leaving Monday on a long road trip, and it looks like I won’t be listening to the  Zip in the car.)

You’ll probably need to have the player in MSC mode, and then add all the music with MSC mode. Car stereos rarely or never support MTP mode USB connections. They also tend to have trouble with USB devices that have multiple disks, so depending on how dumb your stereo is it may see the internal memory, the sd memory, or neither. Good luck.

I’m having a similar problem: My car has a USB port which supports only USB in Mass Storage mode. I set the USB mode on the Clip Zip to MSC, hook up to my computer (which sees it immediately), and copy a couple of MP3’s to the CZ (using Windows Explorer). When I attach it to the car port, the CZ screen shows a brief Transferring Files, and then goes to Connected. The car audio display does nothing and plays no music.

When in doubt, read your stereo’s manual. If your stereo came with the car, perhaps you should try reading that manual, too. If you no longer have a manual, try doing a websearch for your stereo’s make and model, and see if you can find a digital version.

Keep in mind that the people here might not have the same stereo as you. Hence, your manual should hopefully be able to give some detail as to how your stereo works.

Actually, I did read my vehicle’s audio system manual section thoroughly before posting and mentioned the only relevant issues in my post: it works only w/devices in USB Mass Storage Mode (MSC) and it plays MP3’s. As much as I can tell, this is the way most vehicle USB interfaces work - not just mine.

While I’m hoping that the CZ will work in my vehicle (it should, it supports MSC), this is clearly a problem others have had as well - witness thislonger thread

 

http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/Sansa-Clip-Sansa-Clip/Help-With-Sansa-Mp3-And-usb-Car-Stereo/td-p/61407

 

on exactly the same topic (which I didn’t find at first or I would have posted there).