Sansa Fuze: Playing thru Car Audio using USB port

I bought a Fuse to play thru my new car audio using USB port in car.  It works fine if the the Fuze is playing from internal memory, but won’t work when I insert micro-SD card [even tho SD card works fine in Fuze when not connected to car USB port]. Any ideas? Sansa says its car’s fault, but car folks say no, and point out car can’t distinguish what’s coming thru USB. On same issue, has anybody tried using a “thumb drive” in car USB port?

I can’t speak for the SD card part of your question as I haven’t tried my Fuze in my car yet.

When you connect a Fuze to a computer though, the SD card shows up as a seperate disk. Perhaps the car’s stereo can’t deal with the way the Fuze offers access to the SD card. There are (cheap) USB stick shaped micro-SD card readers. Perhaps that would suit your purpose here. Just put the micro-SD card in the USB stick’s reader and put the USB stick in your car’s stereo.

USB thumb drives should work fine in car stereo’s with an USB port. I have tried several different USB memory drives and they all worked fine.

Try setting USB mode to MSC.  Need to reload the internal content if it was in MTP mode…

Your car stereo probably isn’t too smart.

It’s made to see music on one USB drive–which is what the Fuze internal memory looks like to it when it’s in MSC mode. The second drive, the slot, might as well not exist. I doubt the car people understand the way the Fuze is set up. 

As suggested above, just put the microSD in a USB reader–you can find one for $5 or less. 

Message Edited by Black-Rectangle on 07-16-2009 09:13 AM

Maybe you should just consider getting a thumb drive for your car. Searching around you can find 32gb drives for around $50 (after rebates) and 16gb drives for a little more than half that.  You’ll have more storage for less money and a dedicated source for your car.

(…Adding as an aside once again, with 32gb flash memory packaged for end use retailing for as low as $50 it’s getting almost offensive that many player line-ups top out at just 8gb onboard.)