[MinnVolt]

The point I was questioning isn't USB 3, it's the newer USB 3.1.

Anyone tested it in their second gen Volt, or do i need to look into a software/firmware update?

Here is a link to Kingston Technology regarding USB compatibility. They can explain it better than I can . . . . .

https://www.kingston.com/us/usb-flash-drives/usb-30

 

[Genecpu]

I use a 64GB Sandisk USB2.0 small flash drive, barely larger than the connector. There is no need to purchase a USB3.0 or fast flash drive. USB 2.0 speeds for music are fine.
Use FAT32 to format it. FAT32 support file sizes up to 4GB. Most MP3 or music file are not much larger than hundreds of MB at the most. one 64GB flash will provide hundreds of hours of listening. Yes it does take a while too index. Also no heat problems.

 

[fredevad2]

Although there is no need for a USB 3.0 drive, it does make a difference in how fast you can load your music from the computer (assuming it also has USB 3) and how fast your infotainment system can index it and populate the "Browse" list.

However, not all USB 3s are the same. The first one I bought was just as slow as my USB 2. That's when I learned to pay better attention to the read and write speeds.

2019 Volt LT, Pacific Blue, Power Convenience Package, LT Driver Confidence Package, Comfort Package, nicknamed "Voltemort".

 

[Runion]

a 32GB drive seems to work great in the system, with a USB drive formatted with Fat. The USB drives are not meant to use the NTFS systems and you may eventually have problems using NTFS.
I have a 64GB USB in the car now but it occasionally has problems. Someone else mentioned this saying if you use that large of a USB drive you need to take it out to let the system reset or it corrupts in the system and you may not get all your music to play until you do take it out. Sometimes you have to pull the fuse to erase the memory from the USB drive.
Never had this problem with the 32 GB drive and My plan is to go back to that size and skip the random problems that come up with the 64GB drive.

 

[Runion]

oh wow, I can't edit my message above but I found a boo boo

I said "Sometimes you have to pull the fuse to erase the memory from the USB drive." pulling the fuse does not erase the memory to the USB drive, It clears the memory in the radio for the USB playback.

Also wanted to add, that after you get your music to play successfully, the next challenge is to get your playlists created and working. It can be done, it does work and there are example of how to do it here on the forum. Any quesion and one of us can help.. It accepts multi playlists. Have not been creative enough to make a single playlist bring up other playlists but I think it can be done.
These cars have pretty nice music systems.

 

[Godholio]

oh wow, I can't edit my message above but I found a boo boo

I said "Sometimes you have to pull the fuse to erase the memory from the USB drive." pulling the fuse does not erase the memory to the USB drive, It clears the memory in the radio for the USB playback.

Also wanted to add, that after you get your music to play successfully, the next challenge is to get your playlists created and working. It can be done, it does work and there are example of how to do it here on the forum. Any quesion and one of us can help.. It accepts multi playlists. Have not been creative enough to make a single playlist bring up other playlists but I think it can be done.
These cars have pretty nice music systems.

My search results don't bring up anyone having success getting playlists to work with the newer systems, so if you've got a link or an explanation I'd definitely appreciate it. I've tried m3u and pls files with no luck. The car just doesn't see them.

 

[v0lta1r]

If it helps anyone coming upon this thread in the future, the secret for me was to format my USB drive on Windows and not Mac OSX (Big Sur). I was almost about to tear my hair out on why my drive wouldn't even show up in the Media options even though I'd formatted it using FAT-32 but it turns out MacOSX's FAT-32(MSDOS-FAT) is kinda different from traditional FAT-32 filesystems and makes all the difference in being detectable by my Volt Gen2. Formatted it on Windows to FAT-32, dumped all my songs back in there and works like a charm!

 

[crackers8199]

If it helps anyone coming upon this thread in the future, the secret for me was to format my USB drive on Windows and not Mac OSX (Big Sur). I was almost about to tear my hair out on why my drive wouldn't even show up in the Media options even though I'd formatted it using FAT-32 but it turns out MacOSX's FAT-32(MSDOS-FAT) is kinda different from traditional FAT-32 filesystems and makes all the difference in being detectable by my Volt Gen2. Formatted it on Windows to FAT-32, dumped all my songs back in there and works like a charm!

can confirm. i kinda did the same thing, but you can still use OSX...you just have to make sure you format it with a MBR partition map, not GUID. the first time i tried this on my 2013, i used GUID and it wouldn't recognize the drive. brought it back inside, formatted to MBR & FAT, and it worked perfectly.

 

[currter]

I have a question regarding the audio system for the Chevy Volt. Will it or the USB ports accept or read .aif or .aiff files (uncompressed, lossless) which are Apple's version of .WAV? I may take a chance to view another Volt testing out its audio system as it did not read .flac files. . I have to convert from .flac to .aif (or aiff) and .m4a or Apple lossless and I may try again with .aiff or .m4a files but it has to be lossless formats. I would like to be better prepared the 3rd time around. Also does the radio tuner tune 87.5 or 87.7 FM? Where does the FM start (like 87.9 or 88.1 MHz)? Thank you for any information you can provide for my research to not waste anymore time. So should I name the files with .aif or .aiff extension for success?

 

[hellsop]

I have to convert from .flac to .aif (or aiff) and .m4a or Apple lossless and I may try again with .aiff or .m4a files but it has to be lossless formats. I would like to be better prepared the 3rd time around.

The manual claims

USB Media Formats
The USB port will support the following media formats:

• MP3
• Unprotected WMA
• Unprotected AAC

Other formats may be supported.

About half my music is in .m4a and it's fine with that, but it's a lossy compression because I'm old and 32gb thumb drives is all it will take anyway.

 

[currter]

The manual claims

USB Media Formats
The USB port will support the following media formats:

• MP3
• Unprotected WMA
• Unprotected AAC

Other formats may be supported.

About half my music is in .m4a and it's fine with that, but it's a lossy compression because I'm old and 32gb thumb drives is all it will take anyway.

Okay, that is fine. I prefer lossless audio so do you think .aif will work?
I have converted (last night and this morning) ALL of my .flac audio files
to both .m4a --Apple Lossless-- and .aif the lossless or .aiff form for
Apple/Mac (uncompressed like .wav) to test the next time I view a
Volt car. I hope at least the .aif works and the metadata can be
viewed or displayed .

Cross my fingers. I may copy the files onto a drive formatted as NTFS as well.
I believe I tried drives formatted as FAT32 that worked or the car stereo read
the directory structures of but could not read the .flac files the last 2 times
I tested.

Thank you. Wish me luck...

 

[currter]

The manual claims

USB Media Formats
The USB port will support the following media formats:

• MP3
• Unprotected WMA
• Unprotected AAC

Other formats may be supported.

About half my music is in .m4a and it's fine with that, but it's a lossy compression because I'm old and 32gb thumb drives is all it will take anyway.

I am not sure if this was addressed, can the radio tuner tune 87.7 FM? Thank you.

 

[currter]

Does the radio tuner start at 87.5 MHz or ... can it at least tune 87.7 FM? Some newer car radio tuners
unfortunately start at 87.9 or 88.1 FM. Thank you.

 

[Steverino]

My 2017 Bolt EV sees 87.9. The car uses a seek to find stations...

 

[voltyvolt]

[EDIT/UPDATE: So it looks like the Volt disliked the exFAT filesystem I'd originally formatted the drive with. I have reformatted as NTFS, reloaded 19GB of the original 69GB of music, and it works fine, with the drive showing up on the display as (correctly) 128GB. Initial indexing was < 60 seconds, too. I'm now going to copy over the rest of the 69GB to the drive to make sure that there are no hiccups with that much data. FYI, although perhaps you can specify FAT32 on a larger-capacity drive using W10's shell, you can't do it via the GUI. Your only options are exFAT and NTFS, if the drive is larger than <not sure of threshold. 64GB?>. I tried with a 16GB drive and FAT32 did show up as one of the filesystem options, along with NTFS.]


I bought this one. Loaded it with 60+ GB of MP3 and FLAC files. Plugging it into either of the front USB ports, a red light on the drive flashes, which I believe simply means it's connected, but then nothing, i.e., nothing on the display to indicate that the drive is now an input source.

The manual doesn't say much, so I'm stumped. Is USB 3 not supported (although I assume that's a non-issue b/c backward compatibility)? Some min/max data transfer speed I'm bumping up against? Something else? A little research suggests the interface is finicky, so maybe I just need to try a different drive? Recommendations? Thanks!

Fat32 tops out at 32GB in Windows. Does the Volt media player play FLAC files?

 

[Steverino]

Does the Volt media player play FLAC files?

No.

Have you tried the forum's Search? https://www.gm-volt.com/threads/usb-cannot-be-ntfs-volt-cannot-display-unicode-characters.15642/

 

[currter]

My 2017 Bolt EV sees 87.9. The car uses a seek to find stations...

I viewed the manual and I did not see anything regarding the station or frequencies.
So I was asking here for someone with experience with the car:
CAN THE RADIO TUNER TUNE 87.7 FM?

Either the answer is Yes or it is No.

If No, then I will have to consider something else or think about it or
I will factor that in my over all decision as the car does have an
AUX audio input port that can pipe that station in from an external source
output from a headphone jack
Anyway, I may get to the bottom of it soon as I may see a Volt at a
dealership this week. I will make sure to test that out.

Thank you.

 

[hellsop]

I am not sure if this was addressed, can the radio tuner tune 87.7 FM? Thank you.

I have no idea. I think the radio gets used for an hour or so every two years. 87.9 is the lowest assigned frequency in the FM broadcasting band, so it may not.

What problem are you trying to solve?

 

[Steverino]

In the U.S., Low Power TV stations are authorized to also operate an FM station on 87.75 MHz. MeTV in Chicago is one of them.

Meanwhile, 87.5 FM is the first useable radio broadcast frequency on the FM radio band spanning between 87.5 and 108 FM or VHF Band 2. The use of 87.5 FM as the main carrier frequency of a legally established and licensed radio station is rare in most countries as it transmits signals slightly off band down to roughly 87.3 and possibly as low as 87.2 FM.

In the United Kingdom, radio station broadcasts on 87.5 FM are likely pirate radio stations as there are no known radio broadcasting licenses that are allocated to 87.5 FM (within the United Kingdom). There are a few licenses for 87.6 FM, however, most transmit on 87.7 FM and upwards.

Many short range transmitters intended to be used inside of cars operate at 87.5MHz FM and allow the user to stream music from their device to older car radio's or devices lacking bluetooth connectivity.

Stations listed so far that use 87.5 FM are:
Antartica
Argentina
Brazil
China
Greece
Guatemala
Indonesia
Philippines
Spain
Taiwan

 

[currter]

Update:

I was able to do a quick test (hasty) of a 2017 Volt.
Apparently one was able to punch in 87.7 FM and I heard
audio though it was a bit of static. Maybe it was the position
of the car and the status of the antenna.
So I believe it does tune 87.7 FM. I did not try to see if
it would tune 87.5 MHz. Maybe that may require another
test as I wanted to use the arrows to tune the station manually
to make sure. The tuner was set to auto scan and it skipped
past the station going to 107.9 or 88. something.
I need more time with the car to comfortably test things well.

As far audio... The car did seem to accept a USB drive
that was 1TB formatted as FAT32 and containing lossless
and uncompressed .AIF audio files.
I had converted my entire library of about 19,000 songs
from FLAC (uncompressed) to .AIF or .AIFF and
the car seemed to read those even displaying the metadata
and album art. -- So for that the car seemed to pass that test
too.

I also tried a USB drive of .m4a files but lossless Apple lossless (ALAC)
music files. The car read the directory structure but seemed to
struggle with the files so I guess it is true & confirmed that lossless Apple files
(ALAC) are not compatible -- However, at least it seemed to read the
uncompressed .AIF files so there is some promise.

I felt a little rushed so maybe I will be better organized to test
one last time then determine if this is the car for me.

I am used to the gas tank being on the driver's side rear and
this car has the gas fill tank on the passenger side rear.
I am not sure if I want to go to a gas station and have to walk
around the other side of the car to fill up the tank.
However, if the car runs on electricity or the battery well,
I might be able to compromise -- as I may not have to fill the
fuel that much ??

Well that is all.

Thank you.