2021 Durango R/T RWD

I can't get my Durango to recognize my flash drive. I have a few albums on a drive, stuck it in, and nothing. Same USB into any of my other non-UConnect Alpine stereos, it recognizes the music and starts playing it right off. Does anyone know why my Durango can't read music off a USB drive?

 

Check the music format. As I recall on my 2013 D, I had to have music in .mp3 format for the flash drive to be recognized and also play the .wma format. Now I have all my music in my albums either in .mp3 or .wma formats.

 

And the format format!
Test before you load a whole library.

 

Yep, MP3 on the format, and I formatted the flash drive with FAT32. But, it acts like nothing is there. It seems to see the drive is plugged in but won't read it. How I have it loaded on the flash drive is with folders named for the album, with the music inside the folders, and the single DIN Alpines I have in other vehicles has no problem treating these as different albums.

I'm hoping that this thing isn't more primative than my several year old old-school stereos, in that it has to see the MP3s on the top. I've not tried that yet.

 

On my '15 i think all the music has to be in one root folder at the top. The system sorts it out by artist, album etc in the menus.

 

OK, I'll give that a shot then, and will report back if it works. I've been researching this and it seems there have been changes in the Uconnect system in the last year or so that seems to have taken functionality out of the system. I hope Uconnect and Dodge didn't do it hoping to drive satellite subscriptions, because I'll do without a stereo before I'll pay for that junk Sirius pumps out, especially the stupid DJs chattering over the song. They're using the same DJs today as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, and they're all even older than I am and their minds are obviously not firing on all cylinders anymore. FM radio's even worse with their playing a one 3-minute song followed by 20 minutes of commercials, oftentimes the same commercial repeated several times in a row. And, if I have to do without a stereo because I can't make this work, it'll definitely factor into whether my next new vehicle comes from Dodge.

 

Success, sort of. Putting the music on the top of the flash drive, without any directories, allows the music to play. Simple flash drive, plugged into the USB-A port 1, formatted as FAT32. No artwork, but that's not a concern of mine as I'm driving and have no interest in having a tiny little album picture up. It may just need time to read the drive fully, but some of the songs are arranged by album and show the name, others just show Track 1, Track 2, ect. I'll verify that the songs in question aren't mislabeled on the copy, so it may be a mistake on my part as well. It did register the different albums as being part of the different albums. And, when you shut down and restart, it picks up where it left off.

The main problem with the system is no absolute volume control. Disks record at different volumes requiring you to adjust the volume when it goes in. When playing on random, one song will be at one volume, the next one might come in and be very quiet, the one after that might be a lot louder. It would be nice if the system were able to adjust the song's volume to match the set volume rather than require me to adjust it for every song.

Eventually, when I have my CD collection ripped, I have a tiny little 64GB flash drive to save to. I expect to plug it in and forget it when it's done.

 

Some advice:
Rip good cd's or some songs as wavs - then later as tech changes you will have archival copy.
Add/leave 01 Title, 02 Title as filename so windows will find/play in order.
They do make audio leveling programs - I find that using the same program(s) to rip and encode, all at defaults, leads to consistent product. I let windows rip, and Audacity (free) convert, (then edit meta with mp3tag).
I use mp3tag (free) to change "metadata" - stuff embedded in each song file - position. title, artist, cover, etc and genre - saves setting up special directories. Most 'smart' players will use/show all the metadata if any exists, rather than filename, etc
Speaking of, I have no trouble with nested directories - typically artists with multiple albums.
The volume IS NOT a player problem, but the recorder.
I only have the 5 inch screen, but very proud of album covers showing!

 

I just let WIndows Media Player do the rip, max size for best quality, using defaults. If it's not the Dodge messing with volume, then it would have to be Windows doing it.

Will this Audacity program level the volume out or is there a setting in Windows I need to be using? I'm more of a technophobe than a technophile.

 

Update - Leveled the sound using MP3Gain, which worked fairly well. I'm thinking of re-ripping everything using Foobar though. MP3Gain unfortunately makes 1.5dB gains, but apparently Foobar has greater control over sound leveling control.

As of now, the largest flash drive I've been able to use is 16GB. I bought some micro-size Samsung 64GB flash drives but the Durango won't recognize them at all, kind of a pisser because if they had worked then I'd have almost my entire collection in the Durango, and the drive would be unobtrusive.

I'll keep posting until I have this working the way I want it, and will post details on the final solution.