I'm deployed and I'll be taking delivery of a new Limited in July. To pass the time I thought I'd spend the evenings burning CDs to a thumb drive so I can plug it into my bike when I get home. HD's website says a thumb drive works with the new radios, but makes no reference to which format to put the music in. Before I get started copying my music, I can't find any reference to which music file format is best for the new HD radios (MP3, Wav, etc.). I drove to the local HD dealer in Doha (Qatar) and the language barrier made it too challenging to get a proper answer.

Has anybody plugged in a thumb drive to their new radio that can verify a format that works? I don't want to spend the next four months copying music only to find I should have put it in MP3 or something like that. I've only got an Ipod Shuffle and I don't want to drop $200 on a larger Ipod if a thumb drive works just as well. Thanks for any help!

 

I know mp3 plays fine,can't comment on the other formats.

 

I have a thumb drive full of MP3's on mine and it works great.

 

Apples format from an iMac out of iTunes works fine.

 

I am with the rest - the MP3 format is probably your easiest and best bet. That is what I use

 

The MP3 format is what works on my jump drive.
I use a program called Mp3Tag to get cover art, create playlists and edit the tags. I have over 1000 songs in different folders on my jump drive.
The infotainment will display the album art while the song is playing. You can select by artist, song playlist or genre. I have found that the more complete the tags are the more flexible the system is.
I use a SanDisk 32GB Cruzer, really small and fits nicely.
I also put routes for the GPS on the same disk.

 

I have no issues with MP3's on the thumb drive... 8gb is full of various tunes

 

If you are ripping your own, just use a program called "Exact Audio Copy" (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) and save them as MP3 320K non-variable. That is about as good as you are going to get unless you do a lossless format like FLAC.

Out of curiosity, which format are you wanting to save them as... I can go give it a try.

 

I just plug my iPod in to the USB. I can then control it with the infotainment.

Works awesome, music quality is unmatched, and it shows the album cover on the screen.

 

MP3 and WMA both work for me.
jt