I have had this car a week and the mp3 playback from a USB stick was a bit hit and miss . The problem i was having on certain mp3 albums it would display an error which then meant i couldn't play any mp3 on that USB until i powered the car down and back on .

I read a few posts from people regarding it, here is a few suggestions

Change Bitrate of said mp3 to below 190
Change from constant bitrate to VBR
Remove the metadata from the mp3 file
play music from phone instead

But ! here is MY fix , after checking the differences between each album that worked and the ones that didn't i noticed the ones that did work used the Lame mp3 encoder 3.99.

All i had to do was download audacity and the lame codec for windows , Goto File>Chains>Apply chains, Click "Mp3 Conversion" and then "Apply To files" , select the files to convert and hit ok . Files will then be converted and will work fine on the Range rover touchscreen system.

Hope this is of help to any one thats been suffering.

Neat fix, though for audio quality reasons I prefer not to use lossy formats like mp3's.

What's the best quality file extension to use in this case ?

I had an evoque previously and the issue wasnt file type as such but how the drive was formatted, eg FAT32 or EXFAT etc. I had a half terabyte drive hooked up in there permanently and all files were WAV or AIFF (essentially the same thing) 44k/16 bit.

I haven't bothered to go that route in the RRS as I can stream CD quality off tidal via bluetooth and my phone or I have 200gb storage on micro sd accessible same way.

Modern digital recordings are 96/24 or 192/24 min. Mp3 format was designed for when storage was expensive. 44/16 is CD standard. Mp3, to use an analogy, is like the difference between AM and FM quality at the most basic.

In quality terms cd is 44k sample rate and 16 bits a channel so the bitrate is 44100x32, 1411kbit. Mp3 is typically 192 or 320 max kbit and digital radio can be as low as 64kbit. The lower the kbit generally the lower the quality.

There's a good reason pro studios use 96/24 absolute min or 192/24 or higher and not Mp3 and it is due to quality.

Pinnacle wrote:

What's the best quality file extension to use in this case ?

I have a few flac albums , they sound great .

Yes, FLAC would serve a good alternative as it is lossless in data terms so essentially the same as WAV or AIFF in terms of CD quality replay.

but the RRS' Meridian system doesn't play FLAC.

I've also tried various bitrates, but the system just refuses to play any of my mp3s... quite disappointing really --
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2015 Range Rover Sport Supercharged V8 HSE Dynamic



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It absolutely did in the 2012 evoque I drove for 3 years with the meridian system. It is the disk format/hard drive compatability that is the issue.

weird...

I've got 3 different USB sticks - 512Mb (FAT), 2Gb (FAT), 4Gb (FAT32), and none of them are playing.

The system sees the files, but throws an error straightaway - something about not being able to read files or Device Error... --
2010 Defender Puma 90 + BAS remap + Alive IC + Slickshift + Ashcroft ATB rear
2015 Range Rover Sport Supercharged V8 HSE Dynamic



Defender Puma Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zZ1en9
Discovery 4 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zXrtKO
Range Rover/Sport L320/L322/L494 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zc58JQ

I have had that in my RRS. Perserverence. Try a hard drive. As I said, not all sticks or drives work. A pain and more to do with JLR system set up than anything else. There are alternatives which you could use eg tidal hifi stream via bluetooth will get you cd quality for 20 a month. Or rip the files to your phone and feed out via headphone jack to aux in. Or get a 2nd hand ipod etc.

Have you tried exFAT formatting ?

Over on BabyRR.com (the Evoque forum owned by Martin) there is a thread with a list of all the memory sticks that will work in the same Meridian systems as RRS has. http://babyrr.com/forum/Thread-List-of-Mem...USB-socket 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
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Father Jack wrote:

Try a hard drive.
Have you tried exFAT formatting ?

Tried a hard drive, no luck.

Tried a Transcend 512Mb stick formatted exFAT, still no luck --
2010 Defender Puma 90 + BAS remap + Alive IC + Slickshift + Ashcroft ATB rear
2015 Range Rover Sport Supercharged V8 HSE Dynamic



Defender Puma Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zZ1en9
Discovery 4 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zXrtKO
Range Rover/Sport L320/L322/L494 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zc58JQ

See above ref to drives and sticks that work on the same system, or alternatively explore the alternatives.

A 512 stick is tiny. For comparison you can pick up micro sd cards of 256 gb for under 30 quid on fleabay; I got one for 15 quid a couple of weeks back. Frankly if you were planning to cram it full of MP3 files you wouldn't be doing justice to the sound system anyway. The best stereo in the world will struggle with a poor quality source which is why, referring back to my earlier post, no professional studio uses MP3.

Try a good size stick of several gb capacity ex fat or fat formatted, from the list on the evoque site and rip a cd WAV or FLAC. Your ears and your system will thank you for it.

What a from LR... a bargain-bin Sony frontloader can play all my music, but a million rand car cannot  --
2010 Defender Puma 90 + BAS remap + Alive IC + Slickshift + Ashcroft ATB rear
2015 Range Rover Sport Supercharged V8 HSE Dynamic



Defender Puma Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zZ1en9
Discovery 4 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zXrtKO
Range Rover/Sport L320/L322/L494 Workshop Manual: https://bit.ly/2zc58JQ

Just to note .

I tried 3 different memory sticks and they all worked fine .

My mp3 albums are form various sources and they all had used different encoders to make them .

Any one having the problem with mp3s , have you even tried my 1st post ? with re-enconding them using Lame Mp3 encoder and audcatity.

Every single album that wouldnt play and gave me a error now works if i re-encode them with the lame encoder

By the way this was on a 2012 touch screen system