Can Volvos read music from external HDDs?

[Kermit power]

Afternoon all!

I have an XC60 on order which will arrive at some unknown point in the future. Probably. I hope!

In the meantime, given that I can't go to the pub or anything of that ilk, I've been clearing out my study, the garage and all that sort of thing, and was thinking of ripping all my old CDs onto a hard drive to have them all in the car when it does arrive. This has given rise to a couple of challenges!

1. Can you actually plug an external HDD in via USB and listen to tracks directly from there? From what I've been able to find out via google, the suggestion is that you have to transfer them to the car's HDD, and this seems to only have a 10Gb capacity? This was from forum posts from a few years ago, so may be out of date.

2. If you can use an external HDD, does the car support any form of lossless files, or am I stuck with MP3, AAC or similar?

I could, of course, wait for the car to turn up and figure it out myself, but ripping 300-odd CDs is going to take a fair while, so I'd rather get started now!

[niva441]

I'm assuming you're referring to the previous generation of XC60, as the current generation doesn't have the internal storage. I can't recall trying on the XC60 I had, my current V60 can manage a high capacity USB. If you are thinking about the previous generation I can try an external USB on my fathers car.

[Kermit power]

Ah, no, i was talking about the 2021 model year. They might explain why I couldn't find any details later than about 2014!

Can the new ones support and external hard drive then?

Do you know what file formats they support?

[niva441]

I'd have to try it on my own, I've only used a USB stick so far, but hopefully a USB Disk with single USB connector is functionally similar. The older cars were limited on drive size and number of files they could manage, the current generation can manage 15,000 files in 1,000 directories.

I've only used MP3s so far (converted all my files for previous cars), what format are you thinking of using. I've just checked the manual and they can handle MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, FLC, MP4, MPEG-PS, AVI, DIvX, ASF.

[Kermit power]

niva441 said:

I'd have to try it on my own, I've only used a USB stick so far, but hopefully a USB Disk with single USB connector is functionally similar. The older cars were limited on drive size and number of files they could manage, the current generation can manage 15,000 files in 1,000 directories.

I've only used MP3s so far (converted all my files for previous cars), what format are you thinking of using. I've just checked the manual and they can handle MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, FLC, MP4, MPEG-PS, AVI, DIvX, ASF.

That's wonderful, thanks! 😁

Is it definitely FLC rather than FLAC? I'd hoped to use the latter, and as you say, I can't imagine that a single input USB drive would look technically any different than a stick.

[Murph7355]

Use a flash drive - take up far less space.

I have one of these in our XC90:

https://www.samsung.com/uk/memory-storage/usb-3-0-...

Takes up barely any space and gives sufficient storage to exceed the 15k songs limit (god only knows why makers do this!).

Be warned that Volvo's use of ID3 tags is a pain in the arse is you have compilation albums etc. There are ways around it, but they're all a fudge.

https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=...

It's worth spending time with the ID3 tags and album art etc.

[niva441]

Kermit power said:

That's wonderful, thanks! ??

Is it definitely FLC rather than FLAC? I'd hoped to use the latter, and as you say, I can't imagine that a single input USB drive would look technically any different than a stick.

FLAC, I mistyped.

[Kermit power]

niva441 said:

Kermit power said:

That's wonderful, thanks! ??

Is it definitely FLC rather than FLAC? I'd hoped to use the latter, and as you say, I can't imagine that a single input USB drive would look technically any different than a stick.

FLAC, I mistyped.

Perfect, thanks. Amazon are delivering a 128Gb thumb drive this afternoon, and hopefully the Volvo dealership will be letting me know by Thursday when the car is likely to arrive, so things are starting to come together.

[LTP]

Kermit power said:

Perfect, thanks. Amazon are delivering a 128Gb thumb drive this afternoon, and hopefully the Volvo dealership will be letting me know by Thursday when the car is likely to arrive, so things are starting to come together.

I've recently acquired a V60 CC and, faced with no CD player (my old V70 had a 6-CD autochanger), I've spent a few hours ripping 67 CDs (so far) onto my PC hard drive as FLAC files using EAC, (which is a brilliant bit of freewear once you figure out how to use it). Then I just dragged the entire stack of folders that EAC created into a Kingston 128GB USB stick where they take up about a third of the drive. Plug it into the V60, select USB and, using the library function, I can sort by album or artist and the track name comes up when it's playing, along with a thumbnail of the album cover. Sweet.

Edited by LTP on Monday 4th May 16:36

[Kermit power]

LTP said:

Kermit power said:

Perfect, thanks. Amazon are delivering a 128Gb thumb drive this afternoon, and hopefully the Volvo dealership will be letting me know by Thursday when the car is likely to arrive, so things are starting to come together.

I've recently acquired a V60 CC and, faced with no CD player (my old V70 had a 6-CD autochanger), I've spent a few hours ripping 67 CDs (so far) onto my PC hard drive as FLAC files using EAC, (which is a brilliant bit of freewear once you figure out how to use it). Then I just dragged the entire stack of folders that EAC created into a Kingston 128GB USB stick where they take up about a third of the drive. Plug it into the V60, select USB and, using the library function, I can sort by album or artist and the track name comes up when it's playing, along with a thumbnail of the album cover. Sweet.

That's exactly what I'm doing now, right down to using the same software!

[heisthegaffer]

Not the same but I've got a small USB stick in my V40 and occasionally streamed from my phone's SD card via Bluetooth.

For some reason I thought it would only allow this until I discovered the other day I can stream Spotify via BT as well. I am well pleased although there is limited control from the steering wheel buttons etc so I'll have to get the wife to find different music /podcasts whilst driving about.

Enjoy the new Xc60... Lovely motors!