Hi,

I've got new Outlander III 2013 and would like to share my experience in fixing the improper playback of the music from USB memory stick.

PROBLEM & SYMPTOMS: I have 8Gb USB stick having very small dimensions. It is very convenient in use and does not stick out of the USB socket. The stick worked perfectly with Blaupunkt media player in my previous car. To my surprise in my new Outlander the playback was accompanied with short interruptions approximately 0.1 seconds long. It was almost for every mp3 file. Obviously, data transfer rate for that stick is too low and media player software seem does not do a proper buffering of the audio file.

THE FIX: So, I tried to fool the media player by reformatting the usb stick with fat32 fiale systems but with a much larger logical block size. Instead of the default 4Kb I used maximum possible 64Kb. There might be a little loss of free space but it actually worked, no more annoying interruptions! Reformatting procedure: 1) backup you files from USB stick; 2) insert into USB slot of the computer; 3) in MS Windows click right mouse button on the corresponding drive letter (E:, F: ...); 4) choose Format from the menu; 5) in the appeared window select fat32, quick format checkbox and block size of 64K; 6) copy back your files. Whatever OS is running there it will read these 64K at a time (instead of 4K) and while media player application plays this data the OS will have enough time to buffer next 64K of the song and so on... An alternative solution might be to buy a better (faster) stick.

Hope it may help to somebody, not necessarily owner of the Outlander, but other models may also have "not a very smart software" running on their media players.

 

Good information. Thanks for sharing.

 

Here in Sweden I have had 3 years of warranty with my Out III 2.2DiD from 2013. Naturally, I serviced car those three years in authorized workshop. Every time I visited them I was asking about the software/firmware update for my media player. And each time the answer was negative...no updates! What are liers....

Recently, I found firmware update (for Bluetooth/USB module 8785A052 and, and in turn, the mp3 player!) on the Internet! The installation is very simple, the update file is simply copied to the memory stick and then you turn on your radio and hit few buttons to activate hidden menu and invoke the update. There was 12.0 version installed on my car and recently I've installed version 19.0. Apparently, software version is the year number. After the update the Bluetooth/USB module part number shows itself as 8785A084 instead of 8785A052.

The benefits:
- MP3 player can now remember the last played song and starts playing that one upon the next ignition on.
- USB flash drive detection and reading is performed much faster now.
- MP3 playback is glitch- and interruptions free (as previously described in this post).
- overall performance and sound quality is better, although control button response (like RAND) is somewhat slower, which is still OK.