Can this unit be used to play FLAC and or mp3 files off of an external hard drive powered by and connected by USB? Has anyone actually tried this? I was told at a retailer that the unit does not have enough power to run an external hard drive via the USB connection.I was told that if the hard drive could be powered, a 1tb or 2tb drive would take around 30 minutes to be recognized by the head unit. Can this unit be used to play FLAC and or mp3 files off of an external hard drive powered by and connected by USB? Has anyone actually tried this? I was told at a retailer that the unit does not... » Read More Can this unit be used to play FLAC and or mp3 files off of an external hard drive powered by and connected by USB? Has anyone actually tried this? I was told at a retailer that the unit does not have enough power to run an external hard drive via the USB connection.I was told that if the hard drive could be powered, a 1tb or 2tb drive would take around 30 minutes to be recognized by the head unit. « Show Less
832100
Yes - I've got it playing just fine off a 320Gb WD Scorpio blue (5400rpm drive) in an enclosure. Takes about 10s to read the folders and start playing which is nice (pay attention Pioneer! slow load times are frustrating).
1043062
I don't know if it would work or not. I believe that using a flash drive would be way safer to try. Even still, I would invest in a cheap MP3 player. Don't plug your hard drive into your head unit.
85303
OK.... this is a USB *input* - which is what I assume you wanted to know.The USB input on the DC-1 supports all standard sample rates (44.1k, 48k, 88k, 96k, 176k, 192k) at 16 and 24 bit depth.It uses the USB Audio Class 2 (UAC2) USB audio standard - which requires a driver (we provide it free) for a PC, but is built into modern Apple computers.The high performance USB interface chip we use on the DC-1 is the C-Media CM6631A.When you play a FLAC file on a computer or player, it is decoded by the player, and sent to the DAC as PCM.The audio output quality of the DC-1 is VERY good. OK.... this is a USB *input* - which is what I assume you wanted to know.The USB input on the DC-1 supports all standard sample rates (44.1k, 48k, 88k, 96k, 176k, 192k) at 16 and 24 bit depth.It uses the USB Audio Class 2 (UAC2) USB audio standard - which requires a driver (we provide it free) for a PC, but is built into modern Apple computers.The high performance USB interface chip we use on the DC-1 is the C-Media CM6631A.When you play a FLAC file on a computer or player, it is decoded by the player, and sent to the DAC as PCM.The audio output quality... » Read More OK.... this is a USB *input* - which is what I assume you wanted to know.The USB input on the DC-1 supports all standard sample rates (44.1k, 48k, 88k, 96k, 176k, 192k) at 16 and 24 bit depth.It uses the USB Audio Class 2 (UAC2) USB audio standard - which requires a driver (we provide it free) for a PC, but is built into modern Apple computers.The high performance USB interface chip we use on the DC-1 is the C-Media CM6631A.When you play a FLAC file on a computer or player, it is decoded by the player, and sent to the DAC as PCM.The audio output quality of the DC-1 is VERY good. « Show Less
1346745
PJC, My assumption is that the USB connector was not made to the correct specification. I make this assumption based on my overall displeasure with the charging unit. In short.....it doesn't work. I plug my Sansa Disk into a USB port on my computer and in an hour or so, I'm at 100% recharge power. I have actually monitored the charge on my Sansa Disk using the outlet plug-in charger. I would allow the MP3 player to recharge for an hour and to my dismay, the MP3 actually lost a significent percentage of its charge while plugged into the wall outlet. Frankly, the plug-in charger is worthless, in my opinion. I'm not surprised that the quality control on the size of the USB connector is dismal. Sincerely, cmp
1304132
it has two USB's one in the front and one in the back, the back is a cable where you can guide it to wherever you want for example the glovebox of your car.If you are talking about if it can play USB sticks/dongles... then i think yes it can, just put the music on the root of the USB stick and it will play, i believe i did this once with this cd player, however the sound, even at max volume seemed a god amount lower, than when i just had my ipod connected or if a CD was playing.
469802
I was able to control the music with my phone when I hooked it up to the head phone plug. I havent tried it with the usb. I used a usb drive for music and it works great. If you used one of those shorty ones it sits nicely like It's part of the stereo.
1807085
I tried to play a USB with mine. I used a 8gb flash drive and tried to play a 1.6gb mp4 file and a 756mb mp4 file. Each time it said the file type was unsupported.
1964970
Neither could I ! The USB port would not work with my laptop or MP3 player or other audio sources either. This unit has many other bugs as well. I returned mine after toying around with it for 30 days.. Sorry I couldn't really help with your problem, other than my strong recommendation to return it ASAP.....
1258823
As someone else mentioned, I don't think it will play files from a thumb drive if you have the charger plugged in. Try unplugging the charger, and make sure you don't have an SD card plugged in at the same time. Also, for right or wrong, the unit appears to remember where you left off over multiple thumb drives. So if you re-connect a thumb drive, it probably won't automatically start at the beginning. After figuring out those two quirks, mine seems to play fine with older converted MP3 files across multiple directories.
1389625
In order to get this unit to work with my hard drive I had to use an external power supply so i would have to think that you would be better off with a direct connection to the computer for charging any device. Hope this helps.
1235021
No, the USB is just to connect a music player which has its own user interface. If u connect the hard drive, there is no operating system to access that drive
1864862
I have a 32 GB flash drive plugged into mine & I control everything from the unit itself. It just has to be set on source "USB". I've also had a 64 GB flash drive in it with NO problem. I've been using it like that for over 2 years. I've never tried it with an mp3 player as I can get everything I need from the flash drive!!!
719732
I would tend to agree with the other response. I actually own three of these units and use them regularly. However, I have never used the USB port as I have only used them for mixing audio.....they work great for that!
430567
It is somewhat slow. I have not tested with an HDD but it seems that transferring a 1 GB from an SD card to a USB flash drive took a little longer than 10 mins for me. It might depend on the speed of the SD card and the HDD. When I connected the SD card and the USB flash drive directly to the computer the same file transfer took about 4-5 mins. So I would say that there is a factor of 2-3 drop in speed when using this device. I used the FtpMate app on my iPad to do the transfer.
1258827
Let me ask, do you have it on the charger? Because if you do, it will not play the flash drive. Just as a suggestion, return it while you can because it is very hard to navigate your music files and then mine simply got stuck on one song and wouldn't play anything else. Needless to say, I trashed it about a month after I got it.
1051925
I was able to play music on a USB flash drive when running from the battery. If I plugged it in, the music would not play. However, I can play music on a MicroSD card when the speaker is plugged in or running on the battery. We use it to play calming music for our dogs when we are out of town, so being able to have the speaker play while plugged in was important.I hope that answers your question.
639542
I cannot specifically say that a "USB Player" will be recognized. I plugged in a thumb drive and it worked. I have also plugged in an external hard drive through a "Blac X" (USB) and it works flawlessly. I assume that any standard USB device will be recognized and therefore should work. I read the first comment about lousy product and service. That has not been my experience. I emailed a question about using thumbnail displays and received a prompt reply the following day that addressed, and answered, my specific question - it was not a generic automated response. I cannot specifically say that a "USB Player" will be recognized. I plugged in a thumb drive and it worked. I have also plugged in an external hard drive through a "Blac X" (USB) and it works flawlessly. I assume that any standard USB device will be recognized and therefore should work. I read the first comment about lousy product and service. That has not been my experience. I emailed a question about using thumbnail displays and received a prompt reply the following day that addressed, and answered, my specific question - it was not a generic automated... » Read More I cannot specifically say that a "USB Player" will be recognized. I plugged in a thumb drive and it worked. I have also plugged in an external hard drive through a "Blac X" (USB) and it works flawlessly. I assume that any standard USB device will be recognized and therefore should work. I read the first comment about lousy product and service. That has not been my experience. I emailed a question about using thumbnail displays and received a prompt reply the following day that addressed, and answered, my specific question - it was not a generic automated response. « Show Less
800367
I have had my radio for over a year now. I had problems the first time I tried to play music from a USB flash drive. I tried another drive and it worked fine. I have no idea why the first one didn't work but formatted the second one and it worker perfectly.