Why did you convert to .wav?

 

Lossless audio - no compression like MP3.

 

The speed rating is of no significance when playing audio files. The speed of the drive is more important when writing to it, like with a video camera. Playback speeds for any USB drive made today is way more than adequate for use as a music storage and delivery media.

To your point though - Amazon has hundreds of "fake" capacity USB drives. They alter the controller firmware in the drive to report capacity far greater than what the actual memory is. Once you get to the limit of the drive anything you try to copy will be corrupted and likely fail the drive. Buying name brand drives from reputable sources is the best way to avoid these scumbag sellers. If it seems too good to be true it likely is - especially anything from China.

 

Just to be clear, you're not uploading anything. You're providing access to Sync to the music on a USB memory stick. You can have a huge library, put in the stick, close the door (if your vehicle has a door), and let it play forever...

I have both that and my phone, depends on what I want to listen to. I prefer to use Amazon or Google Music most times, I also have unlimited data.

 

From a technical standpoint, it's as someone else mentioned, it's a means of having a library of music on one medium (the USB, not stored in Sync) that allows you to play it through your stereo.

Personally (this work-at-home condition notwithstanding), I have a decent commute to and from work and I listen to a lot of music. I also take lon trips to my hunting camp, or other longer stints where I'm on the road. However, commercials and talk annoy me, as I just like uninterrupted music. I had Sirius in a loaner truck and found it just as annoying because it dropped out a lot here in the city and there were actually more of what I considered commercials on it (not advertising products, but other Sirius stations, DJs, etc.). I don't stream music through my phone or store music on it, as I guess I'm still a bit of a neanderthal.

I love the USB method because I enjoy a very wide range of music styles and love to just hit "shuffle" and see what plays. This is another reason I didn't like the Sirius, the stations were very limited to a specific type, era, etc. My library runs the gamut from AC/DC, Toby Keith, Luke Bryant, The Offspring, Jethro Tull (obviously), The Who...I just like the variety and get a kick out of when Taylor Swift's "Shake it Off" drops right into "Shipping up to Boston" from the Dropkick Murphys.

It also allows me to rip music from CDs (like I said...a neanderthal ), and bootleg it from Youtube so I can save it to my MP3 Player and onto something my truck can read.

So, to answer your question, you surely can connect your iPhone to your truck via Bluetooth or cable and play directly from it, whether it's through stored music or streaming. I just choose the USB route.

Aqualung

 

Sound quality. Bluetooth has the ability to provide near CD quality stereo, but few mfg's use proper implementations to provide it. For devices using call audio (like our trucks), almost everything out there is requiring ALL audio be compressed to the same narrow bandwidth off call audio, and do it on top of the native compression of the file, even though there is no requirement to do so. I used my phone for a bit before loading up a USB stick, Ford definitely hasn't setup BT for quality audio.

The only advantage of running BT audio is google directions voiced though the speakers (Sync 2). I got over losing that in the space of two songs.

 

If you put a Sync 3 APIM in it you can have your cake and eat it too IRT hardwired sound and the google maps lady.