I recently got a new (well, apparently from 2012,) Kenwood Stereo. The exact model number is the KDC-X498, but from my research most of the Kenwood stereos are pretty similar. It’s a pretty cool stereo as it has a USB port on it. I can plug in any phone with a USB cable and it’ll play music from it. It will also play MP3 files from a USB Drive.
Unfortunately there are a number of caveats to make this possible;
– The USB Drive is limited to 32GB in size
– The USB Drive must be formatted in Fat 32. Most are this way from the factory, so usually not a huge deal.
– Audio files must be in .mp3 format or .wav format. Some models will accept the .acc format also.
– Some stereos can only see a certain number of MP3s per a directory on the drive. Its roughly a thousand files, but on a 32GB drive that is easy to reach. If this happens, separate the files out into subdirectories. Or as I do, by Artist then Album.
– MP3s must be in 192k format. Not 320k VBR or some other format.
Despite all of this, my stereo (and several other models,) will suddenly display “NA File” while reading a USB drive full of MP3 files. After a lot of searching on the internet, most said to make sure that it’s in the right format. Well, I run a Mac, and spent several hours downgrading all my files to 192k yet still had the problem. After several more hours of searching and no answers at all, I finally figured out the problem.
The Kenwood Stereo’s firmware does not “skip” over the Macintosh’s .DS_Store files like every other operating system has been doing for years. Modern OSes see any file starting with a . (or period,) as a system file and ignores it, or processes it as appropriately. Not the Kenwood!
So to fix this, these can be disabled in the command line using these directions I wrote years ago.
Or, it’s easy to open up Terminal in OS X, and type ‘rm -rf ._*’ (without quotes.) This will delete all the .DS Store files and everything will magically work! Make sure you cd to the correct directory first , usually /Volumes/Crucial or something similar.
THANK. YOU.
You are very welcome!
A huge thank you good people! Month searched for a solution to this problem, a little tape recorder did not give back to the store))) You are the best !!! )
Hi Rick… Used your command line in terminal and what do you know it actually played . Just did one song as a trial and am now attempting to load a lot more on to my USB drive. ( 16 G ) and then see how that goes . Seemed to take awhile to read the file so hope that doesn’t translate to longer waiting time for the whole drive ( about 12 G ) worth of songs. Kinda dumb that Kenwood would do this . We’re it not for folks like you us dummies would be lost . Regardless of outcome here , THANKS….
Exactly how is the command typed? I’m not getting any action at all.
Hi Rick I used the command in terminal and it said illegal operation. I have no idea if it worked. Little difficult for me because i have zero idea if i use terminal while the USB screen is open showing all the files or not. Sorry big dummy over here when it comes to code. you can email me if its easier. Thanks
Sorry Bobby, I can’t help you because I don’t know what error message you got.
Hi Rick, how can I resolve this issue on a Windows based computer? I have a kenwood car stereo. Thanks.
Hello Shareef, these files are not created on Windows. So you should not have this problem.
This was hugely helpful; after reformatting my USB drive to FAT32 and then using the Blue Harvest app (mentioned in the linked article on disabling .DS_Store files), I am finally able to play music files from the USB drive on my new Kenwood car stereo — though I have to say, I’d have bought a different brand if I had known this would involve so much extra work!
I did want to mention that at least in my case, the mp3 files do not have to be 192 kbps to play, once the other issues have been resolved.
Rick, thanks very much for sharing your expertise.
I am glad to hear that Todd! It sounds like Kenwood might have figured out that it should a higher bit-rate. I too would not have purchased this stereo if I knew this issue. Nothing on their website or documentation says anything about it at all.
I’m confused by your last paragraph. “Or, it’s easy to open up Terminal in OS X, and type ‘rm -rf ._*’ (without quotes.) This will delete all the .DS Store files and everything will magically work! Make sure you cd to the correct directory first , usually /Volumes/Crucial or something similar.”
What do you mean by “cd to the correct directory first”? Thanks.
cd is the UNIX command ‘change directory’. You want to make sure you’re in right directory where the .DS Store files are to delete. It won’t hurt anything to delete them from other areas, they’ll get recreated. But if you don’t delete them from the USB stick, then the problem will not go away.
Try forcing one FAT table when formatting FAT32. I have a 64GB SanDisk working solidly with FLAC files on the DPX502BT. The default for 32GB is to use two tables.
Nevermind it just wrapped out after a week of working great. Argh.
I finally got my kenwood dps500bt receiver working with 128GB USB thumb drive and flac files. The last catch was to split songs longer than 20 minutes.
When debugging this, it’s helpful to have a 2nd flash card or thumb drive. When the player crashes on a track, plug in the other flash drive and playback will start from the first track and get the player un-stuck.
Here is my work flow on linux:
#
#
# Kenwood USB stick work flow.
#
# Required tools:
# sox – sound eXchange for splitting long files.
# rename – Larry Wall’s rename program (also called prename).
# FLAC – Using flac encoding here.
#
######################################################################
######################################################################
######################################################################
#
# Set up Music files for the player.
#
######################################################################
#
# Rename files and folders to be alpha numeric
#
rename -v ‘s/[^a-zA-Z_0-9\.\/]+/_/g’ ./Music/*
rename -v ‘s/[^a-zA-Z_0-9\.\/]+/_/g’ ./Music/*/*
rename -v ‘s/[^a-zA-Z_0-9\.\/]+/_/g’ ./Music/*/*/*
#
# Split flac files that are more that 20min long.
# Player crashes on long FLAC files.
# First use soxi -D to check for long files.
# Then run with splitting if needed.
# I wrote a perl program that searches for long files and splits them using sox
#
trim-audio -c
trim-audio
#
# Check FLAC files. FLAC errors cause the player to crash.
#
find ./Music -name “*.flac” -exec flac -wst ‘{}’ \;
######################################################################
######################################################################
######################################################################
#
# Build the USB partition and file system.
#
######################################################################
#
# BE CAREFUL HERE.
# DON’T PARTITION OR FORMAT THE WRONG DRIVE!!
# CHECK WHICH DRIVE YOU ARE WORKING WITH.
# GET HELP WITH THIS IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!!
#
# In this example my system sets the USB drive to /dev/sdd
# use “ls /dev” with and without USB inserted to be sure of device name.
#
# USE EXTREME CARE!
#
######################################################################
#
# Partition drive
# You want Win95 FAT32 at offset 1024
# (My commands are in parens, yours may differ slightly)
# (Use “m” for menu)
#
sudo fdisk /dev/sdd
Create primary partition. (n, p)
Change partition type to Win95 FAT32 – not LBA (t, l, b)
Move offset to 1024 (x, b, 1, 1024)
Return to main menu (r)
Print Partition (p)
Write table and exit (w)
#
# format FAT32 file system.
#
sudo mkfs.vfat -v -F 32 -n BIGRED /dev/sdd1
#
# Mount usb to /media/
# I do this with the file folder but there is also a sudo mount way.
#
#
# Copy files on USB in sorted order.
# It’s ok to add other dirs or dir levels as input to tar.
# Using * names to get sorted order.
#
tar -cv Music/*/*/*.flac | tar -C /media/BIGRED -xv
trim-audio program here: https://github.com/rodneyramsay/trim-audio.git
hello, I tried with the terminal and I lost all my data on my hard drive … 500GB in 2min
Is it possible to go back?
thank you
Hopefully it’s all in the trash/Recycle Bin. You can recover it from there if it is. That’s why there is warnings to be really careful with that command.
Hello, I’ve the same problem but nothing in my trash… I’ve don’t touch my mac, but I’m looking for a solution to find my files 🙁 … Do you have ?
Sincerely
How do you label the folders with titles so you know the playlist in the folder?
Input USB on Kenwood car stereo and it was NA DEVICE. It was formatted EXFAT. So I formatted to FAT and ran this above command on 1GB Thumb drive in Terminal and still getting NA FILE on Kenwood KDC-165U for all files. But now the song file names aren’t showing up where they were before when It was formatted to FAT and DS files were intact. Drive is formatted to FAT (Master Boot Record) on a Mac in Disk Utility.
Hi Rick,
i am facing the same problem, i have a windows so how to fix it from there. I tried formatting FAT32 but nothing worked. Can you please advise.
Is your USB drive over 32gb? If so, it won’t work in the older stereos according to their literature.