[e.Blue]

I didn't want to rush to judgement on this and I even waited until my LYRIQ had it's first software update (dealer-installed). I've had the LYRIQ for over six weeks and there really is no other way to say it, the interface for accessing your personal music via USB is shockingly bad.

I will admit that I probably have a larger music collection than most folks (a couple thousand albums) but other GM vehicles have provided usable access to similarly-sized music collections without the LYRIQ's show-stopping design flaws and bugs.

List of issues:

• The index seems to randomly disappear meaning that the LYRIQ seems to only have access to a small portion of my music at any given time while it reindexes. If you're going on a short drive you probably won't have access to most of your music during the drive
• 'Hey Google' commands to play music from USB get re-routed to YouTube Music 100% of the time, even though Google's speech detection clearly recognizes that I said USB
• Scrolling through USB media (either via touch or the knob) is restricted to only a couple of pages while the vehicle is in motion.
• Combine the above two and this means that it's essentially impossible to access most of your USB music while the LYRIQ is in motion. If you're on a long drive on the highway, pretty much forget about changing albums without pulling over.
• There is no speed-sensitive scrolling. Scrolling through my music collection from top-to-bottom can easily take a couple minutes. If I'm at a stop light, the light will likely change before I can get anywhere near the bottom of the list. I've had other vehicles that pop up an alphabet quick jump list at a certain scroll speed.
• There is a bug that causes the interface to display the wrong album art/track information if another artist has a song with the same title but comes before the correct artist alphabetically.
• The size of the album art displayed in the gauge-cluster area is comically small for no discernible reason

The most frustrating thing is that GM already knows how to create usable media playback interfaces. It's like the software design team slapped together something bare bones that looks kind of cool and LYRIQ-specific and completely forgot about testing it for usability in the real world.

I guess the one positive thing I can say is that at least it sounds good playing Lionel Richie's song Hello while it's actually showing Adele's artwork for the same title.

 

[Nebula]

• Scrolling through USB media (either via touch or the knob) is restricted to only a couple of pages while the vehicle is in motion.
  [*]Combine the above two and this means that it's essentially impossible to access most of your USB music while the LYRIQ is in motion. If you're on a long drive on the highway, pretty much forget about changing albums without pulling over.
  [*]

That has always been a thing for very large libraries, they have always stated that you could only navigate a few pages and if you are looking for a specific song to use voice navigation.They do this to keep people from scrolling long lists and force people to keep their eyes on the road as counter intuitive as it as become.

I suggest making specific M3U playlists and adding those playlist documents into your USB drive.

 

[hightech-guy]

Also, curious: what is your number of albums, tracks, and file format?

 

[e.Blue]

That has always been a thing for very large libraries, they have always stated that you could only navigate a few pages and if you are looking for a specific song to use voice navigation.They do this to keep people from scrolling long lists and force people to keep their eyes on the road as counter intuitive as it as become.

I suggest making specific M3U playlists and adding those playlist documents into your USB drive.

As I mentioned, I've had other GM vehicles (2014, 2017 Buicks) that easily handled similarly-sized music collections. If you leave the LYRIQ long enough (several hours actually), it will eventually re-index everything and everything is snappy and accessible. The problem is that the next time that you get into the car the index might be completely gone and need to be recreated.
As I also mentioned, voice commands are currently redirected to YouTube Music, which kind of defeats the purpose of having higher-quality FLAC versions on the USB drive.
I've tried making M3U playlists for about half of the music as a test. In addition, to losing the ability to see album art, the playlists also get randomly re-indexed (slowly) along with everything else.

 

[jackyl2551]

One thing I've found annoying is how the audio UI defaults to the playlist selection screen when turning the car on. If I was playing music from the USB device, and it was showing the album cover and song info when I turned the car off, that's where it should pick back up. Instead, it displays the playlist screen that has no info on what's currently playing.

 

[davedogcaddy]

personally I stopped fooling with USB drives since this + Android Auto became a thing. Doesn't excuse a poor interface, but it's another option. I like it because I can pickup where I left off on any device that supports it:

Upload your music - YouTube Music Help

Add your personal music collection to your YouTube Music library by uploading your songs and albums. Once your music is uploaded, you can use YouTube Music to play your uploaded music as part of your

support.google.com

 

[DialM4Speed]

Does it have a line in jack? I use my old Zune MP3 players so I don't have to deal with all that USB stuff.

 

[e.Blue]

Also, curious: what is your number of albums, tracks, and file format?

Albums = 1930
FLAC = 25704
MP3 = 17813

These are spread out about 50/50 over a 512GB SD and a 512GB microSD. I've literally just broken down in the last few minutes and ordered a 1TB External SSD from Amazon. I'll be moving everything to that and see if things improve at least on the indexing front.

 

[hightech-guy]

Albums = 1930
FLAC = 25704
MP3 = 17813

These are spread out about 50/50 over a 512GB SD and a 512GB microSD. I've literally just broken down in the last few minutes and ordered a 1TB External SSD from Amazon. I'll be moving everything to that and see if things improve at least on the indexing front.

Thanks, and nice collection. Would say you are probably an edge case they didn't quite consider. Will be interesting if all the issues you mention are seen even by those with smaller music sets.

 

[e.Blue]

Does it have a line in jack? I use my old Zune MP3 players so I don't have to deal with all that USB stuff.

Modern vehicles no longer include line-in jacks and one of my main reasons for using USB is to take advantage of the LYRIQ's ability to directly play lossless FLAC files. FLAC files are essentially direct bit-for-bit copies of the files on CDs. Anything that involves MP3s, streaming or bluetooth is considered lossy and is not taking full advantage of the LYRIQ's audio playback abilities.

 

[andrew10562]

• Scrolling through USB media (either via touch or the knob) is restricted to only a couple of pages while the vehicle is in motion.

On this one particular item consider yourself lucky. I just posted last week about how my brand new '23 XT5 Sport does not allow ANY USB media scrolling at all while the vehicle is in motion. Every one of my previous GM vehicles since '07 allowed for this and that includes 2 GMCs and 3 Cadillacs (including 2 other XT5s).

 

[dgoodrie]

I would say that the media handling of the music on your USB drive is extremely buggy. I run 7,000+ mp3s and everything normally works quite well except if the system needs to re-index which is slow on my 2017 TX5. I can scroll while the vehicle is moving. Try just a few hundred modules of a smaller size and see what happens. FLACs tend to be quite large and maybe that is where the problem resides.

There are a number on mp3 tag editors around so you might try examining the module contents and cover art size.

If your entire USB flash drive (hopefully USB type c) is over 64GB then you might be running into another issue.

 

[Blastphemy]

I didn't want to rush to judgement on this and I even waited until my LYRIQ had it's first software update (dealer-installed). I've had the LYRIQ for over six weeks and there really is no other way to say it, the interface for accessing your personal music via USB is shockingly bad.

I will admit that I probably have a larger music collection than most folks (a couple thousand albums) but other GM vehicles have provided usable access to similarly-sized music collections without the LYRIQ's show-stopping design flaws and bugs.

List of issues:

• The index seems to randomly disappear meaning that the LYRIQ seems to only have access to a small portion of my music at any given time while it reindexes. If you're going on a short drive you probably won't have access to most of your music during the drive
• 'Hey Google' commands to play music from USB get re-routed to YouTube Music 100% of the time, even though Google's speech detection clearly recognizes that I said USB
• Scrolling through USB media (either via touch or the knob) is restricted to only a couple of pages while the vehicle is in motion.
• Combine the above two and this means that it's essentially impossible to access most of your USB music while the LYRIQ is in motion. If you're on a long drive on the highway, pretty much forget about changing albums without pulling over.
• There is no speed-sensitive scrolling. Scrolling through my music collection from top-to-bottom can easily take a couple minutes. If I'm at a stop light, the light will likely change before I can get anywhere near the bottom of the list. I've had other vehicles that pop up an alphabet quick jump list at a certain scroll speed.
• There is a bug that causes the interface to display the wrong album art/track information if another artist has a song with the same title but comes before the correct artist alphabetically.
• The size of the album art displayed in the gauge-cluster area is comically small for no discernible reason

The most frustrating thing is that GM already knows how to create usable media playback interfaces. It's like the software design team slapped together something bare bones that looks kind of cool and LYRIQ-specific and completely forgot about testing it for usability in the real world.

I guess the one positive thing I can say is that at least it sounds good playing Lionel Richie's song Hello while it's actually showing Adele's artwork for the same title.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Seems like Cadillac lifted the music playback system from the 2014 ELR and plopped it in the Lyriq. Your description is scarily similar to what I experienced back in 2014 with the ELR, although 'Hey Google' didn't exist back then.

I have a music collection similar to yours, both in MP3 and FLAC. The Lyriqs I've driven so far wouldn't even recognize FLAC on the USB drive, let alone index it properly. And I noticed almost everything you pointed out above with frustration. I don't know why in 2023 Cadillac has such a difficult time with user interfaces. They're keep trying to reinvent the wheel and wind up with square pegs every time.

 

[Blas.t]

You could try audiowagon:

AudioWagon - Apps on Google Play

USB media player for Android Automotive OS

play.google.com

Home

AudioWagon. Android Automotive OS USB music player

moleman1024.github.io

it was built after the polestar had some issues with music on storage devices.

I don’t have your setup to try it, but it does claim to possibly address 2 issues:

persistence: remembers the last used playback queue and playback position, so it may also keep the index persistent

google voice commands: claims to work on other Android automotive vehicles, but there are some Edge cases

I’m not sure if it will support direct SD cards in the vehicle, but if you are still having issues when you get your usb it may be worth a try.

the cool thing about the lyriq being built on AAOS is that theoretically you(the community) can build features in your car. Who knows how this will shake out in practice, but I’ve been poking around a bit and there is some potential.

 

[mrstyle25]

I literally have a box of 300+ DVD’s and Blu-Rays I’d sell cheap to anyone still doing the analog thing. Ya, we are talking about digital files, but compared to Apple Car Play, Android Auto, XM?Sirius radio, we are really talking analog.


I gave up trying to curate all but my most precious music to any in car physical system. I suggest making the transition to Spotify or Apple Music and i think 95% of your music will be their, remastered, originals and enhanced versions of it. Create new playlists and call it a day.

I have an old iPod SHuffle i keep with some classics on it. The Lyriq would not use my USB to USB-C cable converter,so i was sad, but then just made the playlists on my profile. Backed it up and ta-dah, i have my music and it’s easier to navigate.

I know that doesn’t help, but just letting you know others made the turn, vs relying on a dieting and probably minimally supported part of the car.

I’m dead serious on these movies. Heck, I will throw in my 300 disc SACD progressive scan couresel DVD player.

 

[davedogcaddy]

I think likely the sticking point is the higher quality of the FLAC files, and I get it. I was there years ago. But then I realized you get to the point of diminishing returns and went streaming with my library and never looked back. So much easier. To each his own. YMMV.

 

[TyeTye]

Hopefully an update can improve the layout. Sure the request may be obscure, but @e.Blue isnt jail breaking or modding his software. So within the realm of what it’s capable of doing, it should be to a functional and exceptional standard.
Question- how detailed are the audio settings(ie bass, treble, etc) and what are yours set to?

 

[jkeldo]

Modern vehicles no longer include line-in jacks and one of my main reasons for using USB is to take advantage of the LYRIQ's ability to directly play lossless FLAC files. FLAC files are essentially direct bit-for-bit copies of the files on CDs. Anything that involves MP3s, streaming or bluetooth is considered lossy and is not taking full advantage of the LYRIQ's audio playback abilities.

What does your manual say about file limits? For my CT6, voice activation cuts off around 24,000 files which includes the folders as well as actual music files so in reality, something near 23,000 tracks still allows for voice activation. Since your system is newer, you might have more capacity. I use a Samsung 1TB T5 SSD and have near 24,000 Apple Lossless files. It does take time to index for the first three or four times when adding a new drive but after that, when it checks the index after starting, it's about three minutes. I think your problem is too many files. The CUE systems don't seem to work well after a certain point and you stated above that you have over 40,000 files with two separate cards. I tried something similar as well putting some tracks on a separate SSD going through the second USB port. That did not work well. I would start with one SSD drive and go from there. Maybe start with 15,000 tracks and let that index properly and then add more later. But check your manual to see what limits are indicated.

Also, I don't bother with voice activation since I tend to just let the tracks shuffle and that works while indexing using the steering wheel controls or the CUE screen.

 

[jkeldo]

I think likely the sticking point is the higher quality of the FLAC files, and I get it. I was there years ago. But then I realized you get to the point of diminishing returns and went streaming with my library and never looked back. So much easier. To each his own. YMMV.

FLAC files should not be an issue as I use ALAC which is similar. The CUE system can only address so many files as I indicated in previous post.

 

[jkeldo]

I suggest making the transition to Spotify or Apple Music and i think 95% of your music will be their, remastered, originals and enhanced versions of it.

Who's to say those are better? Simpler yes but then you're still paying for something you already have. In a home system some of those newer files might sound better but I doubt that in a car environment you would notice a huge difference.