Being an old fossil, I prefer playing my music from MP3 files stored on the SSD tucked away in the car’s console. The car’s infotainment system can do that, but, exasperatingly, it fails to retain the audio source selection and sequencing preferences (play randomly, repeat, etc..) between “audio-playing sessions”, I have several hundred music files on the drive; enough so that the “random play” feature presents a nice variety. What I want to be able to do is to pull into a store’s parking spot with tune ABC by artist XYZ playing, shut the car off, hop out, buy some sardines and yogurt, climb back in the car, and have tune ABC resume playing when the audio system is turned back ON. And when that tune finishes, I want the next tune to be randomly selected, too.

The car’s infotainment system doesn’t work that way, though, and its misbehavior has gone uncorrected through the two years’ worth of updates I’ve experienced. Instead, it forgets that it was playing from USB memory altogether, so that turning on the audio system brings up some sort of infuriating “select source ” prompt. It used to be possible to pick “USB” as a source directly, but the later “improved” interfaces made it necessary to rummage more deeply in the menus. And when USB source IS finally selected, it still won’t play – not until a song title from a presented list is explicitly selected. So much for the “random selection” feature; I wind up always having to listen to one of the eight or so songs with a title at the top of the alphabetically-sorted list. And so much for being able to just click the left scroll-wheel for “Music ON” without taking eyes off the road.

At least, that’s how the system misbehaves most of the time. Sometimes, the car does remember and restore the audio settings after a temporary shutdown. The duration of shutdown seems to be a factor; I don’t think I’ve seen them last more than a quarter hour.