hella356

It appears they said "you get a camera and a new product name" and left it at that.

USB 3.0/3.1 ports, digital out, higher resolution screen. Don't know if the CPU/RAM config has changed, but I know my 4100 could have benefited greatly from higher performance in reading large capacity SD/USB drives.

From what I can tell, the only difference appears to be a bundled camera. Disappointing.

I'm happy to report that after installing the AVH-4100NEX, it performs noticeably better than the AVH-X2800BS. Thus far (I'm still compiling the music) I've tested it with 650GB comprising over 30,000 files (about 90% FLAC, otherwise MP3) spread over an SD card and two USB sticks, all of which are 256GB capacity and FAT32. I'm going to continue pushing the capacity limits. The touchscreen responds pretty much immediately upon full boot, unlike the 2800. It also starts playback from the SD/SB inputs in about half the time. It still takes about a minute before it will start playing music, w

Hi, I currently have the AVH-X2800BS, but I might be getting the AVH-4100NEX from my brother in law for a low price. I'm very excited about the prospect of dual USB + SD card for music storage, plus the other additional features. The X2800BS is a decent unit, but there are a couple issues I'm wondering are present in the 4100: After starting the car, it takes about 30 seconds before it will respond to any user input. This is particularly annoying when I forget to turn down the volume before shutting off the car, because on startup it stays at the same volume, and if it's too loud, I hav

Does this mean having the Play Store, root access, overclock, etc.? I wonder if anything can be done about the number files/folders limitation?

I've always assumed the limit was per input. Waiting several minutes for the unit to read the drives sounds awful, though. I put 10K+ files (FLAC + MP3) on a 128GB Micro SD card in my 2 year old Samsung Galaxy S4 phone and it took my music app about a minute to read them the first time, but has been instantaneous every time since. I can understand a delay on first connection, but it's pretty weak that the Pioneer struggles with this every time.

Can anyone verify if the file/folder limit is the combined total for the device or whether it's per input?

Yes, the 15K/1.5K limitation is a letdown, as I'd like to have at least double that capacity. The Clarion VX405 claims to support 65,535 folders/65,535 files via USB, but I don't know if that's a theoretical limit - it could bog down after 1,000 files. Ideally I'd be able to have my entire PC music collection (about 100K files, mostly FLAC) on tap in the car, but the only other way to do that would be a CarPC, but that's more complicated and more difficult to access my lifetime SiriusXM account. I wonder if the 15K/1.5K limitation is a hardware or software limitation?

I would double check that after you copy all the files onto it. I've read that there are lots of fake drives out there that claim to be bigger than they really are. What people have reported is that it looks like it's copied all the files, but they cannot be read after that. According to HP's site, that model only goes up to 64GB. The Kingston 512GB drive is over $700.

Think there's any chance Pioneer will listen to us regarding the sorting & gapless issues?

I have resigned myself to the assumption that a HDD won't work, but when I get the 4000 I will still give it a go, even if it means leaving it attached overnight to try and get it to finish. If it doesn't work, I will just have to "suffer" with using the 64GB and 16GB USB sticks and 32GB SD card I already have, augmented by the 80 or so CDs I have on-hand until I can budget for the SSDs. This still represents a huge increase in available music compared to my current CD-only setup, so not a bad scenario to start with, and massive storage to be added down the road. I hadn't thought about the

It's a 500GB HDD with 14,999 files and 1,421 folders, totaling 370GB of FLAC files.

I left the drive with them and they said it sat at 99% for over two hours, after taking about 20 minutes to get to 99%. Do you think it could really take THAT long? I'm wondering if an SSD would do the initial load any quicker, or if the lag is based on the the head unit processing the list. Any thoughts about whether it might work any better on FAT32 vs NTFS?

Yeah, I really thought it would work, as it should have had plenty of power. It's NTFS, so I might give it another try on FAT32. It could be that the display unit in the store has an issue or the drive itself, although the drive works fine with every PC it's been attached to. It also didn't work with both USB connectors plugged into the 4000. Ultimately, I'm sure it will work with a pair of big SSDs, but that will add over $400 to the total cost.

I brought my HDD to the local dealer, who plugged the extra USB power connector into an external USB charging port and the data connector to the 4000. It slowly read the disk for about 20 minutes before hanging at 99%. Next attempt read it quickly, but hung again at 99%. Doesn't necessarily mean a HDD won't work, but not what I was hoping for. It's a WD My Passport Ultra; I have no idea if this is a more power hungry drive than most.

I mentioned the electrostatics because I'm also curious to see (hear) what the results would be in a truly revealing home system. I do realize this is all about the context of a car environment. Compared to my car system, the computer sound system I have with me here in NC is less dynamic, less detailed, and hasn't nearly the low-end extension of my car rig. Of course, you're correct that the overall noise floor, which increases the faster the car moves, is higher in the car. That being said, since I don't need to get on the freeway to go to work, the majority of my driving is done at 40MP

Cool, I've never heard of that plugin. I'll play around with it when I get a chance, and will post my honest results here. I'll only be able to test it via my computer's on-board analog output, attached to an older, lower-end Kenwood receiver and 26 year old Energy speakers. I'd rather test it on my modified full-range electrostatic speakers back home in California, but I won't be back there for several months, at least.

Great info, fellas. I agree, this is a silly oversight by the software people - makes me wonder if they every actually use the head units themselves. Hopefully this will be addressed in an update. The ability to drill down by typing in a few letters rather than scrolling down through hundreds of folders would indeed be a nice touch. Personally, I don't use playlists on my Android phone or Windows PC, nor utilize ID3 tags for anything. I just navigate through the folders, so hopefully that won't prove too cumbersome. Compared to fishing through a huge binder (which still only gives me acc

It may be that the conversion process to make the CDs affected the SQ in some way or if the MP3s I used had issues of their own, but I played both CDs in my car for a couple of people without telling them anything about the sources, and they both picked out the MP3 based disk as inferior sounding. Not perfectly scientific, I admit, but it was discernible. I think ABX tests have a great deal of merit, but aren't the sole measure of perception/fidelity differences. The pros/cons of ABX have been elaborated upon many times by many sources, but my default is to use the highest resolution source

Thanks for the insight, MarketSqHero. That is annoying, but I think it would be worth spending some extra time carefully placing the folders in order if I went NTFS, considering I'll likely fill the drive on the first shot and won't have to do anything further with it after that. Good to hear there is a viable solution, even though it seems rather clunky with either format! It's like when I finally got around to organizing my roughy 2,500 LP collection; it was a nightmare to find anything until I spent an entire day sorting them. Now it's no problem finding a record, so it was worth it in

I agree, although my experience with MP3s in my car consists of creating audio CDs made from MP3s. Perhaps MP3s will sound closer to FLAC quality when playing directly from USB, but I would doubt so. I don't know if there is some quality issues introduced by converting MP3s to WAV for inclusion on a CD, but I found that the MP3-based CDs were clearly lacking compared to actual CDs of the same music, when played in my Eclipse head unit. I have a pretty decent SQ setup, with a lot of sound deadening added to the car, which helps. Now, driving at freeway speeds with the windows down may mask

tickerguy, can you please elaborate on the folder sorting thing? I have the folders on the 500GB drive (NTFS) in alphabetical order by artist, with album folders under the artist, then the files themselves in order by number, as in "01 Blitzkrieg Bop.flac", "02 Beat on the Brat.flac". Does that mean that when it reads the drive, it might list the folders out of order, as in having U2 before the Beatles? I'm not interested in scanning by song, artist, genre, etc., just hoping to have it so when I switch to a USB input that it lists the folders the same way they appear on my computer. It sou

I have a 500GB external HDD which I'm going to test with a mini USB3 Y-cable. The other end has two USB cables which I'm going to plug into both ports on the AVH-4000. If it works, I'll have a solution with an external drive I already have, which will hopefully work until I can budget some big SSDs. I will actually install a separate USB power source ($13) to plug the 2nd USB plug into, a dual USB which would allow two HDDs to connect. If all goes well, I could add a 2nd drive just like it for $60 vs about $230 for an SSD + enclosure. Dang budget. It seems clear that a typical SSD USB dr

I'm not an Apple user, so CarPlay means nothing to me. The Google equivalent might perk my ears up a bit, but as long as I can get SiriusXM for Howard Stern, and maximum storage for FLAC files, I can live without all the other source options. Having HD Radio & DVD support are nice, but I can't see myself paying a penny more for either of them. Currently, the NEX series offers the highest number of files/folders on a USB storage device, along with having two USB ports + SD Card, so for me the Pioneers are the only game in town. If Alpine (or any other manufacturer) releases new head unit