2 months in with a 2014 SEL

[PullingMussels]

First, I want to thank everyone for all the postings here.  It's been a great resource for me both before and after the purchase.  Thus far, I'm really, really happy with my C-Max.  I love the ride, the space, and the fuel economy.  

 

As a little background, I drove a 2006 Civic for eight and a half years. It now has about 75K miles on it and got passed down to my teenage daughter.  My wife has a 2010 Prius, that she really likes, and when I started looking, I wanted something that got considerably better mileage than the 28 mpg I was getting on my Civic in town.  I pretty much decided on a hybrid, but then I ruled out the sedans where you usually lose so much trunk room to the battery.  I was initially thinking about another Prius, but I've never really liked the way it drove or the road noise.  When I drove the C-Max, I was pretty much sold. 

 

Here are a few random thoughts from the first couple of months:

• Man, this thing is quiet.  Maybe it's just random, but I've come close to hitting more squirrels (no contact yet!) in the last two months than in the last two years.
   
• Last week I started hearing a tick-tick sound whenever I got above 15 mph or so and had the windows down.  I tried looking around the wheel wells and even pulled a couple of rocks out of the tires, but nothing helped.  Finally, I took it into the dealer yesterday.  The technician took it out for a drive, heard the noise, put it on the lift, then pulled another rock out of the treads.  Problem solved.  Unbelievable.  I'm not convinced I would have heard this noise on a non-hybrid.
   
• I really, really like the refined feel to the car.  It's head and shoulders above my wife's Prius, and it's a lot more comfortable for me at 6 feet tall than my Civic was. 
   
• I picked up the car on May 29, and just passed 1000 miles yesterday.  Yes, most of my driving is in town.  I've only filled up twice, but on the second tank I got 45.5 mpg.  I'm pretty happy with that.  It's not as good as my wife's Prius, but it's a huge improvement over my Civic.
   
• I love that my C-Max has the power if I need it, but by following some of the techniques I've found on the forums, I can still get really good mileage.  
   
• I haven't had any major issues with MyFord Touch, but it feels a little cumbersome at times.  The one hassle I finally figured out is that it won't read files in folders on playlists, so you need to drop all the music and playlists in the root directory of the SD card.  Now that I have that figured out, I've got a 32gb jukebox on shuffle, which is pretty awesome. ​

 

Thanks again to everyone for all the information!

 

[fotomoto]

Excellent report and Welcome to the forum!  Love the rock story; talk about the princess and the pea!    :lol2:  Your MPG will get better as both you and the engine break in.  :shift:

 

Make sure the wife gets the inverter recall done on that Prius ASAP. 

[Rick]

Haven't pulled trigger yet.  Appreciate your post and ALL the others in this forum!  2 thoughts ...

 

-  The first 2 months, is there a recommended "break-in" period?   Restrictions?  ie Don't drive over 60 mph for 1,000 miles, or yada, yada ?  I need to take a 800 mile trip with car loaded soon.

 

-   LOL, I brought an 8G SD card with me for the test drive, and discovered what you did.   No great menu/playlists, but it works! Like the shuffling.

    My question is, is it the same for the USB too?    And ...... can you switch 2 SD cards in and out.  1 SD for music, 1 SD with MAP info ($50 eBay) for navigating when needed.

 

Glad you are enjoying your decision on C-max, thanks!!!

[Adrian_L]

I was told to avoid excessive RPMs and avoid driving at the same speed for long periods (i.e. don't go on the freeway at 70 mph for 2 hours)

 

You'll notice that the milage starts to improve after break in period. (I think it was 3,000 miles but could be wrong)

 

EDIT: from the manual:

 

BREAKING-IN

You need to break in new tires for approximately 300 miles

(480 kilometers). During this time, your vehicle may exhibit some unusual

driving characteristics. The engine also needs to break in. Avoid hard

accelerations and driving too fast for the first 1000 miles. If possible,

avoid carrying heavy loads up steep grades during the break-in period

Edited July 24, 2014 by Adrian_L

[PullingMussels]

Rick,

 

I haven't tried a usb stick since I don't like it sticking out and I'm afraid I'll bump it and mess up the port.  Sorry I can't help with that. 

 

I imagine you can swap the cards in and out, but it does take awhile for the system to index an SD card once you put it in (10 min or so for my card).  I didn't get the nav system since I've been really happy using Waze on my iPhone.  I got one of these http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008ALV0V4/  that I mounted on the brim above the touchscreen and in front of the cd slot, and it looks like it was made to go there.  I don't have access to the cd player, but that's not an issue with my phone and the SD card!

[Jus-A-CMax]

Great post PullingMussels and welcome to the forum :) 

[Kelleytoons]

You can swap USB in and out but I'd recommend just getting a huge one (and you do NOT have to put your songs from a playlist all in one folder, but I'll explain that in a second).

 

First, I'd recommend this USB to anyone worried about it sticking out: http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-Low-Profile-Drive--SDCZ33-016G-B35/dp/B005FYNSZA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1406280117&sr=8-4&keywords=usb+flash+drive

 

All different sizes (I have the 64GB with *most* of my music on it :>) and you'll never know it's even in there (which is good and bad -- I put mine in the lower second USB slot so my wife can use the upper one for hers to swap in and out as needed).  Even with over 10K and 50GB worth of songs it only takes 9 minutes to index and command list and it's ready to go for good.

 

I love your observations about the Prius as I drove my friend's for a week before we got the C-Max and it was such a whale and so noisy I couldn't imagine owning one. 

 

Now, as to playlists: the reason you can't put your music into folders and have the playlist play them is in how you create the lists in the first place.  You need to create them with directory information.  Without that it assumes they are in the root directory because that's where it always looks.  However it's a bit tricky as most playlist creating software doesn't create folder info, or create it properly (and when you use it you need to be careful that you are creating the playlist on that drive itself, in your PC).  Your best bet is to edit them yourself (they are just ASCII files and can be created/edited in Notepad, for example).

 

What I would do is start with whatever playlist software you want to use and then edit the results for the proper pathing.  That may or may not involve editing out the drive info, but you can experiment with whatever you are using for your m3u files. Here's an example:

 

Let's say you have two songs, each in two separate subdirectories (by artist) and in one of those subdirectories the song is further inside of an album folder.  You would specify them like this (assuming the playlist is stored at the root directory):

 

..\Sting\01. The Last Ship.mp3

..\Tony Bennett\The Art of Romance\01 Close Enough for Love.mp3

 

Those (..\) mean to start in the playlist directory and then follow the path to the music. 

 

You may find you have the option to specify relative or absolute in your playlist creating software and you should try both options and then look at it in notepad and see how it's written.  The problem is that even with one that specifies subfolders it may also specify a drive designation (which won't work since you don't know the drives assigned in your car).  So you might see something like this:

 

C:\Sting\01. The Last Ship.mp3

C:\Tony Bennett\The Art of Romance\01 Close Enough for Love.mp3

 

You'll need to replace that drive with the relative folder designations as I showed above.

 

Here's more explanations about how M3U files work:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U

 

Once you understand them it's pretty easy to create and/or modify them to work properly.

[Kelleytoons]

More info:

 

For those uncomfortable with editing things (or just want the convenience of dragging and dropping files and no editing) I found a free playlist creator that works with MFT.  It's called (wait for it) Playlist Creator.  Current version is 3.6.2.

 

You need to change one thing.  Make sure you go to settings and choose Playlist Details and in Saving Playlist Entries choose Absolute, without drive.  

 

Now you are good to go as long as you save as M3U.  By doing this you can have all your music in the right folders and store your playlists in the root directory.

Edited July 25, 2014 by Kelleytoons

[Rick]

Wow, thanks KellyToons and Puling mussels !

[PullingMussels]

KellyToons, 

 

Thanks for the pointer about the path names.  It makes perfect sense that it would use the Microsoft convention of '\' for traversing directories rather than the unix separator of '/'.    I'm working on a Mac, so by default, it also uses '/'.  

 

The export playlist option from iTunes doesn't work since it gives the absolute path to the iTunes library, which is definitely bad for music in the car!  I've been using a Mac utility called Playlist Export, and it has an option to use the Windows path conventions when it exports a playlist, so now I've got things happily stored in folders rather than all in the root directory.  Thanks!

 

I think I have one small clarification:  I believe that '..\' refers to the parent directory, so that ..\Sting\  would take you up one level and look for the directory Sting at the same level as the current directory.   .\Sting\   or just Sting\ will look for a subdirectory of the current directory. 

 

Thanks again!

[Kelleytoons]

Yeah, you're right -- after I wrote that I was actually looking at the way my playlists are organized and I don't use ..\ but just absolute pathing (minus the drive letter).

 

Something else I've mentioned in another thread (but worth repeating) -- turning off the two Gracenote options will then allow you to play albums correctly (in the right order) as well as index MUCH faster (a minute or so as opposed to 10 minutes).  This I didn't find out until yesterday when I was having issues playing some Broadway stuff (where it's really noticeable when it's out of order).

 

I have a MacBook Air so I straddle both worlds <g>.  For those using Windows there is a great free utility/player/all-purpose music organizer called Media Monkey which I would highly recommend.  It will embed your album art for you as well as manage your music even better than iTunes (which I also like but isn't particularly SYNC friendly).  You can even import iTunes playlists into it and it will output them correctly (at least in terms of SYNC) for use in our cars.

[RockwallRick]

We are approaching two months in with ours as well. No problems so far! Wife is getting 47 to 50 mpg on her short trips into town. Overall, around 43 mpg with mixed city/hwy driving. :happy feet:

[MomsHugs]

Wow, Kelleytoons ~ You are just amazing with all your music tech tools!! I use Win7 & really appreciate your Media Monkey suggestion. Thank you! Hugs ~ Eve

[Kelleytoons]

Glad you found it useful.  I'm ex-IT (retired after 30 years in the industry) but always try and keep up as best I can.  This is the *best* time to enjoy tech, be it hardware or software, as there is just so much great stuff out there.

 

Media Monkey (in case I didn't mention it in this thread -- I think I mentioned it in another one) also lets you manage your album art (you can click on an album and then "Get Art from Web" or some such, and most of the time it will correctly find the album and embed the art in it for display on our screens).  It has one additional trick which may or may not work in MFT (I don't have a definitive answer because I'm still playing around): it will allow you to embed Replay Gain information into each file.

 

Essentially that is information that can be used on playback to balance the volume between albums (albums are seldom recorded at the same levels, which makes random or playlist playback a little awkward at times with the variances between songs).  There are *some* devices that support this (SanDisk Sansa MP3 player being one) but I don't know if MFT does (if it doesn't it's something we should lobby for, and I would except I really have no idea where to do that).  Some other software (like iTunes) will also try and manage this volume differences using their own, more proprietary methods, but Replay Gain is an MP3 standard that *could* be supported by all.

 

Essentially in Media Monkey you use the "Volume Leveling" process in your Tools/Options dropdown.  After analyzing your tracks it will then embed that info into them.  Note that it is harmless for devices that don't support it (it will be ignored) and adds little if anything to file size (you won't notice it).  I really need to run some tests to determine whether MFT can use this or not (it would NOT be something in the manual, which is pretty vague about a lot of things, and I can't get any answers from the techs who ONLY know the manual and little else) but it doesn't hurt to have it there.