MP3 wont play, help please

Well my new iPod touch arrived yesterday, quickly got it up and running, plus I bought another album from Amazon.

Connected it up to the car this morning, all three troublesome albums on the usb stick, played perfectly form the iPod, plus the newly downloaded album.

That's reassuring, but still takes away the sheer convenience of using a usb stick.

I have reported to Meridian who referred me to my dealer as they do not make the control unit. I have emailed my dealer. No reply yet
I got the new Lucius album to work by using freerip, this time I converted to FLAC, set MP3 output at 320 then converted back to MP3. Plays perfectly now. What a faff

I have a feeling we won't get a resolution to this as no one seems prepared to either take responsibility or do something about it.

I have contacted Amazon and LRCS, not satisfied with the replies up to now.

I have a different issue with the USB stick connected directly to Evoque's 380W Meridian.

Some of the files randomly don't play.
I get error File and Folder not available then the player freezes to 00:00 seconds for every song i try to play.
After this any stick connected fails to play. (the LED on the stick looks like standby mode: flashes slowly from on to off)

It can read the file structure but it wont play anything.
I tried removing all VBR files from the stick. Same issue occurs.

It comes back to normal only after a few hours in standby mode (engine off and locked)
Anybody experienced something like this ? I need some help to figure this out while still in warranty.

Problem 2 about the audio system:
I also have some strange background noise while auxiliary input is selected (even without any wire connected to the AUX input). Anybody experienced this ?