SD card music formats
- Thread starter Daggerit
- Start date
Ok, well what about you Ash? If you have the HDD sat nav we may well have found the problem... I'll be able to try it out for myself as of next Friday so won't have to bug you guys as much! Haha.
riggssuzuki
Registered User
Yeah this is the exact reason I was hoping that you can drag and drop. You don't want to have to convert thousands of songs and then go back and delete versions to tidy it up...
I seem to remember that when I dragged the tracks straight out of iTunes they were all mp3's in the SD folder though. I'll have to double check for you with a song I know I bought from iTunes and didn't rip from a CD or whatever...
hmy7k
Registered User
I have dragged mine from Itunes on a mac onto the sd card and they are in m4a format which the car reads fine.
They could be mp3 format if they were imported as mp3 into Itunes or if they were converted.
One or two of the tracks are unplayable so I am not sure if they were in a different format I will have to investigate.
They could be mp3 format if they were imported as mp3 into Itunes or if they were converted.
One or two of the tracks are unplayable so I am not sure if they were in a different format I will have to investigate.
riggssuzuki
Registered User
Hi All,
I have the DVD nav and here's how I do it.
- On my PC all my songs are in mp3. Stored in folders and sub-folders (such as Adele then a subfolder of 21)
- I have a 16GB card in the MMI and also a USB HDD
- I store the music in the same way on both SD card and HDD. MMI shows me the folder structure when browsing, not the tags (maybe this is a feature of 'old' DVD nav). DVD nav only shows tags instead of file names. Its not smart enough to order files based on their tags (in teh DVD version at least)
A couple of points though.
- To get the hard drive to work properly it needs to be formatted with FAT32. For a number of reasons Windows doesn't easily do this. You have to use a utility such as Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd
- There's no point in wasting money on large SD cards or HDDs due to the 4000 file limitation. But class 10 SD cards help with the access speed.
- I personally think the MMI software is a bit crap. Eg, you have 4000 tracks on a drive, the shuffle function applies to them ALL not per album/folder.
- I'm in the IT industry so think I'm a bit of a smart **** when it comes to this stuff - however I STILL cannot get some files to play regardless of file format, tags, bit rate etc
Hope this helps.
Simo
I have the DVD nav and here's how I do it.
- On my PC all my songs are in mp3. Stored in folders and sub-folders (such as Adele then a subfolder of 21)
- I have a 16GB card in the MMI and also a USB HDD
- I store the music in the same way on both SD card and HDD. MMI shows me the folder structure when browsing, not the tags (maybe this is a feature of 'old' DVD nav). DVD nav only shows tags instead of file names. Its not smart enough to order files based on their tags (in teh DVD version at least)
A couple of points though.
- To get the hard drive to work properly it needs to be formatted with FAT32. For a number of reasons Windows doesn't easily do this. You have to use a utility such as Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd
- There's no point in wasting money on large SD cards or HDDs due to the 4000 file limitation. But class 10 SD cards help with the access speed.
- I personally think the MMI software is a bit crap. Eg, you have 4000 tracks on a drive, the shuffle function applies to them ALL not per album/folder.
- I'm in the IT industry so think I'm a bit of a smart **** when it comes to this stuff - however I STILL cannot get some files to play regardless of file format, tags, bit rate etc
Hope this helps.
Simo
Cheers for the reply Simo, good to see that someone in IT still can't get tracks to work as well... 
Does the 4000 track limit apply to each card you put in or is it the combination do you know?
Also, I'm still curious to hear back from someone with the HDD version to see if it does something different with the tracks.
Does the 4000 track limit apply to each card you put in or is it the combination do you know?
Also, I'm still curious to hear back from someone with the HDD version to see if it does something different with the tracks.
The 4000 limit is per card/device.
Here's teh full spec from the online manual
The following audio file specifications are supported by the CD/DVD drive, the jukebox, the memory card reader and the connection for the USB mass storage device*:
MP3 files
WMA files
AAC files
Format
MPEG-1 Layer 3
MPEG-2 Layer 3
Version 7, 8 and 9
MPEG-4
Profiles
LC - Low Complexity
File extension
.mp3
.wma
.m4a
File system - Memory card and USB mass storage device: FAT or FAT32 process, only one partition
CD/DVD drive: Joliet (CDs: single session and multisession; DVDs: only single session)
Standard - ISO 9660 Level 1 and 2
Bit rates - 32 to 320 kbits/s and variable bit rates in sampling frequencies of 8 to 48 kHz
Playlist formats - M3U and PLS
No. of files
CD/DVD drive: max. 1000 files per medium and directory
Jukebox: max. 3000 files in total
USB mass storage device and memory card: max. 4000 files in total and max. 1000 files per directory
Supported media
Memory card readers: Memory cards with a capacity of up to 32 GB
CD/DVD drive: audio CDs, MP3/WMA/AAC CDs with a capacity of up to 700 MB
MP3/WMA/AAC DVDs in the format DVD-5, -9, -10, -14 and -18,
standard DVD-V and DVD-V-compatible DVD-A
Audi Music Interface: iPod Link,
USB mass storage device Link
Meta data
ID3 tag up to 50 characters
WMA tag up to 50 characters
Support of meta data
WARNING!
For safety reasons the card reader cover must always be closed while driving - risk of injury!
Note
Here's teh full spec from the online manual
The following audio file specifications are supported by the CD/DVD drive, the jukebox, the memory card reader and the connection for the USB mass storage device*:
MP3 files
WMA files
AAC files
Format
MPEG-1 Layer 3
MPEG-2 Layer 3
Version 7, 8 and 9
MPEG-4
Profiles
LC - Low Complexity
File extension
.mp3
.wma
.m4a
File system - Memory card and USB mass storage device: FAT or FAT32 process, only one partition
CD/DVD drive: Joliet (CDs: single session and multisession; DVDs: only single session)
Standard - ISO 9660 Level 1 and 2
Bit rates - 32 to 320 kbits/s and variable bit rates in sampling frequencies of 8 to 48 kHz
Playlist formats - M3U and PLS
No. of files
CD/DVD drive: max. 1000 files per medium and directory
Jukebox: max. 3000 files in total
USB mass storage device and memory card: max. 4000 files in total and max. 1000 files per directory
Supported media
Memory card readers: Memory cards with a capacity of up to 32 GB
CD/DVD drive: audio CDs, MP3/WMA/AAC CDs with a capacity of up to 700 MB
MP3/WMA/AAC DVDs in the format DVD-5, -9, -10, -14 and -18,
standard DVD-V and DVD-V-compatible DVD-A
Audi Music Interface: iPod Link,
USB mass storage device Link
Meta data
ID3 tag up to 50 characters
WMA tag up to 50 characters
Support of meta data
WARNING!
For safety reasons the card reader cover must always be closed while driving - risk of injury!
Note
- The jukebox does not support playlists.
- The more files, directories or playlists are stored on a medium, the longer it will take to load the audio files.
- We recommend using a storage device which contains only audio files.
- If you want to reduce the time it takes to load the audio files you can create subfolders (e.g. for an artist or album).
- We recommend using SD cards with performance category 4 or higher to access the audio files as quickly as possible.
- We recommend a bit rate of at least 160 kbit/s for compressing MP3 files.
- In the case of MP3 files with variable bit rate, the display of elapsed playing time may deviate from the actual figure.
- The MMI media drives do not support DRM-protected files.
- In view of the variety of CDs/DVDs and the difference in memory capacities, the functionality may be restricted in the case of some memory devices.
- Under certain circumstances, audio CDs/video DVDs that are copy-protected or CDs/DVDs that do not comply with the standard audio format cannot be played at all, or the functionality may be limited. CDs that comply with the standard audio format have the label "Compact Disc Digital Audio".
- Under certain circumstances, multisession CDs cannot be played, or the functionality may be limited. We recommend always finalising the burning process when creating multisession CDs.
- The display of country-specific characters (e.g. for ID3 tag information) depends on the language set on the MMI system; it cannot be ensured that these characters are displayed correctly.
- Never store important data on the memory cards, the jukebox, CDs/DVDs or portable players. Audi shall not accept any liability whatsoever for the loss of files or data.
- Please note that audio files are copyright-protected.
Hi All,
I eventually got my 4rse around to fixing the problem I had with some files not playing.
The problem is a slight deviance in file format that the useless Audi MMI software cannot deal with. All my unplayable files were MP3 and MPEG Layer 1 etc....all should be playable according to the spec from Audi (and indeed, played on my RNS in my previous Touareg).
(For those who have no interest in this level of detail - if its an mp3 file and its not playing - this should fix it!)
The very slight difference I could not resolve directly as it all seemed to be the same!?!?! So I re-encoded the files that wouldn't play using Free Audio Convertor from DVDVideoSoft: Free Studio, YouTube to MP3, YouTube Downloader, YouTube Converter Great app that allows batch conversion.
Select the "Lame Insane Quality" option when converting - all should be good.
All plays fine now. At last!
I eventually got my 4rse around to fixing the problem I had with some files not playing.
The problem is a slight deviance in file format that the useless Audi MMI software cannot deal with. All my unplayable files were MP3 and MPEG Layer 1 etc....all should be playable according to the spec from Audi (and indeed, played on my RNS in my previous Touareg).
(For those who have no interest in this level of detail - if its an mp3 file and its not playing - this should fix it!)
The very slight difference I could not resolve directly as it all seemed to be the same!?!?! So I re-encoded the files that wouldn't play using Free Audio Convertor from DVDVideoSoft: Free Studio, YouTube to MP3, YouTube Downloader, YouTube Converter Great app that allows batch conversion.
Select the "Lame Insane Quality" option when converting - all should be good.
All plays fine now. At last!
Hmmmnn.I have a western digital usb hdd and it wont initialise.Its FAT32.Ive heard that there is not enough power from the mmi to run it.Would that be right? , although you seem to have yours running!!
Mmmm not sure about that. I've plugged a couple in and they've been fine. Does it not see it as being on line in the 'Source' menu? Or does it give you the "No playable tracks" error.
If it's the latter - it may be a formatting issue (appreciate you said its Fat32) - try formatting it with the utility below instead of Windows
Download FAT32format 1.05 Free - FAT32format is able to easily format large hard disks in FAT32, even in Windows XP. - Softpedia
If it's the latter - it may be a formatting issue (appreciate you said its Fat32) - try formatting it with the utility below instead of Windows
Download FAT32format 1.05 Free - FAT32format is able to easily format large hard disks in FAT32, even in Windows XP. - Softpedia
That'll be a file format issue mate. Use that util - it formats differently to Windows.
Audi needs to up their tech thershold - this is retro ******!
Audi needs to up their tech thershold - this is retro ******!
Thanks for this but I am still having problems (iMac/iTunes/class10 32 GB card)
Most of the discussion appears to be from PC users. The Audi MMI does not support Apple AAC files. The only solution for my appears to deleted all of my current library and re-import from CD in Mp3 format. I have not downloaded from the iTunes store.
For Mac users 'Playlist Export' will grab Mp3 files and sent them to SD card retaining the Album structure.
Has anybody used an Apple AAC to Mp3 convertor software?
Most of the discussion appears to be from PC users. The Audi MMI does not support Apple AAC files. The only solution for my appears to deleted all of my current library and re-import from CD in Mp3 format. I have not downloaded from the iTunes store.
For Mac users 'Playlist Export' will grab Mp3 files and sent them to SD card retaining the Album structure.
Has anybody used an Apple AAC to Mp3 convertor software?
If your cd numbers are low, just rip to mp3 with 192kbps which is more than adequate I've found, save messing with with convertors.
