MP3 SD Card size

[dantheman]

Hello, picked up my 04 S4 Avant yesterday, officially puts me in the 'Newbie' catagory now and I cant stop smiling, what a car...

Simple question, before I go spending money! Aidi book says maximum SD card size is 766Mb, has anybody used a bigger card, say 2 Gb, if so did it work OK?
Any info/assistance would be magic!:icon_thumright:

I 'LOVE' my S4

Thanks all & looks like a fantastic community forum, well done!

DTM

 

[Woorlord]

Up to 2GB work fine in the RNS-E.
The ones to avoid are the SD-HC types which are incompatible and are generally for 4GB and beyond capacity cards. That's to say I have tried one "Kingston 4GB SD-HC" card and it does not work.

Early SD cards can pose problems in general - mainly with PC's and the respective card readers. Did loads of investigation years ago when TomTom brought out SatNav for PDA's, before they had there own self contained units, and found many problems with cards corrupting owing to timing issues - found to be cheap Chinese cards.
My rule of thumb now is always buy Toshiba (biggest manufacturer of memory chips in the world - probably), they have very strict tolerances on the design specification and I have never had a problem with them.

I always buy from here: http://www.mymemory.co.uk
Based in Jersey - Just do a search for Toshiba

Enjoy the S4.

 

[1wheelonly]

ill second everything woorlord said.
the size of the card isnt the whole issue, people have got 4gb cards but the rns-e unit will only read upto i think 512 files (something like that ) therefore the 2gb cards are plenty. like he said make sure its not the SD-HC.

Good luck with the avant dan,lovely cars.

 

[JohnboyC]

2GB here also.....which hold around 18 CD's worth of music each....amazingly - I still find myself getting bored after a while with taht much music selection, so have about 6 2GB cards floating around

I also have a 6 disk CD changer in the glovebox hooked up to my RNS-e......via my Bose system though I find the CD's seem to have a much better sound quality than even the highest sampling rate MP3's....across the entire frequency range.....I cannot believe my 47 year old hearing is THAT good ....

Anyone else think the same ?

 

[dantheman]

Tip top folks, just the info I was looking for

I am enjoying my S4 as much as it enjoys super unleaded...

Cheers again

DTM

 

[NHN]

I always buy from here: http://www.mymemory.co.uk
Enjoy the S4.

Yeap I'll second that seller, bought 4 x 4GB cards for camera, rns etc & all work perfectly even in RNS.

 

[dantheman]

OK........

Got three SD cards home, as discussed. Put half dozen albums on and stuck them in slot, only to be greted by 'informaton corrupt!'
Any Ideas?

My files are MP3'd using windows media player, tried formating cards to FAT & FAT32, manual recommends FAT16 but PC does not have that option!?

Woorloed, FYI it is the cards you recommended so that should rule out uncompatable cards.....

Thanks again

Frustrated

 

[Issac Hunt]

Cards need formatting to FAT32. Also the RNS-E doesnt like the latest version of the ID3 tags. Some of my tunes have needed the ID3 tags downgrading.

 

[dantheman]

Thanks for that.

Is ther an easy way to downgrade the ID tags?

 

[Woorlord]

OK........

...........tried formating cards to FAT & FAT32, manual recommends FAT16 but PC does not have that option!?

Woorloed, FYI it is the cards you recommended so that should rule out uncompatable cards.....

Thanks again

Frustrated

Just checked www on FAT types.....

• FAT & FAT16 are the same
• FAT32 is recommended for drives >2GB

Source: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/allcam/hddformat.html

My test for a good compatible SD card.....
My Canon IXUS 900Ti low level formats with FAT - this was a really convenient way to format the SD cards at the time. If my PC card reader can then read and store info on them without wanting to reformat them then they are "good" cards. With troublesome cards formatted via camera then put into the PC card reader it would request to format the card again although there was good data on the card.

Looking into the ID3 tags - will let you all know the outcome - iTunes allows changing to V1.0/1.1/2.2/2.3/2.4 - my complete CD library is imported onto my music server (Slimserver) this way.

 

[dantheman]

Thanks again, got it to work of a fashion...

Seems to be OK with files I have done from CDex...and not Windown MP, it's a start anyway!?

Is ther an easy way to navigate through folders on the card in the car, or is there a technique when loading info on card? does that make sense? Can only get to the next album by going to the last track and pressing next, or is that the way it is?

Thanks for your continued support through these troubled MP3 times...!!??

 

[1wheelonly]

dan
press the return button below the large knob and that will take you back the the album list on that card.

 

[dantheman]

Obvious really....!!

Thanks to all who have assisted, honestly!
Stuck a picture of my S4 in the gallery, will do some more when I have time, when I stop polishing....

 

[ScottyP45]

get any free tool on the net that can set all mp3 tags to IDv2 and not IDv3, some players have trouble reading v3 tags and anything like mp3doctor or similar will convert them.

The tag contains the name, artist and bitrate amongst other things, the v3 format is still fairly new-ish and not broadly supported by standalone hardware like car mp3 players.

 

[Tups S3]

ive just gone and bought a 4gb SD card - wish i'd read this first!! D'oh!!
was only a £5r from Amazon though. will try the Fat32 thing.

 

[aragorn]

if its an SD card and not an SDHC card you might be alright, but the SDHC cards are not supported.

 

[BahnStormer77]

I've not got my RNS-E installed yet, so this is just general SD vs SDHC advice: there's 4Gb SD cards out there, but they're not normally the cheap ones as most 4Gb "SD" cards will be SDHC which most older card readers and devices (RNS-E, older cameras, MP3 players, etc) will not support. Try picstop.co.uk: they have the Transend 4Gb SD cards that are hardware compatable with SD cards, although there may be some software problems, usually because it wil be expecting FAT16(FAT). £8.50, incl delivery! https://www.picstop.co.uk/Secure-Digital-SD/Transcend-Secure-Digital-Card---4GB

 

[ScottyP45]

the difference between FAT and FAT32 is simply the size of the available digits for a single address in the memory, and hence its size limitations.

A 16 bit binary number can represent 65,535 unique values (addresses), and 32 bit can represent 4,294,967,295 unique values, so it can store more addresses in the File Allocation Table (FAT) - each address is a pointer to a file or one of its blocks, or empty unallocated blocks. Bigger cards need FAT32 because they have more space hence need more addresses than FAT / FAT16 can support.

 

[BahnStormer77]

tbh, I've not even tried FAT(FAT16), I was just told to use FAT32 and it worked first time... so I've stuck with that.

Currently using 2 x 2Gb Sandisk UltraII's, but I've got 2 x Transend 4Gb cards on order (£8.50 inc delivery if anyone is interested)... I'l let you know how I get on with those: dispatched today, due tomorrow/Weds.

Apparently these should work as they're regular SD cards (not the SDHC flavour)... PM me if I haven't replied to confirm this and u need to know.

 

[PetrolDave]

Up to 2GB are SD and will work fine, 8GB and over are SDHC and will NOT work, 4G are available as both SD and SDHC but only SD will work.

FAT32 is the safe option - format to FAT32 and you're guaranteed to not have a problem.

 

[BahnStormer77]

Thanks for confirming that Dave - I was pretty confident of those facts... and i'll confirm that the pictop £8.50 cards defintiely do work within the next day or two

 

[BahnStormer77]

success: confirmed... these definitely work!!

£8.50 inc delivery!

https://www.picstop.co.uk/Secure-Digital-SD/Transcend-Secure-Digital-Card---4GB

 

[dantheman]

Getting really pi55ed off with this now...

Got my Transcend 2Gb Sd cards home, Format to FAT 32 dropped a dozen albums on and.....corrupt...!!??

What to do? What to do?

Feel like kicking it

Just as well it's a V8 so the music comes second...

 

[PetrolDave]

Have you checked the length of the path (folder name + filename) is less than 64 characters? That's the maximum for the RNS-E.

Have you checked whether the ID3 tags are V1.x or later? The RNS-E won't play MP3 files with newer versions of the ID3 tag.

Finally, what version of RNS-E SW are you running? Older versions won't accept "special" characters (like "!") in filenames.

 

[BahnStormer77]

and also, I think there's a "3 deep" rule: you can have folders, sub-folders and sub-sub folders.... but no more!

most likely to be special chars causing a problem though...

mine's runnign the 2009 DVD with software version 650 and it's lovign the 4Gb Transend SD cards....

just DOUBLE check it's not an SDHC - I think they do go down to 2Gb!

 

[PetrolDave]

and also, I think there's a "3 deep" rule: you can have folders, sub-folders and sub-sub folders.... but no more!

Never heard anyone say that before ...

I'm pretty sure (99%) that AudiA4B6US over on audiforum.us has tried much deeper folder depth than that with no problems.

SD vs SDHC sizes:

<= 2GB - SD only.

4GB - SD and SDHC available.

>= 8GB but <= 32GB - SDHC only.

> 32GB - SDXC only.

 

[BahnStormer77]

okay, the limitation is NOT "3 deep", but there is DEFINTELY a limit on file lengths and I think somehting around the total number of files and folders that you can have.

I just did a clean-out of most of my two main 4Gb SD cards and filled them up again from my main media archive and it won't pick up 90% of the playlists.... bah!!!

Just to eliminate file formats having changed (I've "refurb'd" my music colleciton and setup a lot of new playlists, so wasn't sure on the before/after M3U formats): I took one of the file lists that I knew was there, but not being picked up and truncated the names and the M3U files's name - picked up immediately.

Now is the limit on an individual folder's length, the M3U file length / both?

I'm pretty sure that there are also folders that are completely missing, so I guess it's the folder name length mostly?

I've now got an extract of the entire SD cards folders and MP3's in Excel, so I can filter on missing files and see what's working and what's not..... but it's getting late and the screen is getting tired of flipping up and down every 10mins....