The Hell that is AMI / MMI and the case of the missing Artwork

[jzbdski]

Hi there,

Having recently taken delivery of a 15 plate A4 SE Technik and discovering the 'joy' that is the hideous MMI interface (knob designed for LHD car, etc, etc) I called Audi UK to check whether it was possible to get a connection lead for an iPod classic which would allow album art / cover flow to make the experience a little more pleasant. They told me that there was but refused to give me a part number because 'we don't sell parts'.

Having gone to my dealer, who has been incredibly helpful, we've tried a couple of different leads with differing results:

Firstly we tried a 4F0 051 510 K with a blue grommet (no apple chip) gives me access to the Audio content on the iPod but no Video or cover art.

Then a 4F0 051 510 R with a red grommet (apple chip in place) which came up with 'Device Not Supported'

Finally Audi advised 4F0 051 510 P -which is merely a dual-pack containing the self same 4F0 051 510 K and an AMI-USB cable.

Reading between the lines, it looks like I'm caught in a loop between an older iPod model (running FW 2.0.5) and a new MMI running software which isn't backwards compatible (FW HN+_EU_AU3G_P0900)

If I had an older unit then the black cable 4F0 051 510 L would work just fine, but it won't work with anything above MMI 2.

Now setting aside the fact that I'm bloody annoyed, having bought a replacement iPod on the strength of the advice from Audi, do any of you know whether there may be any work-around to allow me to get the Album Art / Cover Flow to work ?

Are there any 3rd-party leads which work in this capacity ?

I know I can stick a load of tunes onto an SD card but there are playback features the iPod offers which are really useful and I can't face the hours of trauma in having to manually re-embed the album artwork into each individual track so that it will work on SD or the Jukebox.

Any help would be most gratefully received !

Thanks in advance !

[Guest 2]

From doing a search it seems you do need the red one. Did you try a newer device?

[jzbdski]

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately the 'newest' device I have with the 30-pin dock connector is that iPod Classic which isn't supported by the Red cable.

It's frustrating as, instead of going down the 'classic' route, I could have looked at an iPod Touch or similar.

Music plays fine but no Artwork, no Video and no Podcasts (apparently)

[allanmb]

I just bung all of my music on a portable hard drive, and then use my own program to make playlists and it all works great. You dont need to embed any artwork into the mp3s, the MMI will use the jpeg in the folder too just like iTunes/windows media player. The best way I have found to organise the music for this is to split by genre, then for each genre split by asrtist, then finally split each artist by album. That way you can choose to listen to a whole genre, or a specific band, or even a specific album which are all fairly easily navigable. Then you have the benefit in not needing any Apple products/software ;-)