Use of SD cards for music

[owl1972]

Hi all, my new A6 avant is on order. I am avidly trying to learn all I can about the vehicle in the mean time and am thoroughly enjoying reading all the threads on here and wishing March next year would hurry up. One specific question. What's the score with SD cards for music in the A6. I have not yet progressed from just using SD cards in my digital camera. What's the biggest size that can be used? How many songs will they hold? Thanks to anyone who takes the time to answer my early query.

Richard

[Guest 2]

I'm pretty sure the car will read up to 32gb - 32gb is a lot so I'm guessing near 1000 songs?

Look through this section ;)

[belly buster]

One song is about 5Mb on average. So 32Gb would be 6,400 songs.

[foxy367]

32Gb is the biggest you can use. SDHC cards are best and if you set up the music in folders like you would on Windows explorer in artist and album titles its really easy to find music it will also take MP3, MP4 and AAC files. Also if you copy in Jpeg files for the album art into the folder for the album these usually display on the centre screen too (although for some reason a few on my directory don't).

I think this is as easy to use as an Ipod and if you don't opt for the AMI then its a great replacement.

[MAVAV]

32Gb is the biggest you can use
Not strictly true. You can go up to 128GB if you wish, but I find that 64GB are the best compromise between price and capacity and I have been using the Sandisk 64GB Class 10 Ultra SDXC cards with great success. I have two loaded into my car, one for music and one for videos. The 32GB capacity comes from the fact the windows only allows you to format up to 32GB using FAT, anything above 32GB is formatted using exFAT which the car cannot read. However there are plenty of disk formatting programs available that will allow you to reformat the SD card using the FAT format.

[bwoody]

I stuck a 32gb card in my A6 C6 and it works really well. Just copied all the folder directories for artists, albums etc from itunes which I was using for my ipod anyway. You get full track selection and everything. I have found it just as good if not better than the alpine ipod interface that I installed in my Seat Leon. I will find out what card I bought and post a link for you. Think is paid about £15 for my 32gb card.

[bwoody]

Here is a link to the card I bought (SanDisk 32GB Ultra 30MB/s SD Card (SDHC) - Class 10): SanDisk 32GB Ultra 30MB/s SD Card (SDHC) - Class 10 £16.99 - Free Delivery (http://www.mymemory.co.uk/SDHC/SanDisk/SanDisk-32GB-Ultra-30MB_s-SD-Card-%28SDHC%29---Class-10)

Hope that helps

[robbyg]

i use a 32gb. i have over 100 album CDs on it plus a few months of pod casts, its only using 13GB so far. Great not needing CDs in the car.

The juke box function using the built in hard drive is rubbish as it uses itunes track ordering as opposed to windows style folders. I just use the SD card all the time.

Rememer you need to set files as mp3, not the m4a itunes defaults to.

[sofaspud]

Can you use the SD cards out of the packaging or do they need to be formatted?

[bwoody]

Can you use the SD cards out of the packaging or do they need to be formatted?

I am pretty sure I used mine as it came and it works fine. Most SD cards come formatted as FAT 32 format which is fine for music etc.

[foxy367]

:1zhelp:

[foxy367]

Rememer you need to set files as mp3, not the m4a itunes defaults to.


Actually not true the System will accept MP3 M4a and ACC files. I have a mixture of all three and they all play fine. Might be different with the Jukebox system but not the SD card

[MFGF]

Actually not true the System will accept MP3 M4a and ACC files. I have a mixture of all three and they all play fine. Might be different with the Jukebox system but not the SD card

Nope - the jukebox plays m4a files quite happily.

MF.

[sofaspud]

Can someone confirm if you can use 64gb cards if formatted as fat 32. The brochure says up to 32gb but has anyone actually used higher in an a6 sline avant.

I will only have 1 slot available as I have the standard Nav so don't want to buy a 64gb and not be able to use it.

One poster did mentioned they used 64gb earlier in the thread- is it a SDHC or an SDXC and does the slot except SDXC.

Sorry to almost ask the same thing but still confused 😁😁

[ninjabob]

Can someone confirm if you can use 64gb cards if formatted as fat 32. The brochure says up to 32gb but has anyone actually used higher in an a6 sline avant.

I will only have 1 slot available as I have the standard Nav so don't want to buy a 64gb and not be able to use it.

One poster did mentioned they used 64gb earlier in the thread- is it a SDHC or an SDXC and does the slot except SDXC.

Sorry to almost ask the same thing but still confused 

Use this:-

Fat32Formatter (http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/)

I use a 2.5ins 160Gb Drive formatted with this tool.

[Pausten]

Hi - Interesting that robbyg rubbishes the Jukebox: I am also waiting for my A6 - Collect in 11 weeks today :-)
The Jukebox in the Q5 certainly isn't much use, & I never copied my music to it on this car.
On the Q6 it didn't support playlists. - Does it now?
Can you search by different criteria? e.g. Genre?

[MAVAV]

Can someone confirm if you can use 64gb cards if formatted as fat 32. The brochure says up to 32gb but has anyone actually used higher in an a6 sline avant.

I will only have 1 slot available as I have the standard Nav so don't want to buy a 64gb and not be able to use it.

One poster did mentioned they used 64gb earlier in the thread- is it a SDHC or an SDXC and does the slot except SDXC.

Sorry to almost ask the same thing but still confused 

I use Sandisk Ultra 64GB SDXC cards, which work fine.

[DR_A6]

32Gb is the biggest you can use. SDHC cards are best and if you set up the music in folders like you would on Windows explorer in artist and album titles its really easy to find music it will also take MP3, MP4 and AAC files. Also if you copy in Jpeg files for the album art into the folder for the album these usually display on the centre screen too (although for some reason a few on my directory don't).

I think this is as easy to use as an Ipod and if you don't opt for the AMI then its a great replacement.
Hi had this issue with only certain songs / albums having artwork and found it quite annoying. I had to go through all of the songs in iTunes (using a script) to embed the artwork in each track. It took an hour or so to do but is quite satisfying when finished. i used dougs scripts and there is a link on youtube to show how to do it Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes ♫ Embed Artwork v2.0 (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=embedart)

[Hammer2001]

32Gb is the biggest you can use. SDHC cards are best and if you set up the music in folders like you would on Windows explorer in artist and album titles its really easy to find music it will also take MP3, MP4 and AAC files. Also if you copy in Jpeg files for the album art into the folder for the album these usually display on the centre screen too (although for some reason a few on my directory don't).

I think this is as easy to use as an Ipod and if you don't opt for the AMI then its a great replacement.

I've had this issue with a few files not displaying the album art. I've solved it by making sure the embedded picture file is no larger than the 800x800 pixels and 200kb file size as stated in the manual.
The only other files that would not display the album art were in m4a format, which I don't believe supports album art on the MMI. Converting these files to mp3 and embedding the album art fixed it.

[owl1972]

Hi all....with my car (hopefully) just weeks away, I have started filling a 32meg sd card up. All the tracks are M4A and not MP3 straight off itunes. Having re-read the thread above I am concerned, have I dropped a clanger or will these work ok? Some of the above comments are conflicting on this point? Thanks!

[Guest 2]

I think M4A tracks are apple store purchased tracks - not sure if these would work or not. I will try one on my RNSE tomorrow.

I'd be converting them to mp3 for handiness anyway.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

[Hammer2001]

Hi all....with my car (hopefully) just weeks away, I have started filling a 32meg sd card up. All the tracks are M4A and not MP3 straight off itunes. Having re-read the thread above I am concerned, have I dropped a clanger or will these work ok? Some of the above comments are conflicting on this point? Thanks!

My experience is the M4A format will play, but do not display the album art.

The manual states files of upto 320 kb/sec and 48 KHz sampling frequency are supported

[owl1972]

Chris / Hammer,

Thanks for your replies. Chris - these are all files that I originally uploaded onto itunes over the years from my cd collection. They are not downloads off itunes. I am really hoping they work otherwise I have wasted one whole load of time!

[newA6]

I used iTunes to save all tracks as MP3 , copied them into a single folder and just copied this to SD card. . . works great, just like an iPod.

[Potsaed]

No need to format. I took mine out of the packet slotted it into my pc, copied across my iTunes music folder disconnected from the pc, put the SD card into the slot in the A6 and bingo! All music on the SD card available in the car.

[belly buster]

No need to format. I took mine out of the packet slotted it into my pc, copied across my iTunes music folder disconnected from the pc, put the SD card into the slot in the A6 and bingo! All music on the SD card available in the car.

Officially you do need to format; but most SD cards come preformatted with FAT32 so the work is done for you.

[MFGF]

My experience is the M4A format will play, but do not display the album art.

The manual states files of upto 320 kb/sec and 48 KHz sampling frequency are supported

I have a mixture of MP3 and M4A tracks on my SD cards, and they all play fine and display the album artwork as expected. Initially I had a few MP3s that didn't display the artwork, but I used an MP3 Tag Editor (Reezaa) to fix this.

Cheers!

MF.

[KevTHC]

Not strictly true. You can go up to 128GB if you wish, but I find that 64GB are the best compromise between price and capacity and I have been using the Sandisk 64GB Class 10 Ultra SDXC cards with great success. I have two loaded into my car, one for music and one for videos. The 32GB capacity comes from the fact the windows only allows you to format up to 32GB using FAT, anything above 32GB is formatted using exFAT which the car cannot read. However there are plenty of disk formatting programs available that will allow you to reformat the SD card using the FAT format.
For the record, a formatted a 128GB card as FAT (technically FAT32) on a MAC without the need for any third party software. But I don't have the Audi yet to try it out on!