USB success! 22,000 tracks and counting..

[AndyH123]

Updates -

First post (21 July)
Added "Bugs and Niggles" section (22 July)


Hi,

Finally got a USB cable for my AMI on the weekend. The chaps at my local service centre managed to order one in overnight. £25 all in, which makes it cheaper than the iPod cable!

I strugged to find much info on the web, so thought a FAQ style thread would be useful.


Types of cable

There are two available:

Full size USB - part code 4F0051510G
Mini USB - part code 4F0051510H

The full size version presents a female USB connection, designed for memory sticks, card readers and hard disks. It was the hard disk option that was of interest to me as I've got 70Gb+ of high quality .wma sat on my PC at home. I had a dilema over the cable as my portable disk takes a mini connection, but I figured I'd have more flexibility with a full sized cable in conjunction with a converter (see below).


What works

160Gb portable Western Digital HD (I can get the exact model if anyone wants)


What doesn't work

Zune 80Gb


Using converter cables

The manual seems to warn against this, but I'm using a short mini to full USB cable (often used for charging / syncing phones) with the 160Gb disk and all seems well.


Tips and Tricks

First off I formatted the 160Gb drive in Vista but I frowned at only being offered NTFS and exFAT. I knew NTFS was a no go, wasn't confident about exFAT but tried anyway. No luck, the car spat it out.

Scratched my head a bit, thought about partitioning the disk but couldn't see that getting me much further. Seems XP and Vista limit you to 32Gb. I was sure I'd read reports of large volumes working with the AMI so a little bit of research later I found this:

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Point this at your drive and a second or two later you've got a large FAT32 volume. Hurrah. 90 mins later I had all my music on the disk and in the car!


The MMI Experience

Looks just the same as playing .mp3 / .wma from a CD to me! Virtually identical to the iPod too, except you don't get the top level menu of Playlists / Podcasts and the like. I did spot "playlists", but it was greyed out. Might investigate this further.

The device appears as "USB_DEVICE" which is a little rough and ready compared to it displaying whatever you've named your iPod but whatever.. Seems fast too, shuffle is instant which is good. The only delay I've had so far is navigating up to the full artist list, which is hardly surprising considering the amount of data on there.


Bugs and Niggles

1 - Skipping when on shuffle. Seems if you go too quickly the MMI takes a while to catch up. It'll kick off playing the next tune but you'll either be seeing the previous track displayed or nothing at all.

2 - "Loading track names" message. I saw this today when scrolling through a list of folders (about 60, 2nd level of folders). When scrolling down it quickly caught up, never seemed to refresh when scrolling up.


Plays for Sure support

This Audi page hints at support for "Plays for Sure" and "Certified for Windows Vista":
http://www.audi.com/audi/com/en2/about_audi_ag/news/modelle_services/monthly_summary/The_Audi_music_interface_keeps_up_to_date.html

Not sure what this might get you above what I've described here. Bizarrely the Zune isn't "Plays for Sure" and as above I've confirmed that as a non-starter.



Happy to try various things out if I can help add to this thread!

[Col]

Nice write up.

Problem is now, you'll be skipping tracks more than you will be listening to them :p

[AndyH123]

Nice write up.

Problem is now, you'll be skipping tracks more than you will be listening to them :p


Ta, and yes, I fear you are correct. Still, it is nice when it surprises you with something you'd forgotten about. And I was struggling to decide which albums to burn onto CDs as I got bored every week or so, figured it better to just have the whole lot to hand.

Now, what would be nice is if Audi could implement a search tool similar to the SatNav - its quite hard scrolling through a long list. Having a skip to letter would be a great help.

[neilb]

Andy, Great post and a great idea.
- What bit rate are your wma files?
- Can you provide more details on the WD HD?
- How do you power the HD and where do you put it within the car?
- Must get that 'playlist option' working. I wonder why its grayed out - it's the same on my SD card via MMI.

nlb.

[neilb]

With the Audi music interface, drivers can enjoy their personal music libraries in their car as well. Audi consistently offers the latest updates at www.audi.de/mp3. These updates ensure reliable function and connectability with media players such as the Apple iPod and USB storage media.

nlb

[AndyH123]

Andy, Great post and a great idea.
- What bit rate are your wma files?

Ta:) Mine are 192 kbps.



- Can you provide more details on the WD HD?

Will do..



- How do you power the HD and where do you put it within the car?


Some portable drives have 2 USB sockets, I believe to ensure a laptop can get enough juice to it. The one I'm using only has one, so no issues there. The car seems to have no problem powering it (if I recall, the manual suggests you'll be ok up to 500mA). In fact, it seems to power the drive all the time, even with key removed (doesn't make sense to me so maybe parts of the system wake up when you unlock the car)..

It fits comfortably in the AMI box, there's quite a lot of room in there. Doesn't seem to get too hot either, I was wondering if heat might build up - especially if power is always being fed to the drive.



- Must get that 'playlist option' working. I wonder why its grayed out - it's the same on my SD card via MMI.

Mm, was thinking about this on the way to work this morning. My only thought was to drop a few popular playlist formats in the root folder and see what happens.

[AndyH123]

With the Audi music interface, drivers can enjoy their personal music libraries in their car as well. Audi consistently offers the latest updates at www.audi.de/mp3 (http://www.audi.de/mp3). These updates ensure reliable function and connectability with media players such as the Apple iPod and USB storage media.

nlb


Ahh, I think that might've been where I once saw a .pdf of tested devices. I'll poke around with the translator when I have a bit more time.

Looks like there may be more info up there now, I don't recall seeing mention of a bluetooth adapter last time I looked.

[neilb]

Andy, re the playlist: It must be a file type that the MMI is looking for. Let me know if you have any sucsess.

nlb.

[BMWBig6]

How does the drive handle the bumps? I was looking at solid state drives in case vibration is a problem for conventional platter drives.

[AndyH123]

How does the drive handle the bumps? I was looking at solid state drives in case vibration is a problem for conventional platter drives.

No problems in that department so far and I'm on 18" wheels (obviously down to the quality of the car and my driving ;))


The drive I'm using is model WD1500XMS-00

[JohnH99]

As with Andy's original post I have connected up a Western Digital Passport 250 GB hard drive and had success with MP3 files. A possible word of warning though - the manual states that AAC files are supported and I had whole load of AAC files at 256 kbs ready to go onto an iPod which I was going to buy before I took the USB drive route. I copied these onto the Passport drive and the car didn't recognise them. On the offchance I tried an MP3 and straight away it played from the drive. I then had to download an M4A to MP3 convertor and process all the files rather than rip them all again and I now have a load of 256 kbs MP3 files which play perfectly. So I guess the moral of this strory is try it before you go and rip most of your collection only to find they don't play.

By the way, does anybody know whether the drive can be left connected in the car as it powers up as soon as the USB cable is plugged in.