[Guest]

Hi all

Am new to the forum and kind of excited about my new Q5 which hopefully (it is a bit delayed) will be delivered in a few weeks time.

I'm trying to understand how the car's hard drive works for storing music (all I know is you can transfer music using SD cards). I use a Mac at home and all of my music is stored in iTunes. Does anybody know if/how I can load my music on to the car and whether it will play the songs by artist / album etc like an iPod will?

I'm hoping it will but just in case it doesn't I've ordered the iPod connector (think its called audi music interface).

Am really looking forward to getting the car - this is the full spec I've gone for: 3.0TDI SLine in daytona grey, 20" 7 double spoke wheels, B&O, panoramic sunroof, iPod connector, mobile phone prep, tech pack / satnav / MMI, nappa leather, privacy glass, rear blinds, rear bench seat plus, light package, storage pakage, tow bar, cruise control, heated front seats, electric door mirrors, reversible load mat, underfloor boot storage thing (reckon it should light up like a xmas tree)

Think I'm a bit weak when it comes to the options but I got a good deal, just wish I'd ordered the Audi drive select now that I have been reading about the firm S Line suspension - that said I am coming from a 2006 S3 and I reckon it can't be much firmer than that.

Anyway, can't wait to get it and hope somebody can help with my question about the sound system!

Cheers

Daytoona

 

[Guest]

I too don't have my car yet but I suspect that, nice idea though it is, the HDD will usually take second place to the iPod.

The jukebox should allow you to store music by Artist, Album, Genre etc but my understanding is that you'll find it less versatile than your iPod. One issue is that it sorts song titles alphabetically so if you wanted to play an album, it would not play in track order. Hopefully this is something Audi can address with an update to the firmware. I've posted elsewhere that track titles would need to be prefixed with the track number to play in the correct order within an album. I've also heard that, when SD card play is interrupted, like when stopping for fuel, it doesn't retain the point at which play was paused. Someone else might be able to confirm.

Transfer via SD card is the most convenient method although you can transfer files from recordable CD or DVD. Quite a few owners (mainly based in the US and continental Europe) are surprised the Audi set up won't rip tracks from their audio CDs or allow transfer direct from an iPod. For me, this was never going to be possible but perhaps their expectations are naturally higher.

My spec will be very similar to yours so I'll be interested to hear what you think when the time comes.

 

[Rahoo]

hello and welcome, I got my Q5 in March and the have all the trimmings, the juke box is amazing, I drag my music files into my SD card go into my car put in the slot press import and then it imports all the music, and its on your jukebox. I used to d it via Windows media and it was fine, but I have noticed that when I do it with itunes it sorts the tracks out on my madonna and pop it rock it compilation in alphabetical order of the title of the tracks, very annoying...but I love being able to no have any cd's in my car now!

 

[guyguyke]

I agree SD-cards are very practical, but the sound from a full-CD (not mp3 files) is by far better
Even the FM-tuner gives a better detailled sound, ans his selectivity is astounding (+ absolutely no cracks)
After the first "play"-days, I essentially use the FM, and I'm toying with the idea retrofitting aan CD-changer
(classical music sounds very goud through teh Audi sound System)

 

[Guest]

If your taste is for music heavy on detail, classical being the best example, you are always going to feel short changed with the heavy compression of mp3 and the like. You just have to settle on a codec and bitrate that does the best job. If you have the Audi Music Interface and an iPod, you could always import your music as Apple Lossless files. You won't have access to the tens of thousands of tracks you'd get with from mp3, wma, etc but still many more than the 6 CDs at a time the changer would give you.

Popular opinion says that iTunes' AAC format (.m4a files) sounds better than mp3 even at 320kbps so it is worth experimenting to see if this is acceptable but a direct comparison with CD, itself already compressed, was never going to be favourable.

 

[Guest]

Interesting, thanks all

Think I'll be buying an sd card reader and giving it a go. Will be interested to see how much structure I can keep to the files when I copy the music over (i.e if it stores the music by artist and album as seems to be the suggestion).

Does anybody know if you can copy the files direct to the sd card from the iTunes application on a Mac or do you need to go to finder and do it (I suspect the latter would be more manual exercise). Also, the files are stored on my mac as .m4a files - not sure how I would go about changing the format if I needed but hopefully somebody at apple will be able to tell me.

Only a couple of weeks to go hopefully....

 

[Rahoo]

its stores artist, album, track and genre when I drag my tracks from itunes to my SD card ( do this by dragging them into the SD drive in windows explorer )

 

[Guest]

Interesting, thanks all

Does anybody know if you can copy the files direct to the sd card from the iTunes application on a Mac or do you need to go to finder and do it (I suspect the latter would be more manual exercise). Also, the files are stored on my mac as .m4a files - not sure how I would go about changing the format if I needed but hopefully somebody at apple will be able to tell me.

Only a couple of weeks to go hopefully....

You should be able to use iTunes to copy to the card and you won't need to do any converting since the Audi is able to decode .m4a (AAC format) without any problem.

 

[Guest]

Interesting, thanks all

Does anybody know if you can copy the files direct to the sd card from the iTunes application on a Mac or do you need to go to finder and do it (I suspect the latter would be more manual exercise). Also, the files are stored on my mac as .m4a files - not sure how I would go about changing the format if I needed but hopefully somebody at apple will be able to tell me.

Only a couple of weeks to go hopefully....

You should be able to use iTunes to copy to the card and you won't need to do any converting since the Audi is able to decode .m4a (AAC format) without any problem.

I think that you cannot use the iTunes application on Mac OS X to copy the music files to an SD card - the only direct option/command in iTunes for copying music files is the one that copies them onto a CD or DVD. To copy them to an SD card, you have to manually find the music files in Finder, and copy (drag) them to the card. The music files (the music library) of iTunes on Mac are stored in [Your User Folder]MusiciTunesiTunes Music. From here, the files are stored in separate directories for each artist.

Also, there is a small Mac OS X application that I found on the Internet, which can copy all the music files from your iTunes library onto an SD card (or whatever other medium) and is able to change the names of the files (i.e. according to your wished nomenclature...). The app is called "iPlaylist Copier".

(For Toodeep: this is the software I have used to rename all my music files and to be able to later divide them into the A-Z folder structure as I wrote in the other discussion thread for SD cards...)

 

[Guest]

I have a 16gb SDHC with a-z folders and that works. Its an Ultra II card. But I discovered another problem. It seems that the reader is extremley senseative and a lot says that the title is incorrect or damaged. Has any one the same problem with downloaded CDs? Has anyone a program that fixes it after the download? Or is it just to download a new song from the internet that fixes it? I suppose it is a mark or something on the CD that does it but I ont know?!
Thx Kjell

 

[Guest]

I found a way to fix it! Rip the CDs with windows mediaplayer 11 instead of Itunes. When I did this all songs where played and none where reported damaged! You still need A-Z kataloges for the Car to bee able to read the SDHC card but that is a little effort. It syncronises easy aswell with the cataloge.

 

[Guest]

On the slightly vexed issue of loading from SD cards to the Jukebox

Could anyone tell me what the max bitrate is for the Jukebox? Is it the same for MP3, ACC and WMA files?

Presumably the same limit applies if you want to play directly from the SD card.

Still a few weeks away from delivery so I don't have a manual to refer to.

Thanks.

 

[stevepen]

I use 128 but will try higher next time and how it works