Help With USB Album Creation & Sound Quality

[carlos50]

Hi All

Im looking for some help with the creation of albums onto a USB stick. I have a mini stick so i can plug directly into the USB port in the arm rest on my X6 and whilst its only 3GB (am just using an existing one to try it out) the albums i wanted to put on it are only 669MB yet i get the "not enough memory on the stick" message when i try to put them on. Ive only managed to get 1 album on there.

I have formatted the stick to FAT32 as recommend online, is this a problem?

The stick works in the car, albeit sound quality doesn't seem quite right, had to turn the volume right up too, but the album name and tracks were all there.

Id like to put several albums on and not have to turn the volume right up, help and advice needed please?

Thanks

Carl

[X5Sport]

EDITED & Corrected: The X6 book for 2009 which covers the CCC System indicates artist data of up to 16,000 tracks can be stored on the car from up to 4 USB sticks. It does mention that different devices may cause volume issues and that the sample rate must not exceed 256kbps. It also says it organises them by folder name. No mention is made of generating playlists etc, but it can read ones generated in M3U format.

When converting you defo don't want to go below 128kbps, and if it will cope with 256 then use that.

As there is no amplification on a USB Stick it may not be possible to get around that issue, although a different stick may give a different result. If not you may have to buy an iPod or other MP3 player of your choice and use that instead.

[carlos50]

Didn't know I could download to the car. I put them on the stick then select Audio Input on the Entertainment menu then can choose between Aux In or USB. If i select USB the album i put on shows in title then the song list is below, by title or in this particular case artist and title. I will have to check the handbook again.

One thing i have also noticed is that if i turn the car off it switches to standard radio when it get back in and i have to go back to the USB, a favourite button may sort that but i also found that i have to pull the USB out and plug it back in again for the car to read the stick, is that right?

[X5Sport]

I wonder if it only downloads from the glovebox USB port..
I was surprised to read it in the book too as I thought only the CIC system had that but the manual clearly shows the CCC buttons for the idrive controller and the CCC Menu system.

[carlos50]

Im going to wipe the USB and put another album on then plug it back in and see if the current album is still there. It has a playlist option (if i recall) so maybe it can do it?

[carlos50]

Any idea why i am not able to copy albums to a 3GB USB stick though? The sizes are way smaller than the max capacity but i cant do it. Have read its linked to having to use FAT32 format which prevents the transfer. At 1 album each time it will take a heck of a lot of effort to fill 16,000 songs

[X5Sport]

FAT32 allows a single maximum file size of 4GB so you should not have any issues at 3GB. Is there a fault on the drive so although it says it's 3GB it's actually not formatting correctly and isn't 3GB any more?

I've never tried using a USB pen drive in the car, and all my drives are well over 4GB so need to be formatted in NTFS. Can the BMW System work with NTFS - nothing is said in the manual that I can find.

[carlos50]

Just went in to reformat the stick and it says 481MB of space so there must be a fault with it

I wiped the stick from the first album then put a new one on and when i went back to the car the first album wasnt there so hadnt uploaded to the car, what went wrong?

[X5Sport]

Having now re-read page 201 of the PDF version of the manual again a couple of times more carefully, it's slightly different to the way I read it the first time and wrote.... The difference is important but subtle.

The car can hold the Artist & Track Information of up to 16,000 tracks, not the tracks themselves. It also cannot deal with any DRM (protected) tracks. Track data from up to four USB devices totalling 16,000 tracks is stored and if a fifth device is then used, or the 16,000 limit is exceeded then it will start to overwrite the original track data in the car.

Glad you got to the bottom of the drive though, it was the only thing I could think of. I've got a couple of older drives myself which are losing capacity badly now. Still the drives are getting so cheap now. I paid about £8 each (£15 each now the offer has finished) for some 32GB sticks recently.

[carlos50]

So the tracks dont store on the car then? I found that taking the USB stick out meant no data and if i wipe an album off the stick its not available, makes sense now.

Thanks for your help as usual