David Leitner

hey

i got an 2009 audi a4 2.0 turbo w/o the nav system and i bought a 8 GB San Disk SD card and whenever i put the card in the card slot of my car it says 'unreadable'

can someone help me out?


david

gunsmoker

2009 can't read SDHC cards, only regular SD, which are up to 2 or 4GB I believe.

Moviela

SD cards have evolved over the years with the capacity increasing all the time. Secure Digital cards started in the megabytes and grew to a final size of 4GB. A larger capacity was needed for digital cameras, so a modified specification called SDHC (HC means High Capacity)was published. The minimum size for SDHC is 4GB. Here is where the confusion starts. 4GB is the only size where two incompatable cards exist. Most modern readers can read SD and SDHC, but when the AUDI design was locked down, only the SD specification was published. Some 2009 cars can read SDHC. Most cannot. You can check the radio software version. If it is 200 series, you are stuck using the SD card. In the market there are scant 4GB non-HC cards to be found. Even 2GB cards are gone away from retailers like Costco.

Some 2009 cars have software version series 300. Audi says they cannot flash the new software into older units. If your car has a defect in the head unit, and you are under warranty, you may get a newer version head unit. I was lucky. One of the LEDs on the radio failed, and they replaced the head unit with software version 301. I can now read SDHC 32GB cards.

These 32GB cards can hold 5,000 songs, or one telephone message from your mother-in-law.

bigdadi

I have 2012 model but still having trouble readin SDHC cards, as some sounds are skipped, while some songs are playable. After I switched back to regular 2gb SD, then the problems are gone.

TheRebbie

I've got a 2012 and have had no problems with 8gb and 16gb SD cards.

Nostromo

I have the same problems. But it's not the card. I have both a SDHC 8GB and a SD 2GB card (different manufactures) and some songs still just won't play.

They're all recent purchases from itunes. I thought the m4a format was causing problems, but it doesn't explain why some work and some don't.

The only solution is to transcode them to mp3... at which point I might as well pull out the ipod and copy the tracks to it. I wanted the SD card to quickly put songs on when the fancy stuck me.

bigdadi

Possible the problems in m4a format ... I'll try them in MP3 format and report back.

Nostromo

mp3's work fine. but what boggles my mind is I bought 2 songs off itunes at the exact same time. One would play, one wouldn't.

Moviela

Some content producers insist on strict controls for music on iTunes. These are usually established, older acts that don't need the exposure to become more well known.

New acts, and those without a lot of airplay, want their music to be further distributed, so they don't lock the bits. They want you to share.

bigdadi

In iTune I converted the purchase songs to MP3 format. Then highlight the songs, do copy / paste to the SDHC card. Mine is TRANSCEND 16GB Class-10 SDHC, capable for 4000 songs. Will try it out in the car when go to work.

EDIT 8/13 10:30pm : It works this way!