Audi'sRevenge

Hey I was looking around for the SD card limits on google but didn't find much.

Can anyone confirm what they'd be on a 2014 Q5, with what I think is the base sound system (one SD slot system, no nav)? It does have a Sound System manual and it shows for SD card the following limits:
Max. 512 files per directory.
Max. 2048 files per medium, max. 255 subdirectories.

However I've heard that facelift (MY13+?) models have higher/undocumented limits, is that true or are the above limits correct?

It's my sister's vehicle I'm just trying to figure out what I can put on her SD card and still be accessible. For right now (less than 1K files) everything is working fine organised with folders for artists, subfolders for albums, and files numbered with 01, 02, etc. so it plays albums in order. It seems the system does no sorting at all based on tags, so that seems to be the easiest way to do it for now. Just wondering what happens if the above limits are true or not.

It's odd that it also shows the filenames on the screen but once you play them it turns to the tag info. But if you haven't played the file before it just shows filename? Weird.

Oh one side note, to the people trying to use/using SDXC cards... The reason why people have gotten them to work is because they've formatted them with FAT32 (or FAT16 which is a bad idea but should still work). Essentially all SDXC is, is an SDHC card formatted with exFAT (which these units can't read) and some higher capacities. The higher capacities are still supported in SDHC though because logically the addressing is the same. What isn't compatible (in some devices) is the exFAT part. So, once you format an SDXC with FAT32, you're essentially just making it an out-of-spec SDHC card but this still works in the majority of SDHC-supporting devices. Of course if you have limits to how many files you can have on there, a 64GB card may not be all that useful anyhow.

Anyway if anyone can confirm on the SD limits on this vehicle it'd be appreciated. I'm sure I'll find out eventually anyway, but it would help if I could know before hand.

A6S4

I know the thread is "long in the tooth," but having searched for solutions to my problems with the SD card not playing in my 2013 TTS, I am of the same opinion: Good idea, worthless execution. Sticking with the iPod.

Sheesh.......

vincenz0

And does that work? Some of the other MMI threads seemed to indicate a 2000 file limit?

vincenz0

Just an FYI that I struggled with trying to do this for a couple of hours tonight and couldn't get it to work. Finally shelled out the $5 for the Playlist Export App (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id434426826?mt=12) and it worked!

This was for a 2010 S4.

One thing to note though is that the playlists were greyed out for a short period when I first loaded the card. The music would play (from the folders, not the playlists) and I was about to give up because I couldn't even click into the "Playlist" option, see terrible photo below.

But after a couple of minutes I went back and could access the Playlists and everything worked!

bmarr

You can definitely use larger SD cards. You do need to format them to FAT32, and MMI has a size limit on the number of folders and subfolders. I currently have all my music (over 9,000 files) on one 128 SDXC Pro card, set up by genre/artist/album/track, and it works fine.

vincenz0

Follow up to my earlier post, it does seem like there is a lower limit on the older cars. I tried to load all 6,000 of my songs and was getting a "no playable tracks" or similar message on a lot of the folders.

Then I reduced to like 1,000 songs and everything is working like a charm. Kind of a bummer but I have all my best music on there so no worries. Wonder if there is a workaround though?

116Crew

So I bought a 128GB card (Link below) and loaded more than 7,000 song and it worked great on my 2015 A3 MMI Navigation! Even plays movies in .m4v. Will try more video format and report back. Cheers!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

cmack

I would like to start by thanking the people that have contributed to this thread in general, and give some additional detail to others that might help. Thanks specifically to vincenz0; without the Playlist Editor App, I would have been struggling to find the exact format for a while.

I'm a new '15 Q7 owner and I'm finding the MMI 3G+ very frustrating as many people probably have in the past. {Rant Mode On}Audi needs to pull their heads out of their asses and update their tech already.{Rant Mode Off} My car does drive amazingly, which is of course why I bought it. I digress..........

I'm a Mac user. I'm currently on Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, but I'm guessing this will work across current Apple technology. The "Easy Button" is to just download Playlist Editor and let that export your media from iTunes to the USB Drive or SD Card.

Use Disk Utility to format the Drive. The format should be MS-DOS (FAT) and the Scheme should be Master Boot Record. If you don't select those, this will not work in the car.

At this point you can use the Playlist Editor tool to export the Playlist and copy the files, or you can read on to see how to do this manually and free. The tool is only $5 and will save you time, I highly recommend it even if you just use it to copy the files.

Manual Method:
The next step is to copy the files to the drive. My folder structure went Music as the Top Level Directory, then Artist, then album, and finally the songs. Music/Artist/Album/Song.mp3

Now you'll need to export your playlist in M3U format. When in iTunes, choose File->Library->Export Playlist. Put the playlist in the root of the drive so that when you open the drive you see your playlists and the Music folder.

Just like everyone else that exports a playlist from iTunes, it has the full path to the files that are on the Mac and not in the drive where you copied them to. If you are smart you'll use a similar path.

/Users/myname//Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/ -- Directory on the Mac
/Music/ -- Directory on the drive

Use a text editor (I used TextWrangler) to edit the file and save the file with Carriage Returns and Line Feeds (aka CRLF). By default text editor on the Mac does not do this, and it wasn't intuitive on how to do it; this is why I went with Text Wranger. Choose Save As and make sure you choose CRLF. The edit will be to remove everything, including the preceding /, before Music.

e.g.
/Users/myname//Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/All That Remains/Overcome/01 my song.mp3
becomes....
Music/All That Remains/Overcome/01 my song.mp3

# M3U Playlist generated by PlaylistExport (Eric Daugherty - Playlist Export)
Music/Volbeat/Beyond Hell / Above Heaven/01 The Mirror And The Ripper.m4a
Music/Volbeat/Beyond Hell / Above Heaven/02 Heaven Nor Hell.m4a
Music/Volbeat/Beyond Hell / Above Heaven/03 Who They Are.m4a

No / to start the line.

Something else you will notice is all of the lines that start with #. This is essentially a comment and doesn't even need to be in there. I realized this when I used Playlist Editor and they did not have the # lines in there.

TaDa!!!!! when you connect the SD Card or USB Drive (This is through the AMI USB interface) to the Audi, it will show you the playlists at the top level.


If you have a ton of playlists and want to sort though them using folders, you can use relative paths to do this.

I created 3 folders at the top level; Artist Playlists, Custom Playlists, and Music. My MP3's are stored in Music as described, and I put the playlists into the other folders. The key to getting this to work is using ../ before Music in the location of the MP3 in the text of the playlist file.

e.g.
Music/Artist
becomes...
../Music/Artist

# M3U Playlist generated by PlaylistExport (Eric Daugherty - Playlist Export)
../music/Volbeat/Beyond Hell / Above Heaven/01 The Mirror And The Ripper.m4a
../music/Volbeat/Beyond Hell / Above Heaven/02 Heaven Nor Hell.m4a
../music/Volbeat/Beyond Hell / Above Heaven/03 Who They Are.m4a

You may notice that I have m4a files and not mp3; actually I have both, but both work in my MMI. This may vary for you.

In terms of / vs \, which is really a Windows vs Unix/Linux way of representing the filesystem structure, I used / because that is what the Mac uses. I'm really too lazy to try using \. My guess is that the MMI uses some for of a Linux kernel and therefore will use /, but maybe its smart enough to use both.

I'm using a 128GB Monster Flash USB3.0 Drive. It was on Woot and super cheap for $30. I would have preferred to get a 250GB+ drive so I could copy all my media, but for the price of experimentation, this was well worth it. Make sure the USB drive can be powered by USB, or the one you choose will not work.

The AMI cable I'm using.
USB Audi Music Interface AMI MMI AUX Cable for A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 Q5 Q7 R8 TTMA15
by XCSOURCE
Link: http://amzn.com/B009ZC7VQU

The HDD I'm using.
Monster Digital Overdrive 3.0 External SSD (SSDOM-0128-T)
by Monster Digital
Link: Amazon.com: Monster Digital Overdrive 3.0 External SSD (SSDOM-0128-T): Computers & Accessories

Good Luck!

rasitha

1. Buy a 32GB SD card (not micro SD)
2. Find out where iTunes songs are stored on your Mac – typically /Macintosh HD/Users//Music. If unsure, you can select a song in iTunes and select “File, Get Info” – then look in File tab
3. Copy all music files to SD card. You can copy under root directory of SD card
4. Now you can listen to all the songs
5. For Playlists, purchase Playlist Export – from Apple Store for USD 4.99
6. Run Playlist Export, select Edit and specify where you wish to export Playlists and select the Playlists (typically all). Then Save and in main page, select Export
7. Open the “m3u” files (one per play list), which are saved in the directory specified, using TextEdit and Search and Replace to correct the path. Typically replace “Macintosh HD/Users//Music/” with “/”
8. Copy the “m3u” files to the root directory of the SD card.
9. Enjoy the music and play lists!

Darrell 4.2

If you create an SD card loaded with music using your Mac and iTunes and want to create and edit playlists to use in the MMI system, you can use the method below as long as you also have access to a Windows PC with iTunes. This eliminates the need to purchase any additional editing or playlist apps on your Mac.

- copy your iTunes Music folder to the SD card in a folder in the root directory called "Music". (You can name this whatever you like, I used "music")
- Keep the iTunes file structure intact. (Artist/album/song)
- place the SD card into your Windows computer
- open iTunes on the Windows PC
- in ITunes, go to "File\Add Folder to Library"
- chose your "Music" folder on your SD card
-after ITunes has loaded the titles from your SD Card into the library, you can now create a playlist using the music on the SD card
- export the new playlist to the root directory of the SD card (file\library\export playlist)
- edit the playlist file using notepad on the Windows PC according to the directions in this thread to change the path of the music files so they point to the SD card instead of the iTunes library on the PC/Mac


As mentioned in this thread, the issue with editing the playlist file using your Mac is that the Mac editor creates a file format that is not handled by MMI properly, whereas the Notepad editor on a Windows PC creates a compatable file.

Hope this summary helps save you from reading all 8 pages of this thread.