tosten

Unless the music you want is locked in apple's format.

Marley's Ghost

Interesting, as I was not aware that Apple had a proprietary format for music.

UrbanExtant

Their music used to come with DRM coded in it. Several years ago they stopped this practice, and offered, and still do offer, the option to upgrade your past iTunes purchases to DRM free copies. This is what I did, and that way all those songs can now be played off SD cards in our Audis.

tosten

They do charge you for this though. Its $0.30 per song to upgrade your old itunes music. Depending on the size, and age of your itunes music in your library that extra ipod might be a better deal. I recently started buying from amazon. Prices definitely better.

stevedusa

Actually the Q5 can handle just about all the music file formats, well maybe except OGG and APE files, but un-DRMed AAC (Apple's "own" format), WMA and MP3s can be handled without any problems.

Bottom line, Audi just don't want you to shift your attention from driving to play with your gadgets, that's why they want you to lock your phone inside the glove box, and only provide whatever is in your iPhone/iPod's music library thru their interface.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it but for those whom want more flexibility, you can for sure modify your cable and use a Bluetooth receiver with the iPod dock interface, leave that thing inside your glovebox and forget about it, since majority of the devices has Bluetooth A2DP profile these days. Oh and, you are not limited to just iPhone/iPod and their library music only. A2DP allows you to move the sound from your phone, to the car.

However as I said above, it's safety versus functionality. Sometimes it's obvious which one will come first.

woolie

Since I've become such a fan of A2DP/AVRCP streaming in other cars, I decided to order a device to "bridge" A2DP over the iPod connector.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BLUETOOTH-A2...ht_4402wt_1165

I still have about two weeks before my Q5 shows up, but I might test it in my A3 to see how it works. The price was reasonable, so I'll report back to this thread if it works well.

stevedusa

I don't mean to burst your bubble for in order for that to work you need to modify your AMI/MMI cable.

See with the standard iPod cable Audi supplied us with, it would only work if an iPhone/iPod is plugged in. The AMI/MMI actively communicates with the device then once the connection is established, it will work.

This device you mentioned is no different than the A2DP adapters we've talked about in the past, but it will not work without modding your cable as this thing will not communicate with your AMI/MMI thus the car simply will reports that no device is connected.

To put it simple, you need to change out a resistor in the cable (note: soldering required) in order for AMI/MMI to recognize it as an auxiliary input, which is what the device you bought off ebay utilizes. Otherwise it will not work at all.

tridentnyc

Better to go with an SD card as the sound quality out of an iPod or iPhone is just terrible due to the very cheap D/A converters Apple uses. I did a test using the same songs from CD, SD and iPod as sources.

SD sounded VERY close to CD (I rip at highest quality MP3 bit rate, 320kbs), the iPod was just dismal. Kind of a waste, especially if the B&O upgrade has been paid for.

UrbanExtant

I agree 100%, SD cards and high quality music files are the way to go if you really care about how your music sounds. I disliked the B&O initially because I thought the sound was poor, but once I switched to the SD cards, and got away from the iPod and Sirius, my opinion changed quickly. I was able to hear things in my music I'd never noticed before. The iPod nano I bought for the Q5 now sits unused in a desk drawer.

tridentnyc

+1