New Owner / Member MMI USB Playback Question
 

Hello...new to Audi after 25 plus years in the Mercedes world. Loving my 22 A5 cabriolet beyond measure...with one exception at the moment. I have approximately 12k in songs I've pulled from iTunes and loaded them on a brand new 256gb USB stick. I have a simple file structure that groups folders by type (rock, country, blues, etc) then by artist folders inside of the type folders. The artist folders have the songs in order by album. So I can go to the blues folder, see the BB King artist folder and then see each song in order by album for my BB King collection. This format works fine in our Toyota and my Ford F150 for playback in those systems. But for some reason in my A5 it will get me to the BB King folder and then jumble the song order by some sorting configuration I can't understand...just random, not by alphabetical song order or otherwise that I can figure out. I have the folder templates set to music and the drive is set to fat32. The only way I can get to an album by artist is to sort by artist at the media prompt, find the album then start playback...very clunky. Versus just playing back the BB King folder in the order I saved it. Anyone who understands how or why the MMI manages this playback would be a hero if they could explain it to me and offer any advice! Thanks much for your time! Dave Lamoreaux

Welcome and glad you're enjoying your car. Look in the B9 section for the A5 as there is a detailed thread about how to set up the file structure for SD or USB playlists.

There is a lot of activity on this board for the 5 model series and very knowledgeable members.

Thank you so much for your reply...I'll go check out that section asap. I kinda figured someone would have had the same question. Great that a resource like this is available!

Try these two threads
 

Found the first one specific to music on a USB- Problem with playlists on USB

And this one more recently about developing playlists for the MMI- Playlists not recognized

Thank you "ShiftyWolf" for passing these along. I had actually read those in my forum reading on this topic before you sent them, but unfortunately it wasn't getting to my issue. Although it triggered one thought which I tried and it didn't work. I've put the question to the B9 group and have gotten some good suggestions that I'm going to explore. As I said in that forum, I may just have to accept I can't play albums w/in the artist folder as I hoped. I'll just have to live with having an artists music play back in a random order. Not optimal but tolerable! Thanks again!

New to USB on new A4 Allroad
 

A little late to this thread but I also have issues with the new MMI on Audis. I have a new 2024 Audi A4 Allroad. I had a 2016 A4 and still have a 2013 Audi A6. I used SD cards with a file structure, built on Windows, with Music/Genre/Artist/Album/Song file structure with track number built into the file name. You could go to Genre and it would play all of the songs in that Genre in order of artist and album. I put the same structure on a USB stick and plugged it into the new A4 and select Genre, it displays the artists within the genre. You select artist and then you select an album. It will then play that album continuously, even if I have only one song from the album. I don't really want to make playlists as I have thousnds of songs. I don't have Itunes as I am an Android user and Windows desktop user. Has anyone found how to get around this? I believe it's a safety hazard having to continuously check the screen to select albums.
I have used Media Monkey on Windows to create this file structure and I also use MP3tag as most of these songs are ripped from CDs.

The MY13 A6 and MY16 A4 both have MMI 3G+. The MY20+ A4 has MIB3 (B9.0 were MIB2, B9.5 are MIB3). So when you are looking around, you're looking for info specific to the MIB3 infotainment system, which all the US Audis have starting MY21 (A4/A5 actually got it for MY20). MY22 introduced enhancements to MIB3, such as wireless Android Auto. But I don't know of any changes to the external audio input handling (which is only via USB port for MIB3; all the disc and media slots on the J794 were eliminated). So when looking for info, B9.0 (>MY19 A4/A5, >MY20 Q5) MIB2 info may or may not work as is for MIB3 (MY20> A4/A5, MY21> A6/A7/A8/Q3/Q5/Q7/Q8). So no help on your specific issue, but at least some knowledge of the systems involved so you can vet which information is directly applicable vs might also work.

Thanks for clarifying the MMI versions. It will also help when looking through the forums for Vagcom/VCDS mods that I had an Audi mechanic do on my earlier Audis.

Still trying to figure out the B&O systen, coming from the standard Audi (2016) SD card. It could be set up with a folder hierarchy of Genre/Artist/Album and a filename starting with the tracknumber. The songs would play sequentially but you could jump around. The new system (2024 A4 - B&O) uses USB, not SD card. Using the same hierarchy on the 2024, if you choose a folder, it will only play within that folder. It will not go through all of the songs on the USB stick. I've got to the point, using MediiaMonkey, to create playlists (one per Genre) and have the fillenames made up of artist-album-track# so the playlists can be created to play in that order. Not so simple. Anyways, I have come up with an issue that maybe someone has dealt with. The user manual says that you can only have 1000 files in a folder. Does this apply if there are no folders? I have about 3000 songs spread out and if use Genre as a folder, I will have less than 1000 files per folder but I would prefer to have no folders, just the song files and playlists (by genre) but that would mean there would be about 3000 files on the USB stick, but no folders. I've been trying to make this as simple as it was with the SD card but it is frustrating. Going to the screen constantly to choose different music (artist, album, genre) is distracting, if not unsafe. I want to start playing music from a USB stick and not have to keep choosing what to listen to. Anyways, the one issue I have right now is this 1000 files per folder and does a USB stick with no folders get treated the same?

Sorry for being lazy. Just put 1052 MP3 files on a USB stick. No folders. In Audi, it got to 991 and started skipping files. They were sorted by artist so 992 - 1043 were skipped and it picked up files 1044-1052. It put 1000 files into it's database but it skipped 52 files. Strange. At least I know that the 1000 files per folder also applies to a folderless USB drive. Still a pain to scroll from artist A... to E... every time on the screen. I wish there was a better, safer way.