hinckley

Novice questions I know, but as I'm waiting for my S4 delivery in the next couple of days, I'm preparing music for the car and am trying to decide whether to go the SD card route or the iPod route.

I understand that there are two SD card slots and believe that the cards will play music at a better quality than the iPod. Is that correct?

Does the MMI display album cover artwork from either the iPod or the SD cards?

If I'm going to just leave the SD cards or iPod in the car semi-permanently, are there any other benefits of one versus the other?

Thanks for the advice.

bbmaster

SD card is better alternative. The music quality is a bit better too. The only drawback is that it takes some time to load your music when you insert the SD card into the slot. Ipod on the other hand is pretty fast. It's hidden in the glove box so you don't worry someone will steal it. What I do is that I put my music library on ipod and connect it in the glove box permanently and use SD card to store music that I listen to most of the time. Don't put too many mp3 files onto the SD card as it takes a while to load. oh and you can create folders in SD card to make several playlists (albums).

urojohn

No album artwork. I leave the iPod in the car, although now that I can get Pandora to play over the iPhone to the MMI, I extended the cable from the glove box to the console and use mostly my iPhone for music and over bluetooth for phone. Pandora sounds about 1000% better than Sirius and is free or $4 per month for premium Pandora subscription (no ads)

dreaddontdie

I would also add that the iPod interface lets you view all music by album, artist, etc while the SD card only allows browsing by the folders you create. Neither support album art thru MMI.

Other pros and cons? Can't shuffle music across two SD cards (not terrible). I do have 2 32GB cards in the car which is nice...i keep different genres on each. Shuffle on SD card seems to be all or nothing...cant figure out how to shuffle only the album or artist. When the ipod is connected, its hard to switch to the aux input because u have to reach to the glove box to do so...not ideal as i like to listen to music on my phone too via aux sometimes.

Honestly, i use both but have stuck to the SD card recently.

hinckley

Thanks for the input guys. Just one more question, do the SD cards load the first time you insert them into the slots or each time you start the car?

bbmaster

Each time you insert the SD card into the slot, it takes time to load. For example, if you want to add more music onto the SD card.

zulujams

Consider using the jukebox in the car also. I loaded a bunch of tunes from the iTunes folders to an SD card and then uploaded to the jukebox. Everything stays organized, and there is no digital to analog and back to digital conversion as there is for the ipod adapter (according to other posts). I have abandoned the ipod (older one is still in the glovebox if needed). I use the jukebox mostly, and have some of the wife's favorite tracks on an SD card for when traveling together. For really good sound, try a music DVD or CD. I enabled ripping CDs to the jukebox via VAGCOM but haven't tried it yet.

urojohn

I also enabled ripping CD's to the jukebox via Vagcom but can't get it to work. I have tried multiple times, the process starts and then hangs up for a long time. Need to reboot the MMI to get it unstuck. I have successfully ripped about 10 seconds of one Green Day song and that is it.

zulujams

Thanks for the feedback on CD ripping. It is more of a novelty these days as more and more people buy (or steal) music online. No sense burning a CD to rip it when you can just load digital files onto an SD card, but some of us have older CDs around at a minimum. Will give it a shot soon and post back, maybe tonight.

hinckley

So I could download directly from an SD card to the car's hard drive/jukebox and have iPod-like sorts and searches?