Question about playing music from an SD card

[Scribe42]

The radio in my 2012 A4 is equipped with a slot for an SD card. I have had a 16 GB card installed for about 4 years, containing hundreds of songs. I "ripped' these songs from CDs and converted them into MP3 files. Until recently, it has worked flawlessly.

Several days ago, while playing a familiar folder of songs, I noticed that one of the songs was listed in grey (ordinarily shown in orange) and would not play. A message on the screen said that the file was damaged and could not be played.

Selecting other folders at random, I discovered this same condition in several other folders. So, I pulled the card from the car radio and installed it into my computer. The same files would not play using the Windows Media Player.

I deleted all the content from the card and replaced it with the same identical files from my hard drive. They installed without problem and the previously "damaged" songs now play on the Media Player as always.

The songs that didn't play before in the car radio are now back to normal as well.

Does anyone know why/how these seemingly random files could have gotten corrupted and unplayable, considering that the SD card had never been removed from the radio since it was first installed?

[CaptAnonymous]

I’ve never had your issue specifically but my SD card(s) never show everything in my 12 A4. The tracks all show up when I look at the folders on my Mac but when in the car lots of folders are just blank. Not sure what the deal is. Sorry, I know that doesn’t help but your question reminded me of that.


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine

[BeerBrent]

I need to try an SD card full of songs in my car. Isnt there only a certain type of SD card that will work?

[JeriQo]

I need to try an SD card full of songs in my car. Isnt there only a certain type of SD card that will work?

has to be mp3 format. any SD is fine.

[adamazing]

I run dual 64GB cards in my car, with a total of roughly 110GB of music.

SD cards are volatile memory, and unfortunately sometimes the data storage becomes corrupt. Exposure to heat, like consistent exposure to high temps while parked in the sun, is sometimes enough to corrupt the card. It's rare, but it happens.

The only time I've ran into your issue specifically (gray'd out tracks) are when I download something with a certain type of DRM protection. The MMI will play a few seconds of it, skip it, and then it becomes gray's out. It usually does that to the entire album and I have to download another version.

[adamazing]

has to be mp3 format. any SD is fine.

The card needs to be formatted in FAT32 if it's above 32GB (SDXC vs SDAC).

It doesn't need to specifically be MP3 only. The MMI has codecs to read several other formats as well, like FLAC and AAC for example.

[BeerBrent]

Thanks for the info!

[keiffr]

I run dual 64GB cards in my car, with a total of roughly 110GB of music.

SD cards are volatile memory, and unfortunately sometimes the data storage becomes corrupt. Exposure to heat, like consistent exposure to high temps while parked in the sun, is sometimes enough to corrupt the card. It's rare, but it happens.

The only time I've ran into your issue specifically (gray'd out tracks) are when I download something with a certain type of DRM protection. The MMI will play a few seconds of it, skip it, and then it becomes gray's out. It usually does that to the entire album and I have to download another version.

+1, I used to do the same thing for my 150GB of music (10,000 plus songs) until it became a hassle to reformat the SD cards.

I bought a Tune2Air and have my entire music library stored on my iPhone 8 Plus and streamed. Less of a headache and also able to stream Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, etc....

[doc_oc]

How's the quality? I noticed in my '14 q5 that over the factory bluetooth, the quality is way worst. Is the tune2air doing the same thing?

+1, I used to do the same thing for my 150GB of music (10,000 plus songs) until it became a hassle to reformat the SD cards.

I bought a Tune2Air and have my entire music library stored on my iPhone 8 Plus and streamed. Less of a headache and also able to stream Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, etc....

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

[A4x]

How's the quality? I noticed in my '14 q5 that over the factory bluetooth, the quality is way worst. Is the tune2air doing the same thing?

My completely subjective review is that the SD card sounds much higher quality (when the file is 320 kbps) compared to Tune2Air.

[doc_oc]

My completely subjective review is that the SD card sounds much higher quality (when the file is 320 kbps) compared to Tune2Air.

That sucks. You pay for premium audio B&O to degrade the quality with Bluetooth or Sirius/XM. I wish they had an Aux in option.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

[BeerBrent]

You cant shuffle all your songs when using the SD card correct? I assume it has to play them in alphabetical order, by artist?

[doc_oc]

I think you can but in a really convoluted way and it only does it until you shut the car off. Upon restart plays in straight order where it left off. And it shuffles all songs only regardless of folder.
I might be wrong since I haven't used that in a while.
When you play media you have to go to the menu where you can see skip forward/ back.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

[adamazing]

It will only shuffle the songs in the current folder you're in.

I've learned that folder structure plays a huge role in not only how the display and functions operate, but also how quickly the MMI loads files from a cold start. For example, if you turn off the car while listening to song from a specific album folder, the MMI will load that specific folder first the next time you start the car in order to get the media playing the fastest. If you want to back out of that folder, the system will take a slight delay to then load up the parent folder, and so on.

In order to save processing resources and speed along start-up time from a cold start, the system only loads the most recent folder. As you navigate back up through the directory, it will then load those parent folders and files.

Basically, it will only load upper directories as you navigate to them the first time. Once you do, they stay loaded until you turn the car (or MMI) off again.

[BeerBrent]

Thanks.
Just bought a 32GB SD card on Amazon for $13 and gonna try it out.
I think I might like it better than using my Bluetooth adapter because I'm not a fan of the car phone answering system. I wish there was a way to turn the bluetooth phone feature completely off.

[adamazing]

You cant shuffle all your songs when using the SD card correct? I assume it has to play them in alphabetical order, by artist?

It does sort them by alphabetical order, according to the filename (not always the same as the song title). It also places an emphasis on numbers before letters.
So if the song title in the metadata is something like "Dance, Dance, Dance" but the filename is "01. Dance, Dance, Dance", the MMI will display 01 Dance, Dance, Dance.

[adamazing]

Thanks.
Just bought a 32GB SD card on Amazon for $13 and gonna try it out.
I think I might like it better than using my Bluetooth adapter because I'm not a fan of the car phone answering system. I wish there was a way to turn the bluetooth phone feature completely off.

You can. It's in the MMI Phone menu. You can turn Bluetooth completely off. That kills phone calls and streaming audio.

[BeerBrent]

You can. It's in the MMI Phone menu. You can turn Bluetooth completely off. That kills phone calls and streaming audio.

Wish there was a way to only kill the bluetooth phone calls.

[adamazing]

Oh, yeah I don't think that's possible.

[doc_oc]

Wish there was a way to only kill the bluetooth phone calls.

That's done in the phone. In the bluetooth profile. You can have 2 bluetooth connections: car stereo and tune2air let's say, and you can do multimedia on one and calls on the other. At least my Samsung can. Dont know about iPhone.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

[BeerBrent]

^ not on an iPhone.

[A4x]

That sucks. You pay for premium audio B&O to degrade the quality with Bluetooth or Sirius/XM. I wish they had an Aux in option.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

I don't have B&O, but yea I get your point. I was pretty pissed when I bought this car and realized it doesn't have Bluetooth audio streaming lol.

The SD card works well enough for me tho.

[Novarider]

Wish there was a way to only kill the bluetooth phone calls.

Can't you turn Bluetooth off in the phone settings of the car? Tune2air should still work as it thinks it's using a wired iPhone.

It should work that way right?

[B G 8er]

I believe3 the SD has better sound quality as well. I leave a card in there with music that's ready at the push of a button (media). Lately, I have also been streaming I-Heart, mostly through the Android Auto stand alone app and through the Audi Bluetooth audio streaming adapter. Problem is the volume of the Bluetooth audio is way softer and sometimes when I switch to radio or SD, it blasts the volume really LOUD. The basic Concert radio allows you to shuffle the music. Not sure how it mixes them within the same folder but can be annoying as the same songs come up often. So some I never hear at all.

[dieselquattro]

The card needs to be formatted in FAT32 if it's above 32GB (SDXC vs SDAC).

It doesn't need to specifically be MP3 only. The MMI has codecs to read several other formats as well, like FLAC and AAC for example.

How did you manage to get FLAC to play? I've never been successful.

[BeerBrent]

Can't you turn Bluetooth off in the phone settings of the car? Tune2air should still work as it thinks it's using a wired iPhone.

It should work that way right?

I looked yesterday and didnt really see any phone settings. Just found basic stuff like stored numbers, last number called, etc.

[captain_video]

I had the Audi Concert system in my '13 A4 FWD and used SD cards. The manual doesn't give you much info on using SD cards so I had to do some research on how to properly format them and set up playlists. I think I tried FLAC and some other formats and couldn't get them to play, but that was over a year ago. I currently have a '14 A4 Quattro with an Alpine X701D-A4 head unit and use the same SD cards. I bought a bunch of 8GB class 4 SD cards on ebay for about $3 apiece and they hold about 60-75 albums in mp3 format. You don't need high speed (i.e., class 10) cards for music files. The Alpine is supposed to work with FLAC files, but I haven't tried them yet. There's no SD card slot on the Alpine, but it has a USB port on the back of the head unit so I attached an extension cable with a SD to USB adapter and it works fine. I also have the optional DVE-5300 DVD player for playing my vast CD collection, but I don't use it all that much.

I use a couple of apps that I have found to be invaluable for working with my digital music collection:

Rename Master - this is a great program for performing bulk renaming tasks of individual files and folders. If you download any music you know that the track titles are never in a standard format so this is extremely useful for working with music files. Works with any type of file.

dbpoweramp CD ripper - great ripping tool for CDs

dbpoweramp Music Converter - comes with dbpoweramp CD ripper and can convert between most any digital music formats

CUETools - a lot of downloaded music is only available as a single cue file and a single flac file. This tool splits the single flac file into individual tracks. The single music file can be in other formats like mp3 or wav and this works equally well with all formats. There is a CUE splitter app available from the Microsoft store for Windows 10 that also works quite well. Do a search for Medieval CUE Splitter and I think it takes you to the Microsoft app. I believe Microsoft bought the rights to the app a while back.

Playlist Creator - Works great for generating a playlist for whatever media you choose

Note that dbpoweramp is a paid program but the others are all free

[BeerBrent]

Good info. I'll probably use dbpoweramp Music Converter to change the files from iTunes format to MP3's. Thanks Captain Video.

[dieselquattro]

foobar2000 is a free, open source audio player and converter - https://www.foobar2000.org/

[BeerBrent]

^ I like free! Thanks

[damonhimself]

I’ve never had your issue specifically but my SD card(s) never show everything in my 12 A4. The tracks all show up when I look at the folders on my Mac but when in the car lots of folders are just blank. Not sure what the deal is. Sorry, I know that doesn’t help but your question reminded me of that.


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine

Most likely the SD card is not formatted correctly. You will want to make sure that it is formatting in a FAT format. Most likely you have it formatted in a Mac format that the car cannot read.

[CaptAnonymous]

Most likely the SD card is not formatted correctly. You will want to make sure that it is formatting in a FAT format. Most likely you have it formatted in a Mac format that the car cannot read.

If it was formatted wrong it wouldn’t show anything though right? It will display and play nearly all the tracks and folders I’ve put on the SD cards but some folders on the card are blank in the car but on computer they are there. All tracks are mp3 as well. I really want to figure out how to play video files from the SD cards But I’m pretty sure I need vag com for that


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine

[Novarider]

I looked yesterday and didnt really see any phone settings. Just found basic stuff like stored numbers, last number called, etc.

It's in radio settings not phone settings, sorry.

From this screen (radio) click the setup button on the console.
20180511_075503.jpg

That brings this screen up
20180511_075516.jpg

Click the lower right button next to the big knob and it brings up the Bluetooth settings which you can turn off.
20180511_075521.jpg


I have not tried to stream music through the Tune2air with Bluetooth off but it should work since the radio thinks it's a wired iPhone.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Audizine mobile app

[captain_video]

foobar2000 is a free, open source audio player and converter - https://www.foobar2000.org/

Foobar2000 works great, but dbpoweramp can convert large batches of files. I believe foobar2000 can only do one album at a time. I've used numerous file converting tools and dbpoweramp is the best one I've tried for my purposes.

[BeerBrent]

Thanks Novarider, but I don’t have the Bluetooth option when I follow your instructions. I have “sound“ in lower right when I click setup.

[Novarider]

Thanks Novarider, but I don’t have the Bluetooth option when I follow your instructions. I have “sound“ in lower right when I click setup.

Interesting, do you not have the 3G high mmi system?

Have you checked your owners manual? There has to be a way to turn Bluetooth off.

[greasykid]

The radio in my 2012 A4 is equipped with a slot for an SD card. I have had a 16 GB card installed for about 4 years, containing hundreds of songs. I "ripped' these songs from CDs and converted them into MP3 files. Until recently, it has worked flawlessly.

Several days ago, while playing a familiar folder of songs, I noticed that one of the songs was listed in grey (ordinarily shown in orange) and would not play. A message on the screen said that the file was damaged and could not be played.

Selecting other folders at random, I discovered this same condition in several other folders. So, I pulled the card from the car radio and installed it into my computer. The same files would not play using the Windows Media Player.

I deleted all the content from the card and replaced it with the same identical files from my hard drive. They installed without problem and the previously "damaged" songs now play on the Media Player as always.

The songs that didn't play before in the car radio are now back to normal as well.

Does anyone know why/how these seemingly random files could have gotten corrupted and unplayable, considering that the SD card had never been removed from the radio since it was first installed?

Have 2014 A4 w/ B&O system. One question Are you playihg off the SD card directly? I have also recorded to the SD card but have downloaded from the SD to the Harddrive. It works very well. I can select several different catagories--Artists,Albums,etc.About 6 in all. It does start up where it left off. It is not an easy system to learn--"folder up" & so on. Music quality off Harddrive is excellent.

[Scribe42]

Yes, directly from the SD card -- my radio doesn't have a hard drive. Quality of music from the SD is also excellent, in my opinion, seemingly as good as the CDs from which the music was ripped. I'm not an audiophile, though!! And the music on the SD picks up from where it was turned off, even the middle of a song.

[BeerBrent]

Interesting, do you not have the 3G high mmi system?

Have you checked your owners manual? There has to be a way to turn Bluetooth off.

I'm not sure which one I have, but I think it's the most basic (no navigation etc).
I'll check my manual.

[BeerBrent]

Found a simple solution (insert face palm here) to turning off phone calls via the car/bluetooth. On my iPhone, in my bluetooth connections, I told it to "forget this device" for the Audi connection. The CarPro connection still works perfectly for music.

I'm still gonna try the SD card since I already ordered it on Amazon and got it today.
Update - Put some Social Distortion songs on it to test it out and wow, sounds noticeably better than when streaming via CarPro from my iPhone.
I used the dBpoweramp music converter (batch). Free 20 day trial. It's awesome. Can convert all the songs by an entire artist all at once into the folder (artist name) that I created on the SD. I converted the files to MP3 Standard.