SD Card Issue?

[alexcutter]

Hi all,

I tried using an SD card loaded with ripped music for the first time the other night.

It was a 32GB card, with about 24GB of music (MP3 and AAC formats). Probably about 3500 songs.

Upon inserting the card, the dash display seems to be scanning through the songs, in alphabetical order (by artist name). The songs are not available to be listened to during this process.

Here's the problem(s) -- first of all, it will take hours of uninterrupted driving for for the stereo to scan all of the songs.

Second, if I change the audio input during the scanning process (listen to music via iPhone for example), the scanning process stops.

If I eject the card, and reinsert it, the scanning starts from the beginning.

If I let the scanning continue, it eventually stops when it reaches artists in the "D" range, and only gives me access to those songs.

I've got a 2012 Passat, with no navigation system, and my stereo has two knobs, not three. The card is SDHC, formatted for Windows. The music files were copied directly to the preexisting "My Music" folder on the card from iTunes.

Any suggestions/tips?

Thanks!

Also, unrelated to above issue, when using iPhone for music, some songs seem to be missing certain audio tracks -- for example, backing vocals on some songs, guitar on others?

[tdinerd]

I have been thinking about trying the SD card thing since the SE doesn't have a USB plug-in for my old iPod, but it sounds like a disaster.

On your other comment about missing vocals and music parts on Bluetooth streaming -- ABSOLUTELY! I thought I was going crazy when I didn't hear one bass line in a song, but then it started happening with background vocals and even drums. It's almost impossible to take that into the dealer and replicate (need to remember a song title before taking it in), so I wonder if anyone else has experienced this and had any success at the dealer...

[gtaylor0]

There's a limit to the amount of folders/songs that the system can handle. Something like 2000 or 2500. Also, delete all non-music (except folders) files, like image files and whatever else is generated by the OS. Also, there's a limit to the folder hierarchy -- only so far that it can drill down, which could be another reason why it takes so long and stops scanning at the D's.

Search this or the B6 forum for posts by Seki, he posted a PDF with this info a few months ago.

I should qualify this by saying I use a 32GB SD card in my RNS510 and have about 16GB of data on it and it works great.

[alexcutter]

Thanks for the help.

I wasn't able to find the post you mentioned, but I've PM'd Seki.

[chadinwv]

The audio track issue via BT is addressed here: http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...Stereo-vs-Mono

Long and short of it: Right channel is being streamed through all 4 speakers. If you adjust your ipod balance to "left" you'll hear nothing. Everyone is waiting for an update from VW. Only an issue on RCD510. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the RNS.

[tdinerd]

The audio track issue via BT is addressed here: http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...Stereo-vs-Mono

Long and short of it: Right channel is being streamed through all 4 speakers. If you adjust your ipod balance to "left" you'll hear nothing. Everyone is waiting for an update from VW. Only an issue on RCD510. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the RNS.

Thanks. I wasn't quite sure if that was my issue or not (I saw that thread, but it's hard to make it through all 11 pages) because I do hear things out of all 4 speakers. I'll be sure to report it to my dealer so they can fix it. Maybe my iPhone 5 with iOS 6 will fix it. Or at least make streaming from iCloud not so choppy when driving.

[alexcutter]

The audio track issue via BT is addressed here: http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...Stereo-vs-Mono

Long and short of it: Right channel is being streamed through all 4 speakers. If you adjust your ipod balance to "left" you'll hear nothing. Everyone is waiting for an update from VW. Only an issue on RCD510. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the RNS.

Thanks for the help. I actually just got off of the phone with a VW rep, and she claimed no knowledge of this issue. So I wouldn't be holding my breath on a fix coming in the near future.

[Seki]

If anyone else needs the PDF.

[mknieri]

That PDF and the owner's manual is out of date and/or may vary depending on the firmware that you have. I put over 5000 MP3s on my 32 GB SDHC card last November and have been adding music to the card every since then without any problems. Here is my post...

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...HC-max-folders

There are couple more older threads on this if you search for SDHC. Things like naming the files correctly so they show up in track order, etc.

[alexcutter]

That PDF and the owner's manual is out of date and/or may vary depending on the firmware that you have. I put over 5000 MP3s on my 32 GB SDHC card last November and have been adding music to the card every since then without any problems. Here is my post...

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...HC-max-folders

There are couple more older threads on this if you search for SDHC. Things like naming the files correctly so they show up in track order, etc.

Thanks for the info, but I'm still having issues getting 2048 to be recognized on a 32GB SDHC card.

I'll seek out these other threads you mentioned, but basically the radio is still scanning the songs in alphabetical order, and craps out before it completes -- leaving me with songs by artists with names in the ranges of A - I, but nothing further than that.

This screen grab shows the card's file structure and a sample of how some of the files are named:


SDHC_FS by alexcutter66, on Flickr

[alexcutter]

Found this info in one of the threads mknieri referenced:

"Had the same problem.. just got the fix last night. Created a main folder (music) with some songs in it.. then created subfolders with aprox 2gb of music in each. Now when I tell it ti mix, it will retrieve songs from all folders. It seems that the fix is to have a main folder with songs in it. In the past I only had one folder with about 950 songs (4.5gb) and the device would only read about half of it... Good Luck."

Going to try this approach.

[mknieri]

Going to try this approach.

Cool. Let us know what you find out.

FWIW - All of my MP3s are tagged properly with embedded album art. The root directory contains the Artist name with folders with each Album name and individual Songs/Tracks within the Album directory. Each Song/Track starts with the actual track number as it appears that my RCD-510 doesn't read the ID3 tag for the track number. Example below.

Artist A
- Album 1
-- Song 1
-- Song 2
- Album 2
-- Song 1
-- Song 2
Artist B
- Album 1
-- Song 1
-- Song 2

[illusionVW]

Whoa, is that for real.

We have been told that there is a SW fix coming up in 6 weeks to fix the BT issue. a lot of peole have called and complained to VW and even have a Case number.

If the rep told u that.. she must be smokin crack. or we have been waiting for a bogus software upgrade.

[alexcutter]

Whoa, is that for real.

We have been told that there is a SW fix coming up in 6 weeks to fix the BT issue. a lot of peole have called and complained to VW and even have a Case number.

If the rep told u that.. she must be smokin crack. or we have been waiting for a bogus software upgrade.

They gave me a case number as well.

[alexcutter]

Found this info in one of the threads mknieri referenced:

"Had the same problem.. just got the fix last night. Created a main folder (music) with some songs in it.. then created subfolders with aprox 2gb of music in each. Now when I tell it ti mix, it will retrieve songs from all folders. It seems that the fix is to have a main folder with songs in it. In the past I only had one folder with about 950 songs (4.5gb) and the device would only read about half of it... Good Luck."

Going to try this approach.

I tried this -- made a series of folders with no more than 2GB of files in each. The radio did dig deeper into the various artists, but didn't give me access to all of the songs.

And after a while, using "mix" setting, it only cycled through a couple dozen or so of the same songs.

I can't be bothered to play around with this any longer

[RaidV92C]

This is one of my complaints also. The "track" tag is not read so I had to go back and rename all the files with track in it. I have about 3000 files but found software to do it. THE biggest disappointment is the "mix" issue.

I use the same structure on the hard disk and the SD card and it makes no difference. I cannot get the MIX to MIX on anything but the lowest level of 1 album. It will not carry over the whole collection. Very frustrating as this is something that cheap MP3 players have been doing for 10 years.
DIR- Music
>DIR- Artist
>>DIR- Album
>>>DIR - Song

[bryduck]

AFAIK, this old issue has never been resolved by VW, but I hope I'm wrong. On the RCD unit, you are limited to <2048 songs total and each folder must have <2gb in it for the "mix"ing software to find them all.