Mini Cooper R56 MP3 Quick Guide (w/standard radio and cd player)
This describes some suggestions for making MP3 files burned on CD’s to play in your 07/08/09 Mini Cooper. MP3 files are approximately 1/10th the size of a standard audio file, hence you can fit many more files on each CD. It does not cover using the AUX jack or the iPod interface. I hope this helps.

MP3 File Suggestions
* When naming files use roman characters such as A-Z and 0-9; do not use Unicode characters.
* Keep folder names and filenames short (only 30 characters show on display in LIST mode).
* For easiest navigation, do not put folders inside other folders; keep all on one level.
* Use standard ID3 tags on your MP3 files (these tag each file with artist, album, song title, etc).
* Play MP3 files ripped at CBR (constant bit rate); VBR (variable bit rate) files are unpredictable and may skip or stutter.
(USING MP3 FILES RIPPED WITH CBR IS CRITICAL FOR THE BEST PERFORMANCE OF PLAYER)

MP3 CD Player Limitations
* Maximum number of songs on CD- 255 (?? not sure about this).
* Maximum number of songs per folder- 28.
* Maximum number of folders- 28 (?? not sure about this).
* The LIST mode shows song name based on the filename and provides easier access to navigation controls.
* The TRACK mode requires MP3 files with ID3v1 or ID3v2 tags to display song title and artist , otherwise it will say- TRACK ##.
* Plays CD-R or CD+R media only (not DVD) (CD-RW not tested).

MP3 Disk Burning Suggestions
* Burn CD as a data disk (not audio disk).
* Organize the songs so that each album is in a folder with filenames starting with numbers (see example below).

Example of File Organization
Dido- Safe Trip Home < folder name
01 Don't Believe in Love.mp3 < filename
02 Quiet Time.mp3
03 Never Want to Says its Love.mp3
04 Grafton Street.mp3
05 It Comes and Goes.mp3
06 Look No Further.mp3
07 Us 2 Little Gods.mp3
08 The Day Before Us.mp3

Pink Floyd- Dark Side Of The Moon
01 Speak To Me Breathe.mp3
02 On The Run.mp3
03 Time.mp3
04 The Great Gig In The Sky.mp3
05 Money.mp3

MP3 Playback Starting From Beginning of Last Played Track
This is normal behavior whenever the car is turned off for more than 15 minutes.

MP3 Playback Where Left Off
To resume playing a long track or after car is shut off longer than 15 minutes:
1) Before turning off the car change from cd to tuner.
2) Turn off the radio with the volume **** before shutting off the car.
3) Shut off car.
4) To resume play, start car, turn on radio with volume **** and switch to cd.

Free MP3 Audio Windows Programs

Ripping- or getting the music from an audio CD to your hard drive:
Audiograbber (this program also downloads ID3 tags)
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

Editing or adding ID3 tags:
MP3TAG
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

Editing audio files (such as cutting long files into smaller pieces):
Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Other Audio Programs

Program used to change VBR to CBR:
4Musics MP3 Bitrate Changer
http://www.4musics.com/index.htm

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Some information was gleamed by other postings, some was obtained by my own experimentation. Comments and clarifications are always welcome.

 

Good guide. If you've dealt with mp3-CD's before it's a pretty standard setup.

 

Perhaps I should of posted this in the Navigation & Audio forum

 

CD-RW is supported, at least by the player in the R56.

I've yet to encounter a problem with a VBR mp3 file -- YMMV.

 

I've actually encountered a few problems-
1) the file "skip" played- like sound bites were missed.
2) files not playable or showing up (LIST mode)- i had a folder with 24 files in it, the first 13 songs played the rest were ignored.

(It is my assumption this was caused by VBR files, as I converted them to CBR and didn't get the problem.

 

I've read that some have experienced ID3 tagging problems.
For best compatibility use ID3v1 tags and not ID3v2 or later.

 

there are idtag programs out there, free on the interwebs, that allow you to change what the tags display.
Can't remember the name of the one I use, but it helped clean up some tags that had WAY more data than I wanted coursing across the screen.

 

One word...

Toast.

It gets the job done.

PS - does anyone know if you can use CD-RW's on the R56 stereo?

 

The large majority of my collection is VBR and I've never noticed any playback problems- excluding one file that worked after a re-encode (still in VBR).

I have noticed that fast forwarding in tracks can put me earlier in the track, or rewinding being later in the track- which sounds like VBR issues to me, but I've never tried to test it out.

I've never noticed a track-per-folder limit either, I'll have to check for that specifically next time I burn a disc.

I've had 1400 tracks on a DVD inserted in the Nav disc slot without any limit on the number of tracks- but it does take a minute for MINI to display that a disc has been inserted. I don't remember having a CD with more that 255 items, but it seems odd that it would be different between the standard and Nav. Actually, getting a 255 track MP3 CD would be kinda tough now that I think about it.

Also, MediaMonkey works great for ripping/management/tagging/format conversion.

 

I have the standard boost radio cd player, not a system with NAV. I think it might be best to make a separate section for dealing with 2nd generation minis versions with the NAV (navigation system) option.

I'm not sure but I think the systems have different capabilities- The NAV sys can read DVD-R, the standard player cannot. I would guess that they might handle MP3 files differently too.

 

I'm okay with that. Aside from this clarification, I'll butt out:

Actually, there's two drives in a system with Nav- the standard drive which does not read DVD's and the Nav disc slot which is hidden a bit behind the removable volume control. The Nav system runs on the DVD drive all the time, so you have to sacrifice maps to run an MP3 DVD.

 

To try and minimize text difficulties I'm changing the tags on my mp3 files from ID3v2 to ID3v1. I tried doing this with a number of programs. The best I found was foobar2000 and it is free.

 

are mp3 files of 320 kbps recognized by the audio system?

 

should be no problems. i have played them both on cd's and usb stick.

 

I've had problems with VBR on a CD. Had to re-encode all mp3 files to CBR. This is on a HIFI with NAV.

 

The two big disappointments of my Mini are with the standard audio system MP3 capability. One is the inability to resume playing a long MP3 track (my tracks are appx 1/2 to 1 hour long) after the car has been turned off for a long period of time (over 15 minutes), and the lack of an elapsed time display.

First, I can only get it to play from where it left off during the 15 minute period mentioned at the start of this thread. I have tried the technique identified above for resuming after the 15 minute time period:


MP3 Playback Where Left Off
To resume playing a long track or after car is shut off longer than 15 minutes:
1) Before turning off the car change from cd to tuner.
2) Turn off the radio with the volume **** before shutting off the car.
3) Shut off car.
4) To resume play, start car, turn on radio with volume **** and switch to cd.

But this doesn't work for me. I follow these instructions exactly but if the Mini is off more than 15 minutes, the playback starts back at the beginning.

Am I missing something or is there another technique. Mine is a 2009 R56 delivered in April of this year.

As for my number 2 disappointment, the lack of an elapsed time display, if this were present at least then I could remember where I left off and fast forward to that spot.

Any suggestions as to why the "MP3 Playback Where Left Off"
feature doesn't work with my standard system? Am I doing it wrong?