I have an F56 on the way. It will have the HK sound system, Wired Package, as well as Connected and Visual Boost XL. Somewhere in there will be the 20GB hard drive.

At my disposal I have a big stack of CDs, an HTC1 Android phone with no music, and an older iPod with a lot of music that works fine. I have a computer (replaced an older computer with a lot of music that died) with no music except it has iTunes and about 50 songs bought from iTunes.

What's the best way to listen to music?

Will the iPod work OK?

How is music played from the hard drive? What is the best way to get music onto the hard drive? I have a bunch of USB thumb drives.

 

USB drives formatted with iTunes...works really well. You can update as you want. It is pretty great. There is really no need to plug in anything unless it is a friends playlist.

 

I'd stay away from iTunes at all costs.

 

I've always used iTunes and streamed music through my iPhone. Never had a problem and it's easy to use.

 

This is really the only thing that's bugging me about this car. I have the standard center radio not the visual boost and I'm using the same exact USB drive that I used on my R56. The music organization is crap compared to the R56. It still shows the folders as Name/Albums/Songsw but I can't view all the songs by one artist at once and play ONLY the songs by that artist. It just plays all the music in a random order. Please tell me I'm doing something wrong because it'll **** me off if only the cars with visual boost have the option of organizing the music... The only reason I got H/K was because I loved the USB audio from my R56..

 

You can do that on the Connected XL at least by doing a search by artist.

 

I can only speak for my experience. I hate iTunes too. But it is the best way I have found to organise tunes for the MINI. I have an Android and no Apple products. I'm no Apple groupie believe me. iTunes just works.
I have the Visual boost and it displays the album cover and other stuff - I love that.
Must remember to watch the road when I am driving though!

 

Exactly... I was able to sort by artist, albums, or all songs on my standard radio in my R56... but not on this new one! I may sound whiny but why would they REMOVE features that were available previously on the standard radios..

 

I am typically an Android user for most things but when it comes to music in my Mini (both my R56 and now my F56) I have found the ipod (I have a ipod touch 4th gen) to be the best option. The sound quality is better and there is simply no delay in anything I try to access or playback.

To help with the organization and looking things up easily within the connected interface, I changed the "genre" tags on my music to the artist name. This way I simply browse by the genre menu and pick the artist and the album of theirs I want to play. Now of course this means giving up the option to pick an actual genre of music such as Rock, Hip Hop, Metal, etc.. But I never personally used this method of choosing what I want to listen to in the first place.

 

Take the big stack of CDs and rip them, lossless files would be best.

Which iPod do you have?

 

Connect the old iPod with the Y cable and you're good to go. That's what I've always done. Use iTunes to rip all your CDs to it. Then you can add those to the iPod. Finally find a program that will move the iPods contents to your computer, to iTunes, to back it up. They exist and may be free (or not). Apple won't let you do it of course.

 

iPod Nano, 5th generation, 16GB.

 

That should work fine and you should not need the Y cable in the F56. You should just be able to connect it via the standard USB cable that comes with it.

For the internal hard drive you have 20gb of storage space there so I would suggest you load up your "go to" music on a thumb drive (as close to 20gb worth). You will be able to copy that over and it will always be available in the car. You can then easily rotate other music on your ipod with its 16gb.

 

Does the internal 20GB partition show album art with the XL HK?

 

Paid Spotify. Build your own playlists, or use theirs. Download music for offline usage while on WiFi. Then stream to you car. For me, highly worth the small subscription cost.

 

This!
No more searching for new songs and downloading them one by one. Top playlists updates automatically and they have absolutely everything.
Not to mention the app itself syncs with most of the newer cars, giving us full touch screen access from within the car's display.
It syncs with the F56 but I found the iDrive interface (non touch screen) is not as intuitive as other cars.

 

I listen to all my music using either a thumb drive & USB or the internal HD. All my music is ripped from CD using MP3. I normally use a 32GB thumb drive although smaller works fine also.

While I could have chosen ripping to larger files for loss-less quality, w/ the quality of stock car music systems (traffic and other ambient noises encountered), that, IMO was overkill and a waste of storage space, so I selected files smaller file sizes that still sound good to me while driving. Smaller sizes also let me have many more songs stored in my car.

Rather than suggesting one file size over another I'd recommend you listen to a song ripped at different sizes and find one that meets your expectations and then rip all the music in the size. I did this using my home computer with a decent set of speakers and small sub attached.

I have an IPod but have never tried it. The thumb drives and internal storeage seem to do exactly what I need them to do.

I'm big into blues and oldies (60's 70's). I have every 60's and early 70's band's albums loaded internally on the car's HD. You will see and option in the media menu that allows you to import music (I did the Import from a 32 GB Thumb drive). I opted to store the old stuff internally because it will never change...afterall, they are oldies.

I have all my blues music (and some country) on a 32 GB thumb that I will constantly update when I find new music I like. I can change from one to the other on the car's interface with a press of a button.

Honestly, I find the music interface on this car rather clunky and not particularly intuitive. Trying to find an artist or particular song while driving is a recipe for disaster. That being said, my choice is to select all artists in random play. Like listening to it w/ this setting is like a non-stop radio station that only plays your favorite artists and song.

Love Spotify and Amazon Prime music. Only have the free version of Spotify on my phones,Tabs and computers. Build your own playlists on line and have the same experience as the ripped CD (only you will get some commercials) Amazon doesn't have as big a library, but operates the same as the free Spotify w/o commercials. Both the free Spotify and Amazon Prime require Wi-Fi, or some other internet connection to stream.

 

I mainly use my Pandora/One and Amazon prime via Mini Connected and USB. I keep quite a bit of Prime on my phone for when I don't have a good enough signal to stream. No internal HD and the car ate my 64G thumb drive. I'll probably find it in one of the seat tracks after I crush it adjusting a seat.

 

Paid Spotify lets you keep any or all of your songs offline. Download when on WiFi, and thus save your cell data by storing offline.

 

Always wondered about the paid version (since the free version is awesome). I knew Spotify allowed the download to listen off-line (as they advertise that feature when listening to the free version.

My question is, lets say you have a few hundred songs downloaded a device and then cancel the paid subscription. Are those songs still available to listen to, or are they tied to an online refresh code that allows them to be played off-line....so if you cancel and you don't get the code, the song are not playable. Are they MP3 format? Can they be put on a thumb-drive and used in that fashion?

Thanks

 

If you cancel then it will disable the songs from within the app. You cannot play the songs outside the app. Since I have an iPhone, I haven't really play around with trying to extract the actual files from my phone. Paid subscription also allows you to save or stream at higher bitrates.
You may also use the same log in on multiple devices but not stream at the same time. Share one subscription with the whole family, just create different playlists for every member of the family and then download the playlists you want for each phone for offline play. Well worth the 10 bucks every month. I use it extensively at home too. Wired the whole house with AirPlay so I have my phone as a mobile jukebox.

 

^^^ This ^^^

There are "stream rippers" that could be used on a Window's PC to capture songs played through Spotify or any free streaming source, but beyond being illegal, it is a real hassle to do so when for $10 a month, you're good to go.

Besides the features already mentioned, you can subscribe to all kinds of Spotify curated playlists, as well as any "public" playlist of others. Then every playlist shows up on your phone, and for every playlist you can select it as "available offline" if you wish, in which case those songs are downloaded at the "quality" of your choosing (up to 320 kbps at the highest setting). I've got a couple thousand downloaded right now for MTTS -- but I also just bought a one month T-Mobile SIM for the trip on E-Bay for $21 so I've got "no data use" streaming for the trip.

Finally, the one think I also like is that with the paid subscription you get your own custom tailored playlist weekly of 30 songs based on what you've been listening too -- so between this playlist changing and the other playlists changing, you get new songs, and if their crap, that's what the forward button is for

 

Thumb drive plus streaming Pandora and TuneIn audio does it for me. Occasionally I've also downloaded a bunch of podcasts on my phone, and listen that way (long road trips, primarily). Re: Pandora/TuneIn, the Mini Connected app is a little clunky, but works well enough.

 

USB stick loaded with iTunes & from CDs works for me, although I bet the sound would be stronger if I could use CDs directly....but getting used to my HK sound system....just need to put the volume up higher than should be needed. I have a Blaupunkt am/fm/cd player in my 1976 BMW 2002 with 4 speakers I installed myself that puts the HK system to shame!

 

Don't ever use MP3' etc. Check out FLAC music files for better than LP audio quality. My sound ROCKS!