So after 2 weeks, just noticed that there is no CD player! So how does everyone listen to music? I do not have Sirius Radio either......

 

plug your iphone (or smartphone) into the USB connection. can play music from itunes, pandora, spotify, etc..

Personally I pay the $10 a month for spotify.

 

Rip your cd's and store them on a USB key....pug it in...your entire CD collection will be stored on a $10 USB storage key...no worries about scratches,fingerprints, or theft....and no looking for the "right" CD when driving...folks are looking back at CD's in cars the way we look back at 8 track players or car record players....
Depending on how you choose to compress and store the CD's, the quality may be just as good (lossless high bitrate) or slightly lower than you CD's....

 

Better than plugging in is to stream via Bluetooth

 

Or your iPod or MP3 player

 

I have about 3000 songs loaded on the hard drive. I have a flash drive with about 10,000 songs loaded. Put any of that on random play and never again listen to the radio. I do Pandora from my iPhone.

 

Keep in mind that not everyone is as tech savvy as ya'll. Dealer should have mentioned it along the way. Assuming there was a test drive conducted.

 

It says not to plug a harddrive into the USB port, but I'm still tempted to test a USB DVD player.



You can also plug a portable CD player into the auxillary port.

Ripping CDs is pretty easy, or that's what children are for. It's very convienent when you get your collection done. I've got my collection in WMA Lossless files backed up on two network drives. I select some of them to put on my iPod.

I also listen to them by streaming them from my computer to an AppleTV, or to my iPod.

I had this idea yesterday that I could create a little network in my car with a router and a network harddrive in the trunk.

In October I will have a Pono Music Player to plug into the auxillary port and test the HK.

 

Tacoman,
I expressed the same CD concern several months ago, and was politely
told I was an "Old _ _ _ _ Guy".
Guess you gotta have Blue Teeth these days to get tunes.
Perhaps you remember vinyl?
You may even have a turntable?
I do.
Twenty years from now the current "youngers" will be saying.....
Remember when we were able to drive our own cars?
The Blue Brain will take care of everything by then.

 

I bluetooth stream from my phone. I know this car has an HDD, but I doubt I'd ever use it.

I think from the suggestions here, should you not have a device which has bluetooth streaming, you can choose to plug it in (if capable), or choose the USB stick route.

 

[QUOTE=hammerhands;3973617]It says not to plug a harddrive into the USB port, but I'm still tempted to test a USB DVD player.

[QUOTE]
A computer USB drive will not work...it REQUIRES a computer to do processing, and needs drivers....
A portable CD player aka "disc-man" will work....if you plug it into the aux jack...

 

A hard drive would have a better chance for success because the stereo will be looking for a USB mass storage device.

People had some degree of success using a hard drive on the R56 USB (the F56 has completely new electronics, so results may be different). The drive needed to be formatted as FAT32. The first problem was that the USB didn't supply enough power for many hard drives. This is probably the main reason MINI warns against using a hard drive -- the file system may be damaged if the drive doesn't get enough power. Even when the hard drive did work, there were other issues. The stereo couldn't index more than something like 4000 tracks on the drive, and indexing took a long time after the drive is plugged in. However, as I said, the F56 has a completely different system and will behave differently.

 

Something I know about DVD drives is that they negotiate with the computer over what set of commands to use, they find one the computer and the drive understand. I expect that they would revert to a similar command set that a USB drive uses, maybe read-only.

Would the computer understand what to do with audio data streaming from the drive?

That's why I want to know what format the Personal Profile file is, it could give a clue to the operating system. I'm going to guess it will be Linux.

 

The F56 probably runs Blackberry QNX kernel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
http://www.qnx.com/company/customer_stories/

 

I listen to FM-HD stations for my daily commutes. I do wish at times that I had gone with the satellite option. I miss it! I do, though, use Pandora One for long trips. In many ways it is superior to satellite because you can select your own channels (artists or music preference) and the content is very rich.

 

Wow! Does nobody else here use Webradio? It's the ultimate source of audio entertainment. You have to have your MINI Connected app running to use it, but I have no use for Pandora, Spotify, et al. Live-streaming internet radio stations trump all of these, and they're free. Many stream at very high bitrates and sound great. Any radio station, from anywhere in the world -- all at your command. You can download the app and find your stations in advance, then play them from the iDrive controller, when driving. I had added the TuneIn app, but find I don't need it, because BMW's Webradio performs the same function.

 

I'm weird. I like CDs. I will not own a car without a CD player until they no longer exist in any make or model

I like options and I don't care for car makers making the decision for me to not be able to listen to CDs in my car. Oh and I'm 35

 

1. I don't know about you, but I am. This doesn't stop me from getting my music on the oh so good HK though.
2. Maybe eating a blue raspberry slush will get blue teeth for you, but I doubt you'll get any tunes that way.
3. Yes. Got well over a thousand 45's. Pales in comparison to my CD collection, but some music just isn't available on CD.
4. Yes. Professional direct-drive. Never could get this setup to work in a car.
5. I'll be dead before this happens.

All jesting aside, what was your solution to not having a CD player in the car?

 

This is good because there is an option for a 6-Disc DVD player available.

 

May I ask why you would rather use CDs? The F56 plays FLAC audio files, so you can listen to lossless or uncompressed audio if that is your problem.

If you're not concerned about sound quality, you can plug in an MP3 player or use bluetooth for streaming and not worry about your CDs being stolen.

If you have the wired pack, the car has a 20 gig harddrive you can load songs onto as well.

Also, as mentioned above, there is an option for a 6 disc DVD changer.

 

What is a cd?

 

This



(just joking, esp for those who prefer CDs) Hell, I still have shelves and shelves of LPs. There's no way I'm getting rid of those.

 

Both my 2003 MC and my wife's 2001 VW Cabrio take those things, although
I usually use a better tape than TDK-D. Back in those days, CD players in cars
still tended to skip over bumps, especially taughtly suspended cars like the MINI.

I still have a good 3-head deck (Tascam 122mkiii) in my home stereo setup
(yes, stereo, only 2 speakers, not home theatre or dolby 5.1 or such).

 

Holy cow! That is such a good point. I remember my first car, a 1990 toyota camry. I had installed a benzi box (paragraph 7) back in those days as stereos were being taken from cars in NYC. That POS was the top of the line model from Cadence (don't even know if this company exists now), and skipped every chance it got. LOL The good old days... I loved putting that CD there, and watching the slim stereo gulp it up

 

In my '93 Saturn, I had some high end Sony (or Alpine, don't recall exactly anymore) that would skip if I sneezed too hard. I had the great joy taking a sledgehammer to it at some point How quickly we forget...