I'm not defending Minis price of the mega player, but I have paid for OEM mega players on 3 or 4 differant cars over the last 6 years or so and when they are installed and
integrated into the car audio system, prices were from $500 to $700, the last one I had was a 12 disc system and worked well, but the 12 dics sleves were not cheap.

 

Now the next question is, if you play MP3 discs on the CD changer, will it display track titles? Or will it only show track numbers like the base stereo? Maybe you need the $2100 Nav to display the titles -- see, they may have planned it all out very carefully.

 

I've yet to try a MP3 CD yet, but according to the Owner's Manual that came with our nav equipped MINI, there is a "Details" setting that can be turned on and the tag info in the MP3 files are extracted and shown. It also appears that the names of the artist and album are displayed (instead of just track numbers) as long as you organize the MP3 files into a standard Artist\Album\Song Titles type directory structure on the MP3 disc (I would think that this would/should be available to non-nav cars as well).

 

Apparently so, although the interface is really awkward: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...d.php?t=113832

 

Maybe this will help:

 

You could be the one guy with the MINI CD Changer.

This will by my first new car, though when my girlfriend was car shopping earlier in the year a number of auto makers offered the CD changer as part of their ~$400 audio system upgrade. My current car (a '97 BMW 318is) came with a Pioneer changer in the trunk and an adapter that lets it talk to the OEM head unit. Those put together I think should have cost about half of the $500 BMW wanted for the CD changer. (Still less than what MINI's charging.) I'd consider the aftermarket route if someone would come up w/ an adapter, but then you run into fitment issues.

 

Put in the mp3cd it'll show you the list of folders on it (in my case they are all albums, but you could make them playlists I think) you open one and the list of songs comes next, with the artist/track title. The kicker is that the tracks are in alphabetical order, not album order. I don't know how to fix that, maybe you can't. So I just shuffle them usually or use the iPod.

 

In a previous stereo, I had the same problem. I added "01 - ", "02 - ", and so on to the begining of the tag. Tedious, but it worked. For a limited number of cds, with only 10 or so albums per cd, it's not too bad.

 

Yep, that's what I do. ALL my mp3 players (alpin in truck, phone/pda, home multi cd player, home dvd/mp3 player...) do that. I always # them in the order I want.

 

you can put album number order in the ID3 tag it think that would work also...just throwing out ideas....my mini is not here yet!

 

My Blackberry plays 'em in correct order after an OS update. I hate messing with the tags, it's a PIA and I don't want to reburn all the mp3 again. I'll have to check my one at home and see.

 

You might be interested in something like MusicBrainz's Tagger, it comes up with an audio thumprint of sorts and identify songs, update tags, and rename files with updated info.

I've changed how my digital collection was stored a few times over the years, and after re-tagging and sorting it manually the first time I'll never do it that way again.

You can have it rename and sort them automatically too. I've got:
/Artist Name/Album Name/Artist - Album - Track No - Track Title.ext

 

my week 34 didnt have one either

 

Has anybody received it? I have the bluetooth prep package and no usb port even though one of the addons in my stack of manuals showed it. I presume it's supposed to be next to the audio in jack.

I'm a week 38'er

 

One of our week 39 guys doesn't have it either -- I guess wait for the 2008 model...

 

USB port is not there on my week 34 build.

 

Looks like it won't be arriving until the December builds (i.e. the 2008 models) start showing up.

 

i pick mine up tmw.. week 39 build.
i'll let you know.

 

My week 37 build did not have the USB with the bluetooth prep.

 

My MCS was built on October 3rd, not sure what week number that is, but it has the USB audio port.

However, as in the past, this car was built to North American specs but delivered to Germany since I'm military. I think since August we've all ben getting the usb port right next to the aux in jack.

Rob

 

9/23's the latest build date that has been delivered that I know of out of week 39 (Sept 23-29th) and still didn't have the USB port. My order was built 9/27, but won't be delivered for another two weeks or so since I'm on the west coast.

Maybe October was the line switchover, but IIRC- wasn't the other North American spec 07 with USB a German delivery?

 

Yes, it was... I know you didn't ask me, but I read it here and was hoping like crazy mine would have it too. Lucky it worked out!

Note that the system can't control the iPod with just the USB port... You need to purchase a BMW iPod adapter for $50 ($40 with NAM discount).

 

I'm not really sure who I was asking

I was aware that an adapter would be needed for an iPod, but I don't own one. I was thinking I could use the Sony 4GB thumb drive instead. If I could find something to automatically transcode and sync a random selection of favorites to it, that would hold enough music for a day or two

 

The addendum to the manual leads me to believe you can put a memory stick with music files on it and play it directly like that. Even has a directory browser capability on the radio display. Only limitation is that it can't play DRM files.

 

so does anybody have an idea what would be the effort to install it please ?