Yes, I know they don't really rewind. My problem is that I use my player almost exclusively for audio books. It's irritating that when I start the car the player goes all the way back to the last track. I don't want to hear it again before I hear the new part!

I have the standard radio/CD player for the '07 R56. I can't find anything in the manual about it, and a quick search on NAM didn't reveal anything. Does anyone know of a way to make it restart at the point where it was when I shut off the engine?

 

I don't have an R56, but have you tried switching to another input (like the radio) before shutting down the car, and then switching back from the radio to the CD when you restart the car to see if it saved your place?

 

A similar trick works for me (although I have a Nav system, so it's a bit different), turning the stereo off before turning the car off.

 

I'll try them--both ideas make sense. I'll let you know!

 

if you hold the FF or REW down on the wheel it will do what your asking

 

Turning the radio off first does not work. Yes, Twister, I know about the FF and REW buttons, but that's not what I'm asking. I want to start the player at the exact same point where I was when I shut the engine off, without having to hunt around for it. In other words, the same paragraph--I don't need a review. The other day I had to hunt through 3 bands to find the place where I had been.

Dealer doesn't know.

 

So when you switch from the CD to the radio and then immediately back to the CD, does the CD resume where you left off or does it go back to the beginning of the track?

 

I haven't been able to make it do anything other than start at the beginning of a track. On most books, each track is 5 to 10 minutes. IF I park for just a few minutes, it does seem to have a memory, but not if it's an hour or so. And it's a lost cause for once a day, unless anyone has a solution.

 

Well crap - I don't suppose you listen to an iPod in the car? You could copy your CDs to iTunes and mark the "remember playback position" option for the tracks before transferring them to your iPod.

 

Nope, no iPod. IPods came around about 55 years after I did, and that's fine with me.

I think I'll talk to my SA and have him to ask Germany. I did that when the subject of sunroof weight came up, and got the answer from the engineers' mouth. Probably translated, though.

 

Have you had a chance to compare the operation of your CD player with the players in other MINIs? It would be helpful to know whether this is a defect in your particular car or a general design flaw.

 

Other threads on this subject exist - I was just searching last week for help with the same issue. Some had reported that turning off the stereo before turning off the car would "save" the current track position. That doesn't work for me either. Once the ignition has been off for longer than a few minutes, it returns to the beginning of the current track or MP3 file the next time I start it up, no matter what I do.

I have some discs that have very long MP3 files (60-70 minutes) and these are unusable in the Mini - on my 10-minute commute I'll only ever hear the first 10 minutes, over and over. And since there's no run time display on the stereo, you can't even note your position in the track and then FF to it the next time you get in. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is just the way it works.

 

I think it's the way it works too. Goes to the track's beginning if you are gone for more than xx minutes. That's significant for an audiobook, and I would wager it could be fixed, but would wager even more that it will not be fixed. I'd be interested in whether or not the 2009 cars do it the same way. The ipod method would fix it for sure, but that's another bunch of stuff to mess with, I hear you. What you need is a cassette player. It stops right there in its tracks. Who cares about sound quality of audiobooks?

 

If you're driving along playing an audiobook and turn off the stereo, will it remember your place when you turn the stereo back on an hour or two later if you haven't turned the car off in the meantime?

If it will, you may be able to get a stereo shop to rewire your stereo so that it's powered by a constant-power wire rather than an ignition-switched wire. The drawback is that you'd have to manually turn your stereo off when you shut the car off, but that might be worth it to you if it will hold your place in the audiobook indefinitely.

 

A cassette player would be fine with me, and would open up a whole new selection market at the library, BUT I haven't owned a car with a cassette player for a decade and a half. That includes 3 BMWs. And I refuse to drive around with another player perched on the right seat.

I'm going to ask my SA to write to Germany.

 

This must be one of the differences between either the nav/non-nav or the standard/hifi systems. My 07, August build with hi-fi and nav, holds the same place in a song on an audio CD for weeks similar to what nicknbecka reported.

 

I was thinking that convenience access might have something to do with it too, since my wifes' fob will keep track of a separate place as long as we don't change CDs.

 

That really doesn't make sense to me. It is true that each fob is programmed differently (Hubby's fob goes to radio, mine to CD), but I can't see how the place would be saved. Do you shut the radio off before you kill the car, or something like that?

 

On my car, I don't shut off the radio or switch sources, it just remembers the position. I have convenience access also but never use my other key fob so I don't know if that option affects any of this.

 

I've tried it, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't help. I'll keep trying; meanwhile I emailed my SA and asked him to contact the guys across the Pond.

 

I was just thinking that the convenience option was designed to store audio preferences and that this behavior we'd found might have been an un-intended consequence. Sounds like not, though.

 

Final word from Germany: Can't do it. It will go back to the start of each track unless it has only been off a few minutes.

And I just started a new audio book. Seven CDs. One track per CD. I give up.