A buddy of mine says he burned me a bunch of Mp3 CDs, which I'm told hold about 75 songs apiece. However, he said many commercial and in-car CD players can't play these discs. Does anyone know if the MINI will play these things?? Any help from you audio-heads would be appreciated.
Thanks!

 

Stock MINI head units up to today cannot read MP3 data discs - be careful of people who burn from MP3 files onto an audio disc (ie: 74 minutes of music) then claim that the head unit can read MP3 ... all that is happening there is the head unit reads CDRs.

Rumour has it that the 2005 MINI will have an updated head unit that *can* read MP3 data discs. But this rumour has occurred before - wait and see when someone truly tests & confirms it.

 

The European Mini site says that all head units from July 1 production on will play MP3's off a CD-R or CD-RW disk. Unlikely that U.S. models will have a diffrent head uniit, so it should apply to all 2005 U.S. cars as well. No details have come out about how the song names will be displayed or other features. Hopefully the songs will be identified by the MP3 ID tag, and separate directories on the disc can be navigated, but no one has actually seen the new head unit in person yet. I find this odd, since one would think Mini would publicize it. There have supposedly been convertibles floating around for evaluation, but no one bothers to look at the radio!

 

I'm very interested in this too! During christmas, I just installed an MP3 player in my current car and WOULD NOT drive another car without one. I currently have 120 songs, and about 2 hours of stand up on one CD-RW, It's amazing.

 

The really amazing thing is the lack of information about the new head unit. 2005 models should actually be showing up in England, but I have yet to see a single description of the true MP3 capabilities of the new head unit. No advance info from Mini except to say that the unit plays MP3's from a CD-R or CD-RW disk. No info on song display, directory availability, playlists - nothing. No word on what you can control from the steering wheel.

When will this torture end?

 

Joe, will this end your torture?

Posted on MINI2 by GeoffC:
I can def. confirm that the CD Boost on my facelift MC (picked up at 2.30pm today - just got home - bl%dy fantastic!!!!!) DOES play MP3 - at the mo can't get the track name / artist to show but hey, so what.

See this thread:
http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59438

 

OK, so its been a while. The UK guys say that MP3's play just fine in their "Boost" or what is a U.S. stock head unit. Now the question is song information display. Has anyone determined if it is possible and which MP3 ID tag is involved? Also do we have a statement about what compressions the unit will play? Are my 160K encoded disks going to play, or are we limited to the more common 128K encoding?

C'mon guys, this is an internet site - there must be computer geeks like me buying Minis. Lets get on the stick here! Lets fire up those Sinclair 80's or whatever they have in England and figure this out.

 

Well, as far as I can tell Mp3 discs will NOT play in a stock US 2003 Cooper. Would love to hear otherwise, but I haven't heard from anyone who's had success.

 

We know that only the new head unit from the U.S. 05's or the "boost" head unit elsewhere will play MP3's. Someone in Europe must have one of the new ones and enough computer savvy to see if they can get the ID1,2,or 3 tag to display.

Also they should be able to encode at different sample rates and see what plays.

 

If it is the case that the 05 head unit will play MP3s off a cdr, how likely is it that I would be able to plug-and-play a swap a 2005 unit for my 2003 unit? Are the connections to the wiring harness likely to be different?

 

I was wondering as well about the 05 head unit working in an 04. Would love to be able to use MP3s again. Wonder how much damage a broken CD would do to the head unit..... Just kidding! Doubt they would put a new 05 unit in as a replacement.

 

I would assume that the 05 head unit is a direct replacement for the 04 - after all, the MP3 capability requires no more input or output channels than a plain audio CD deck. There is no incentive to change the hook-ups to solve any problems, and the HK system in general requires specific outputs to the Ibus and other factors that would be required. I would assume any 05 HU would just plug into an 04 Mini. Probably 03 as well. We'll just have to wait for the stereo mavens who want to put in aftermarket HU's to start selling their old ones. I for one am willing to bet that a 2005 HU that plays MP3's will probably be worth MORE than most aftermarket HU, at least at first.

 

Good point. I neglected to think about the HK situation. I currently have the HK system. You're right. Might as well wait and see.

 

I've heard of people putting '04 HU's in '02's (to get the Aux jack capability) with no problems...

 

Stovepipe - you'll have to retrofit an '05 headunit into your MINI to play MP3's with a stock headunit

 

With an iPod, holding more than 20,000 MP3 songs, and an FM transmitter sold at Radio Shack for $28, you can play all your MP3 songs over the stereo system with very good quality and you can easily take your music from car to car.

 

I was very skeptical of the FM transmitors but yesterday I got to see one first hand from my friend and think they sound pretty good. I would say the quality is as of a good radio station but you can tell it's not CD quality.

 

If you have an iPod already, and want to play MP3's in your car, then I guess it is worth the extra $150 or so to wire your car up with white spaghetti and worry everytime you stop about kids breaking in to steal it all. Why not just put an X-box on the front seat?


Buying an iPod in order to play MP3's in your car is just plain crazy.

A head unit that plays MP3's is much more sensible and cost effective.

 

Guess it's a good thing that I delayed getting into the dealer to get my CD skip and aux audio vs Sirius problems fixed... maybe I'll get the new '05 head under warranty for my trouble.

Dan

 

Does anyone know if the 05 head unit will play "wma" files?

 

Sadly, the powers that be decided not to display the tag info, just track #'s. Here is a link:
http://www.motoringfile.com/2004/07/...p3cd_head_unit
That article contains a couple of links to another forum where people confirm no tag info.

At one point a few weeks ago I found (and have since lost) another article saying that BMW thought tags were "distracting." What genius came up with that one???

 

Quote: At one point a few weeks ago I found (and have since lost) another article saying that BMW thought tags were "distracting." What genius came up with that one???


Especially since the Sirius Radio displays song titles!!

Peter in Denver

 

And some radio stations that support the artist / track titles on regular radio if that is true.

EDIT: or is that what sirius is?

 

No, Sirius (and XM) is radio via Satellite. Think of it as the radio equivalent of cable TV. The info you get from the radio stations that support it is RDS and PTS data.

Sirius and XM are over 100 channels of music, news, and sports that you subscrible to. You can listen to the same programming no matter where you are in the country. No looking for a new station when you drive outside of it's area, and all of their music programming is near CD quality.

 

Believe it or not, I believe that I read on the Mini2 forum that the head unit DOES play WMA files, vbr files, and mp3 files and actually a few more kinds I was not familiar with. I am still waiting for the definitive posting by someone who has the new head unit to let us know what it will play. There is still some question about encoding rates for the MP3 files, and there may be some odd downloadable formats used by MAC owners that I have never seen. If no one does it by the time I get mine, I have already prepared a CD with multiple encoding speed files, and all the different storage file protocols I can find. All I will have to do is pop it in and see what plays. Who knows, maybe ACC or AC3 or some THX encoding will work as well. Time will tell.