I am new to the world of MINIs. I have seen some threads and videos about playing audio on USB sticks of various kinds. Most of the threads date to 2015. I have a new 2019 2 door JCW with Car play, etc. Everything works fine but I am a bit of an audio buff and would like to try some of my larger, higher-fidelity files in my car. Anyone have advice or threads/sites I can dig into? As a test, I tried a USB drive (FAT 32) and I converted some FLAC files to M4a since it is listed as one of the supported file types in the manual. I tried 2 full albums of files - once with files in album folders and once with them all right on the root of the drive. In each case, I get an error saying no compatible audio files are found (or something similar). Current version of media software: MT-002.099.001 (I also have found it a little hard to find where to go to check for software updates so...any help there is also appreciated).

Thanks!

 

Did you try the FLAC files? They worked in our 2016 and should work on yours. My 2014 basic h/u doesn't support FLAC.

If you are an audio buff, I'm guessing you aren't going to be satisfied with what the MINI provides. You can throw high resolution files at it all day long via USB and the internal cheapo DAC they provide isn't going to do what you want. If it does, then either they have made changes in recent years or your less buffy then I.

Try a USB stick with as many file formats as you can convert to and see what you get.

 

Exactly what Minnie said, your probably gonna want to upgrade the speakers next. I'm doing the Bavsound upgrade next month when I get some more mula. They have the 100 day in car trial and free returns, so why not.

Stage One Speaker Upgrade

 

Thanks to you both! Honestly, I have a great setup at home so I'm not sure I will go nuts with a system in my car but ... you never know. First, I just want to hear any difference with my existing speakers when using better source files. I am trying a different external hard drive today to see if I can get the system to read my m4a files. @minnie.the.moocher, I will try the Flac files as well! That would certainly simplify things (although I have already converted most of my files to m4a). The 2019 owner's manual list the following file formats as compatible: mp3, mp4, m4a, m4b, aac, wma.