Hi Guys, the thing that has been bugging me about my order is whether to have the MDI socket. Now I currently use my mobile connected through the aux socket in my Leon to play tunes, my hope was to replace this with the sd card so I don't have to bother plugging my phone in every time I get in the car. I've recently been told by a co-worker Octavia owner (2010 se with bolero) that you cannot set the whole sd card to play on random (something I always do with my phone), only single folders. Can anyone confirm this? Is there any work around for it?

What features does the MDI socket (with a hard drive or pen drive) have over SD card functionality? (other than increase space with hard drives) Does it enable other play options? Does it speed up scanning and track changing?

Any info would be helpful

If you have your entire music collection on an iPod then the MDI is worthwhile. You plug in the iPod and control it throught the Bolero.

If have no iPod then you can plug in a HDD but why bother? You can get a few SD cards that hold your collection and work just as well as the MDI. They take up much less space than the HDD in your glovebox.

I have MDI as it happened to be fitted to the car I bought. I use a HDD that I already had. Would I specify it as an option next time - absolutely no! Not at £180 plus £20 for the lead - there are a lot of SD cards in that.

You could put all the tracks you want to be random in one folder. You may be able to create a playlist and make that random, but I haven't tried it on SD.

I use playlists from a hard disk, so I'll try the mix function. I think the functionality is the same whether you use hard disk via MDI or SD card direct, apart from the file count limitation on SD of course.

Once I put all my music on the hard disk I stopped using the SD card slot.

There's a thread form last year about getting the Bolero to work best with an SD card - I think kIwI may have been a major contributor (also on an Oz VW/Skoda site).

I got the MDI because all my music is on an ipod. The interface is a bit clunky, and not as intuitive as the ipod one, but it's great to be able to just plug it in. Or, if you've got an old HDD lying around, you can just plug it in and leave it there.

You could put all the tracks you want to be random in one folder. You may be able to create a playlist and make that random, but I haven't tried it on SD.

I use playlists from a hard disk, so I'll try the mix function. I think the functionality is the same whether you use hard disk via MDI or SD card direct, apart from the file count limitation on SD of course.

Once I put all my music on the hard disk I stopped using the SD card slot.

Checked up on the playlists this morning. Selecting mix with a playlist on a hard disk does do a pseudo random mix, so I assume the same would be true for an SD card.

OK, from a sound quality perspective the Aux Socket is just not up to the job and this is where the dock connector or USB comes to the fore. You are avoiding the crappy little headphone amp on the ipod or going digital to analogue with a HDD. Control is much better - steering wheel access or touch screen and it's just a better way of accessing music stored on mass storage.

I personally am moving away from the ipod as my entire CD collection (all 1500 albums) is now ripped to WAV - uncompressed 600meg per album so a 1TB HDD is going in the glovebox!

Do it, you won't regret it.

Do it, you won't regret it.

Indeed, comparing to what you will pay for the car, £180 is noise. It is expensive, but the MDI is more than just a socket, there is a controller attached to the socket that has its own firmware and "intelligence". This then interfaces to the Bolero unit.

OK, from a sound quality perspective the Aux Socket is just not up to the job and this is where the dock connector or USB comes to the fore. You are avoiding the crappy little headphone amp on the ipod or going digital to analogue with a HDD. Control is much better - steering wheel access or touch screen and it's just a better way of accessing music stored on mass storage.

I personally am moving away from the ipod as my entire CD collection (all 1500 albums) is now ripped to WAV - uncompressed 600meg per album so a 1TB HDD is going in the glovebox!

Do it, you won't regret it.

Thanks for the replies, if there is really no difference in interface or performance in the MDI socket then I might not bother I only really carry around my favourite tunes so its very unlikely that my portable collection is going to go over 1000 tunes so the sd limitation probably won't effect me.

BTW wardth I recommended you rip to FLAC not WAV. FLAC is basically WAV but compressed (a lossless format) like a zip file so you don't lose quality but save alot on space around 20mb per tune rather than 40mb+? Also officially supports tagging where wav does not.

Thanks for the replies, if there is really no difference in interface or performance in the MDI socket then I might not bother I only really carry around my favourite tunes so its very unlikely that my portable collection is going to go over 1000 tunes so the sd limitation probably won't effect me.

BTW wardth I recommended you rip to FLAC not WAV. FLAC is basically WAV but compressed (a lossless format) like a zip file so you don't lose quality but save alot on space around 20mb per tune rather than 40mb+? Also officially supports tagging where wav does not.

Thats the point there >IS< a difference over the AUX socket both in sound quality and control terms.

Yes I'm looking into FLAC but I'm struggling to find a seamless ripper and jukebox that is touch screen friendly. I currently rip to WAV using Media Player and play using Media Centre. Not ideal I know but the Media Centre works a freat on a 19" ELO touch screen whereas most FLAC tools are a PITA to operate!

Space isn't an issue TBH - I is a 4TB NAS :-)

Thats the point there >IS< a difference over the AUX socket both in sound quality and control terms.

I think TMO was comparing SD card slot to MDI, don't think he was considering using the Aux.

Yes I was, I know aux is crap the background noise in my Leon is terrible.

At current count I only have 467 songs on my android mobile so like I said the file limitation probably isn't a problem for me its whether I can get round this randomise all tracks problem with a playlist or all in one folder. I'd rather not put them all in one folder though I'm one of those people who is pedantic about putting everything in its correct place .

I do have Bluetooth in the car so I'm also hoping that's a reasonable alternative for playing tunes without draining the battery too fast.

wouldnt be without it now, and no matter what car I have next I will make sure it has native USB/ipod interface

best option I picked!

Spent a year on and off ripping 500+ CDs and spent £50 on a 32GB SD card only to find the 2000 file limitation.

If I'd known last year what I know now I'd have ordered MDI with the car.

If you've got an old HDD lying around, you can just plug it in and leave it there.

That's any old HDD with a USB enclosure and low power consumption of course (assuming its powered by USB)

That old 30GB desktop drive that you've upgraded and have had lying around probably won't do!

If i'm not mistaken the MDI will not recognise Flac files

If i'm not mistaken the MDI will not recognise Flac files

Documentation is not clear about the codec support, it claims to support the following formats:

"...in MP3, WMA, OGG Vorbis and AAC"

Ogg supports two lossy codecs, speex and vorbis, but also two lossless codecs, FLAC and Ogg PCM.

So I don't know how complete the Ogg support is, or if it supports FLAC within an Ogg format file.

But, yes, it would appear not to support native Flac.

That's my understanding as well, regards FLAC.

I don't have many (if any?) OGG files to test, and even then I'd need to see exactly how these had been created.

I would say though, from my undertanding of the MDI interface so far, that these would need to have been created by using the Vorbis codec. So if you did have an .OGG which had been created by passing the original source through the FLAC codec, this still wouldn't work.

If I get chance, I'll do some testing and see what happens. But certainly, to answer the simple question, if you have music files created purely in FLAC with a .flac extension, these won't play with MDI.

It's annoying for me too, as I've been slowly building up my collection of FLAC content, as the quality is superb. So what I've been doing up until now is creating a 320kbps MP3 version of everything as well; just as well I've got enough space on my server really

Hope this helps.

Steve

Resurecting an old post Wardy - did you ever get round to test the MDI with OGG Vorbis ?

 

Debating if I should add an MDI interface to my Columbus. I have an IPod Classic as well so that is also an option with the MDI - but depends on if it uses the IPods internal DAC or not.

 

As the CD input on the Columbus appears to be a line-level I am assuming that the DAC is carried out in the MDI interface hence OGG support.

Hi Guys!

 

I have a 13 reg Roomster - any idea why my Apple iPod will not play when I plug it into the MDI? It did before but now it won’t!     

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited 1 April, 201412 yr by Blancsanglier