For the non-techies amongst us:

 

Having read the posts on Swing and MDI, I decided to keep it simple and have a little play around with my in car system.

Although I realise some may not agree, I think the Swing-based system in my Spaceback Elegance works well for the car's price point.

The AM/FM radio tunes well to all the major stations (Herts/Essex border) and the CD player functions 100%, along with all of the steering wheel controls, MDI audio displays etc.

To be honest, I am quite pleased, but wanted to access a selection of music on a shedload of CDs built up over many years.

I wiped and formatted an old USB flash drive (data stick), then ripped three favourite tracks using a variety of different music file formats.

For my ears, and music taste, there was a clear winner played through the Swing unit - Windows Media Audio, more commonly known as .wma

Not only did this sound really authentic to the original digital music, but all of the "Artist", "Album" and "Track" details displayed well through the MDI via "Browse" and "Info".  The great thing about .wma, is a click on "Properties" and all of the details can be edited - I liked the display on the Swing unit, and liked the MDI dashboard display even better.

And so to my criticism..... a normal size flash drive is much too big to sit in the USB without sticking out/snagging, so I internet searched for reviews on a small USB flash drive with suitable memory. I finally settled on a TDK TF60 16 GB:

 

http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/nignb/media/Spaceback%20MDI/B9113EE0-3BDD-4A4E-9C33-CA6A83F84568.jpg.html

 

http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/nignb/media/Spaceback%20MDI/A92FEF06-2982-43E5-97DB-FD87DE33E473.jpg.html

 

Although the TDK packaging claims a capacity of 1000 tracks, I have now stored 80+ tracks and used less than 10% of available memory.  So for less than a tenner, I will be able to have an 800-900 track Juke Box.  If the files are stored without folders, i.e. use the flash drive as the root folder, then the "Mix" function works like an Apple shuffle facility across all of the music stored.

The TDK is tiny, sits neatly in the USB port, reacts fast and has (so far) worked seamlessly with both Swing and MDI.

Maybe not audiofile quality, but I am delighted with the end result.

Those 2 links are well dodgy when I'm looking via phone.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Try these...

 

http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/nignb/media/Spaceback%20MDI/B9113EE0-3BDD-4A4E-9C33-CA6A83F84568.jpg.html

http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/nignb/media/Spaceback%20MDI/A92FEF06-2982-43E5-97DB-FD87DE33E473.jpg.html

Good simple explanation on how to get some playable music on your swing system

On amundsen the SD slot allows the same thing with any old SD memory card lying around the house - from old camera, phone, laptop.

Definitely a much cheaper and much neater solution than the cable.

That said, my BMW USB+3.5mm to Lightning cable has been behaving itself of late. As long as you connect it to the phone after the car starts and after the Bluetooth pairing has commenced, it works as expected. The cable doesn't mind being left connected to the MDI all the time, it just objects if you start the car up with the phone already attached to the other end as well.

cheers for this i just brought from ebay an scandisk usb 2.0/3.0 16gb cruzer fit for £6.95

i put 141 songs on in format mp3 only 917mb works a treat ....