USB Compatiblity Question

[Paul De]

I have finally gotten around to updating my USB stick with the latest tunes I had loaded into iTunes since last Jan.  It sucks that the BMW system can't use the native apple ma4 (mp4/acc) format and insists on, IMO, the the less desirable mp3 format.  Updated my wife's SUV USB stick and that system can accept mp3, mp4 and I think others as well....so simple to just copy the music files over to the USB and go (I think someone already put this on Sywagon's wish list to the mother ship so +1 to that wish).   

 

Anyway, I am getting close to maxing out my 64 GB USB stick and thought it was time to jump it up to a 128 GB stick. For you folks doing the math, no I don't have that ginormous amount of a music library' but decided to use more memory per song by using revised rip settings at a 320 bit rate.  I know on a M/C this isn't really needed with road noise and such but  I can use the same high quality MP3 files in an older blu-ray player at the lake house HT which is a nice enough system to reveal just how terrible the default bit rate mp3 music can sound.  Two uses for one time consuming conversion exercise from ma4 to mp3.

 

The Question.

Reviewing the audio system info from BMW it makes no mention of any USB memory size limitation, but has anybody used a 128GB stick on their Wethead USB input and had problems with the system accepting a stick with that much memory?   I don't think the high bit rate will be an issue, but has any body else use a 320 bit rate for music files for their bike?

Edited November 10, 2019 by Paul De
clunker sentence & corrected a missspelling

[Trilegy]

Not sure of the USB but I have a 1tb (I think) micro sd in the NavIV. Same issue with mp3 so not just a bmw issue.

It works fine. The good part is you can you use it via the media app on the unit so can easily do the playlist etc.  

FWIW the only difference mp3 v mp4 is the album/song info/pics. The actual recording is the same (I believe and I could be corrected.)   Oh and of course the PITB process of converting back to mp3.

[Bill_Walker]

3 hours ago, Paul De said:

It sucks that the BMW system can't use the native apple ma4 (mp4/acc) format and insists on, IMO, the the less desirable mp3 format.

The BMW system works just fine if you get the rather expensive adapter cable and plug an iPod into it.  I've got an iPod nano plugged into mine.  I can use the wonder wheel to choose playlists, albums, songs, or whatever, and a simple push right skips to the next song.

[LAF]

32 Gig or less is what I believe the USB slot likes. 

 

I burn and play all my music at 320 KB or CD quality.  I dont have the RT but a GS now so I use the NAV VI with a 32 gig Ultra Fast card.  It really pays off to use a fast SD card in the GPS units. 

[Paul De]

 I can confirm that the my '15 RT accepted a 64GB USB 2.0 stick with ~ 50GB of music on it with no problems.

 

The FAT 32 formatting used on these USB sticks, and required by the BMW system, should not limit the use of a 128GB USB stick, but that may mean nothing on BMW's side on the equation.  In theory if fully compatible with FAT32 then the limit is 2TB of memory and file sizes up to 4GB. (haha catch a movie on your GS TFT screen while riding).

 

[Paul De]

11 hours ago, Bill_Walker said:

I've got an iPod nano plugged into mine.

I have that $$$ dongle too.  No way to fit my music library on my Nano as it has only 8GB of memory even if I use the default bit rate. 

[PadG]

I do believe that in my '15 RT manual for the radio, the limit capacity is 64 gig.  I suspect that it's because, when using the USB to play MP3 files, the radio needs to read all of the ID3 header information, from all of the files, into it's memory.  It may not have enough onboard memory to read more than 64 gig worth of MP3 files!

 

IMHO, using maximum bitrate (320 kbps) is pretty much a waste when listening to music while riding!  Take into account the size of the speaker that you are using to listen to the music, whether it's your in-helmet headset or earbud.  They just don't have the ability to reproduce that level of fidelity.  Then, there is that constant background noise interference!  All of my MP3s are ripped at 320 kbps, and that's what I used to have when playing on the RT, until I needed more room.  That was when I downgraded them all to 256 kbps.  Needless to say, I didn't notice any difference in audio quality.

 

BTW, I don't actually use a thumbdrive!  I, and I suspect the same for most of you, have several microSD cards around, and several "spare" ones.  That is what I use, with a tiny (quite inexpensive) USB reader.

[LAF]

Well with custom ear plugs I can tell the difference in music recorded at 320 or 256.  Maybe as one gets older it does not matter. 

 

My 15 RT I used 32 gig but that may have been my own choice and not the limit.  It is a FAT 32 thing for sure on the Nav V  and Nav VI.

 

That size means nothing at the cost of USB sticks.  I have a bunch, and many more SD cards as most do.

 

 

 

[Bill_Walker]

9 hours ago, Paul De said:

I have that $$$ dongle too.  No way to fit my music library on my Nano as it has only 8GB of memory even if I use the default bit rate. 

I think my nano is 16 GB.  It won't fit my whole library, but it will fit the 1337-song playlist that I always listen to on shuffle when I'm riding.

[Paul De]

22 hours ago, PadG said:

do believe that in my '15 RT manual for the radio, the limit capacity is 64 gig.  I suspect that it's because, when using the USB to play MP3 files, the radio needs to read all of the ID3 header information, from all of the files, into it's memory.  It may not have enough onboard memory to read more than 64 gig worth of MP3 files!

OK, but the header info is only a factional part of the music file.  I would be very surprised that the radio is pulling a copy of the whole file into its internal memory. But then again I can't say how it handles indexing.

 

 

22 hours ago, PadG said:

IMHO, using maximum bitrate (320 kbps) is pretty much a waste when listening to music while riding!

No argument with that point except that I want tp get a 2fer from the time spent on conversion to mp3 Aside from the bike I will create a second stick for use on a nice HT system at out place in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.  That system will reveal the difference and at times would be inclined to do some active listening there.

 

13 hours ago, LAF said:

Well with custom ear plugs I can tell the difference in music recorded at 320 or 256.  Maybe as one gets older it does not matter. 

Haha.  So, far so good, which is surprising given all those years riding/racing 2 stroke dirt bikes and a whole mess of Rock concerts.

[LAF]

So glad you got that tongue in cheek comment.  It dont matter and music is second or third or even 4th to the ride at least.

 

Like I said with the cost of memory you can have a playlist 32 or 64 gig playlist for every day of the week with not to much financial pain.  The difference between 256 and 320 is just not worth not doing.  I can use it in the car and the house so they get played in various environments.

[PadG]

Yes, the ID3 data is just a tiny fraction of the MP3 file, which goes to show that the radio also has just a tiny amount of memory.  When the music plays, it actually plays from the file.  The ID3 data is used, by the player, to display and give you the various options available, such as artist, genre, and so on. 

 

I used to use the Apple adapter and connect my 64 gig iPod Touch for music, but using the USB with MP3 files takes up much less room, and actually performs (in term of functions) much better than with the Apple adapter.

 

Lee, you must have very good ears!!!!   Look at the frequency response spec. for the 265 kbps vs any earbuds or in-helmet speakers and you will see what I mean.  OTOH, many audiophiles will claim that having speakers (talking about big floor-standing ones here) that responds to larger range than the "normal" human hearing range of 20 - 20k Hz can make a difference in the listening experience, but they usually refers to the bass, which is very lacking in the speakers that we use to listen to while riding, because of their physical size.

[Paul De]

I don't want to go astray too far from the USB music creation for my Wethead but this next challenge to convert ma4 to mp3 files hit what I think is some type of DRM (digital rights management) sanfu and that is all on the Apple side.   I have maybe 150 ma4 files that give error codes using iTunes to covert them to mp3.  I admit that I'm guessing it is some type of rights protection issue, but what is weird is that most of these files were ripped from my purchased CDs and more weird than that is the issue affects a few songs but not all songs from a particular CD.  This really keeps me hating Apple for their attitude that we should never want flexibility beyond their vision for us.

 

I pulled copy of these files out of the iTunes directory tried the conversion process with my Nero software as well as a another ma4 to mp3 freeware converter with no luck. I then went searching for DRM removal software and there is some software that looks like they might do the trick, but are not offered as freeware and  before I spend $40 to download this software I hope to get some input from the BMWST community if any one has experience with a good DRM tool out there.

 

I'm gonna get POed soon, and just have to remind myself of all the terrible times I had with 8 track and cassettes players eating tape as well as skipping CD players, Grrrr!  

 

[dirtrider]

28 minutes ago, Paul De said:

I don't want to go astray too far from the USB music creation for my Wethead but this next challenge to convert ma4 to mp3 files hit what I think is some type of DRM (digital rights management) sanfu and that is all on the Apple side.   I have maybe 150 ma4 files that give error codes using iTunes to covert them to mp3.  I admit that I'm guessing it is some type of rights protection issue, but what is weird is that most of these files were ripped from my purchased CDs and more weird than that is the issue affects a few songs but not all songs from a particular CD.  This really keeps me hating Apple for their attitude that we should never want flexibility beyond their vision for us.

 

I pulled copy of these files out of the iTunes directory tried the conversion process with my Nero software as well as a another ma4 to mp3 freeware converter with no luck. I then went searching for DRM removal software and there is some software that looks like they might do the trick, but are not offered as freeware and  before I spend $40 to download this software I hope to get some input from the BMWST community if any one has experience with a good DRM tool out there.

 

I'm gonna get POed soon, and just have to remind myself of all the terrible times I had with 8 track and cassettes players eating tape as well as skipping CD players, Grrrr!  

 

 

Afternoon Paul

 

Two things (might or might not help you)_

 

First, compare the title ID of the ones that won't convert to the ones that will (maybe it is a title length thing). 

 

Next, if you have an old (like real old) computer then try re-ripping  the songs using that. I have had (digital rights management) issues when using my newer computer (new CD/DVD reader) as those have some sort of built in anti-pirate ware. 

 

My old shop computer with antique CD reader seems to not pay any attention to the digital rights.

[Paul De]

Evening DR

 

2 hours ago, dirtrider said:

 

First, compare the title ID of the ones that won't convert to the ones that will (maybe it is a title length thing).

I thought about file name length but whether the format is NTFS, exFAT, FAT32 or FAT16 all allow up to 255 characters for file length.  I'll double check, but I don't think it will be the ah-ha moment.

 

2 hours ago, dirtrider said:

Next, if you have an old (like real old) computer then try re-ripping  the songs using that. I have had (digital rights management) issues when using my newer computer (new CD/DVD reader) as those have some sort of built in anti-pirate ware. 

I thought of that and after running into this issue on my 1 year old win10 notebook, I went and tried to execute the conversion on an 8 YO old desk top that came with Win7, and is the box I use to load CDs into the the music libray. The music files are on my home network NAS drive and can be accessed by either machine, but I thought maybe iTunes was fussing over the notebook not being the same machine the library was created with.  Got nowhere on this approach

 

How old is your shop machine?  I think in a dark corner of my basement shop I have an  Win XP machine...haven't booted it up in years though.

[dirtrider]

44 minutes ago, Paul De said:

Evening DR

 

I thought about file name length but whether the format is NTFS, exFAT, FAT32 or FAT16 all allow up to 255 characters for file length.  I'll double check, but I don't think it will be the ah-ha moment.

 

I thought of that and after running into this issue on my 1 year old win10 notebook, I went and tried to execute the conversion on an 8 YO old desk top that came with Win7, and is the box I use to load CDs into the the music libray. The music files are on my home network NAS drive and can be accessed by either machine, but I thought maybe iTunes was fussing over the notebook not being the same machine the library was created with.  Got nowhere on this approach

 

How old is your shop machine?  I think in a dark corner of my basement shop I have an  Win XP machine...haven't booted it up in years though.

 

Evening Paul

 

On the longer file length names,  yes, you should be OK with FAT 32 but how about your ripping software? can that handle longer names? 

 

It's old, came with Windows 98 (so that is the era of the CD player), it's had new hard drives a few times, new video card, USB card, etc but it still has the original CD player. It also has an older added  DVD player I can't remember how old but old enough to allow the newer BMW service DVD's to be copied to another drive & run from there. 

 

 

[lkraus]

MediaMonkey for Windows will convert at least some .m4a files.  I tend to avoid Apple products as they never seem to work the way I think they should, so I'm not real familiar with their formats or DRM usage.  I do have a few .m4a tunes that I copied from my mother-in-laws Ipod/Itunes many years ago, and MediaMonkey easily plays and/or converts those to .mp3.  I don't usually make a manual conversion, I let MediaMonkey make the conversion automatically as it transfers the song to my Zumo or phone (@128-192kbps, original file remains intact)).  I'm using the "Gold" version to manage about 100 GB of music, but the free version seems to have the same conversion capabilities (Gold might convert a bit faster on some PCs.)

 

EDIT: Found more info about using MediaMonkey with DRM protected files: Playing M4A, M4P, M4B (AAC) Tracks

 

EDIT 2: Maybe those files are .m4p and not .m4a? ...or it's not a DRM issue?

	M4A	M4B	M4P
Encoding	AAC, ALAC	AAC	AAC
Usage	DRM-free iTunes Songs	iTunes Audiobooks, Podcasts	DRM-protected iTunes Songs
Copyprotection	No	Yes	Yes
Compatibility	Almost All Media Players	iTunes, QT, Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch	iTunes, QT, Apple iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android

[Paul De]

Thx Ikraus,  I'll have a look at the software.

 

Yeah this event is getting me to consider abandoning the Applesphere where they tell you what you will like and are egotistical enough to be surprised when you are not liking it so much.  To be fair Apple was the first to provide integrated software, apps, and personal devices where I could centralize and play music around the house and patio without the nosebleed investment in the Sonos system. But there are so many ways to skin that cat today.  Haha, I guess after 15 years an updated strategy is in order.

[PadG]

I had always held the Apple's general principle against them, ever since their very first day of Apple 1!  Back in those days, I was (and still am) the proponent of the IBM (PC) philosophy of having open architecture so that one can use 3rd party hardware and software on one's computer, while Apple holds the opposite philosophy of holding everything within their controls.  One MUST use Apple operating system and hardware, and if any other companies tried to get around it, then they will get sued into submissions.

 

OTOH, I do use iPods, because they are, unarguably, the best MP3 players around, which had been proven over the decades.  I load up iTune with my own MP3s, ripped at 320 kbps, BUT if you look into the details of how iTune operates in transferring those files to the iPod, you will find that it actually downgrades the bit rates as it converts the MP3 into ma4 for loading into the iPod.

[PadG]

Lee - it had dawned on me that data on frequency response of mp3 files seems to be a little hard to come by, nowadays.  Here are some data that should show you that listening to mp3 at 256 kbps is really no difference to listening the same song from the same encoding at 320 kbps.  Keep in mind that mp3 encoding is a "lossy" compression method, and the bit rate value determines how much of the high and low frequencies of the original sound gets clipped off.  Also keep in mind that the normal human hearing range is from 20 hz to 20,000 hz.  Here are some comparisons of the frequency clipping at the top-end (high):

 

Original data came from here: https://thesession.org/discussions/19642

 

bit rate cut-off frequency compression
1411kbps >20kHz 1:1
320kbps 19.5kHz 1:4.4
192kbps 18kHz 1:7.3
160kbps 17kHz 1:8.8
128kbps 16kHz 1:11
96kbps 15kHz 1:14.7
64kbps 11kHz 1:22
32kbps 5kHz 1:44

I think you’d have to have an extremely good ear and absolutely top-of-the-range audio equipment to notice any significant difference between the source (1411kbps) and 320kbps – and possibly as far down as 160kbps (iTunes suggests 160 or 192 for most purposes). When you get down to 128kbps (the “near-CD” quality beloved of mp3 file purveyors on the internet) even my old ears can tell the clear difference between that and 192 and higher. 128 and 96Kbps may be just about bearable if you’re listening on low-end playback, but when you get down to 64-32kbps range you’re definitely in the voice (radio and telephony) recording range

[Paul De]

All-First my excuse my minor brain fart where I transposed  m4a to ma4, but I think all who have responded got what I meant and rolled with it.  Thanks

 

Ikraus

10 hours ago, lkraus said:

EDIT: Found more info about using MediaMonkey with DRM protected files: Playing M4A, M4P, M4B (AAC) Tracks

I did a little reading on this link and there might be something to try here even W/O using MediaMonkey.   They talk about uploading protected songs to iCloud and redownloading them which removes the protection flag. 

 

I had read elsewhere that Apple was abandoning their heavy handed rights protection policy which to me always seemed to be geared to enriching primarily Apple through forcing multiple purchases of the same music for your various devices with stand alone iTunes programs.  That is worth a try as the songs in question are just over 500MB so my unused free iCloud space is more than enough to do this. 

 

PadG & LAF

You all are trying to get me to go full geek on audible differences of the formats, but I'm not going to bite except to say I will say that above 192kbps things get a lot better and diminishing returns are in play. However, given that the cost of storage is so cheap now why throw any info away.   If I ever start from scratch again I will go lossless and even more important than that avoid any compressed sources where possible(not too easy to come by in an mp3 addicted world).  You can always create downgraded files for other needs from that master library.

[92Merc]

I use AVS Audio converter to convert all of my Apple bought music over.  I think I run it at 320k for my wife's files.  No DRM issues there.

 

https://www.avs4you.com/avs-audio-converter.aspx

 

I'm hard of hearing.  So I don't listen to any music on my bike.

[LAF]

8 hours ago, PadG said:

Lee - it had dawned on me that data on frequency response of mp3 files seems to be a little hard to come by, nowadays.  Here are some data that should show you that listening to mp3 at 256 kbps is really no difference to listening the same song from the same encoding at 320 kbps.  Keep in mind that mp3 encoding is a "lossy" compression method, and the bit rate value determines how much of the high and low frequencies of the original sound gets clipped off.  Also keep in mind that the normal human hearing range is from 20 hz to 20,000 hz.  Here are some comparisons of the frequency clipping at the top-end (high):

 

Original data came from here: https://thesession.org/discussions/19642

 

bit rate cut-off frequency compression
1411kbps >20kHz 1:1
320kbps 19.5kHz 1:4.4
192kbps 18kHz 1:7.3
160kbps 17kHz 1:8.8
128kbps 16kHz 1:11
96kbps 15kHz 1:14.7
64kbps 11kHz 1:22
32kbps 5kHz 1:44

I think you’d have to have an extremely good ear and absolutely top-of-the-range audio equipment to notice any significant difference between the source (1411kbps) and 320kbps – and possibly as far down as 160kbps (iTunes suggests 160 or 192 for most purposes). When you get down to 128kbps (the “near-CD” quality beloved of mp3 file purveyors on the internet) even my old ears can tell the clear difference between that and 192 and higher. 128 and 96Kbps may be just about bearable if you’re listening on low-end playback, but when you get down to 64-32kbps range you’re definitely in the voice (radio and telephony) recording range

Thanks PadG.  Hey just having fun on this.  I do listen and burn everything to 320 KBS just because.  It could be in my car, my living room or on the bike.

 

I do wear musicians ear plugs and that brings music alive in my C4 when on the bike and since I have SO many jump drives that everyone gives away space just is not a thing so that is why.

 

You order that new RT yet?

[Rob Nowell]

On 11/9/2019 at 2:44 PM, Paul De said:

I have finally gotten around to updating my USB stick with the latest tunes I had loaded into iTunes since last Jan.  It sucks that the BMW system can't use the native apple ma4 (mp4/acc) format and insists on, IMO, the the less desirable mp3 format.  Updated my wife's SUV USB stick and that system can accept mp3, mp4 and I think others as well....so simple to just copy the music files over to the USB and go (I think someone already put this on Sywagon's wish list to the mother ship so +1 to that wish).   

 

Anyway, I am getting close to maxing out my 64 GB USB stick and thought it was time to jump it up to a 128 GB stick. For you folks doing the math, no I don't have that ginormous amount of a music library' but decided to use more memory per song by using revised rip settings at a 320 bit rate.  I know on a M/C this isn't really needed with road noise and such but  I can use the same high quality MP3 files in an older blu-ray player at the lake house HT which is a nice enough system to reveal just how terrible the default bit rate mp3 music can sound.  Two uses for one time consuming conversion exercise from ma4 to mp3.

 

The Question.

Reviewing the audio system info from BMW it makes no mention of any USB memory size limitation, but has anybody used a 128GB stick on their Wethead USB input and had problems with the system accepting a stick with that much memory?   I don't think the high bit rate will be an issue, but has any body else use a 320 bit rate for music files for their bike?

 

[Rob Nowell]

Well, I'm not speaking for all the guys here, but it sounds as though we've been invited to the Wisconsin Lake House!  Woo-hoo!  See you in July?

[Paul De]

12 hours ago, Rob Nowell said:

Well, I'm not speaking for all the guys here, but it sounds as though we've been invited to the Wisconsin Lake House!  Woo-hoo!  See you in July?

 

Haha that could be a possibility, but not quite yet.  We are in the throws of getting rid of the city home and upgrading the lake place to be our primary home.  The GS guys would love it as we butt up against part of the Chequamegon National Forrest. The fire roads and lesser trails are awesome! If you showed this July I would set you up with ATGATT for cutting trees, brush, or to attack a pile of lumber to build something

[Paul De]

16 hours ago, 92Merc said:

I use AVS Audio converter to convert all of my Apple bought music over.  I think I run it at 320k for my wife's files.  No DRM issues there.

 

https://www.avs4you.com/avs-audio-converter.aspx

 

I'm hard of hearing.  So I don't listen to any music on my bike.

Thanks for the tip.  I'll look at that.

 

What is really weird now is that Ikraus had a link that I read over it suggested to upload these files to iCloud and then pull them down which would remove the protection tag.  When I tried this these files were flagged as ineligible to be put into iCloud.

 

I am getting to the point where I may have to consider re ripping these songs from the original CD into mp3 files.  Ugh, what a PITA.

[LAF]

14 minutes ago, Paul De said:

 

Haha that could be a possibility, but not quite yet.  We are in the throws of getting rid of the city home and upgrading the lake place to be our primary home.  The GS guys would love it as we butt up against part of the Chequamegon National Forrest. The fire roads and lesser trails are awesome! If you showed this July I would set you up with ATGATT for cutting trees, brush, or to attack a pile of lumber to build something

Well I will work for food.

 

[Paul De]

1 minute ago, LAF said:

Well I will work for food.

[PadG]

22 hours ago, Paul De said:

PadG & LAF

You all are trying to get me to go full geek on audible differences of the formats, but I'm not going to bite except to say I will say that above 192kbps things get a lot better and diminishing returns are in play. However, given that the cost of storage is so cheap now why throw any info away.   If I ever start from scratch again I will go lossless and even more important than that avoid any compressed sources where possible(not too easy to come by in an mp3 addicted world).  You can always create downgraded files for other needs from that master library.

That is also my philosophy, which was why I had loaded with 320 kbps mp3 files in the first place.  It is good to understand the technology though, so that you know what to expect should you downgrade to the lower bit rate, as I did to gain more room for more music.

 

Lossless is the way to go, but they aren't going to play on any mobile devices (that I know of).  In the recent years, my music that I had ripped had been to a lossless format, in particular flac, which is probably the most popular format right now.

[PadG]

14 hours ago, LAF said:

Thanks PadG.  Hey just having fun on this.  I do listen and burn everything to 320 KBS just because.  It could be in my car, my living room or on the bike.

 

I do wear musicians ear plugs and that brings music alive in my C4 when on the bike and since I have SO many jump drives that everyone gives away space just is not a thing so that is why.

 

You order that new RT yet?

I tried one of the so-called musician earplug (EarGasm or something like that) and didn't like them.  I did get more high frequency through, as compared to the NoNoise plugs that I usually wear but it also let through more of the (to me) annoying higher frequency mechanical noises from the bike!

 

No, I haven't ordered the 1250 yet.  No advantage to ordering now, and based on what I saw on the Mottorad website, if I order now, it would be a 2019 model, which I could have done a couple of months ago and saved a few grands with the BMW promotion at the time!  I am still hoping that the 2020 model RT will have something more than the 2019, except for the color.  After all, the '15 RT had gotten keyless ride and the hill-hold features over the original '14 wetheat!

[Paul De]

On 11/11/2019 at 2:25 PM, Paul De said:

I don't want to go astray too far from the USB music creation for my Wethead but this next challenge to convert ma4 to mp3 files hit what I think is some type of DRM (digital rights management) sanfu and that is all on the Apple side.   I have maybe 150 ma4 files that give error codes using iTunes to covert them to mp3.  I admit that I'm guessing it is some type of rights protection issue, but what is weird is that most of these files were ripped from my purchased CDs and more weird than that is the issue affects a few songs but not all songs from a particular CD.  This really keeps me hating Apple for their attitude that we should never want flexibility beyond their vision for us.

 

Update:

I just did an update to my USB stick I keep plugged into the USB port on my '15 RT audio system with added music from my iTunes library over the last year. Since the last time I did this exercise I've learned a few tips to share.

As a reference to one of the questions discussed above in the chain.  Yes the BMW system will recognize a 128 gig USB thumb drive, but it must be formatted in FAT32(typically this is the formatting used when you buy a new stick). BMW will not recognize NTFS, or  exFAT formatting long used by the Windows OS.  I sadly was reminded of of that limitation of the BMW system when I did a quick format on my current USB memory stick with a Win10 machine that defaulted to the exFAT format. Ugh, I had to go back and format my USB memory stick  to FAT32 and reload 40 Gigs of Music. 

 

I found a nice way to get past my biggest peeve I wrote about a year ago with the iTunes software from blocking DRM protected files from being transcribed from apple's native m4a format to the mp3 format required to work on the BMW system. The best part is that I found solution with some freeware that worked well and only has a little banner with adds. You do have to run it logged in as an administrator.

 

https://www.maniactools.com/soft/m4a-to-mp3-converter/batch-processing.shtml

The software allows you to pick a the iTunes folder and assign a separate destination folder and then it batch processes all the m4a music files it finds in all the artist the further subordinated album named sub folders that iTunes automatically creates when you add music using the apple software, but the output is only in a single directory loosing all the Artist and album sub folders iTunes had created (I did fix this as listed below). I directed the mp3 files to a holding directory on a external USB hard drive for safe keeping and for the next step to recover the iTunes generated artist sub folders.

 

So now with thousands of music files in a single directory I needed to create a folder structure to make navigation of the music while riding possible. I did not want to do this next step with the desktop machine I use to manage my music files on my home network, for fear the iTunes software would do something terrible to my primary library while messing with the now transcribed mp3 library. So I downloaded a new copy of iTunes to a second laptop computer and connected the external hard drive to create its own stand alone iTunes library. I then pointed the iTunes software to the external drive folder and allowed it to organize my mp3 files for me. Voilà all the artist and subordinated album named sub directories were recreated in minutes.  I now had an exact copy of my primary iTunes music files and directories in mp3 file format

 

Next with 40 gigs of music that is still a hell off a lot of artist or album names to whizzie wheel your way through while riding, so on the USB memory stick I created a alphabetic directory structure and then I copied the artists named folders form their holding directory on the external hard drive into their respective alphabetical directory on the USB memory stick which of course drags along all the associated album sub folders and music files. There was some chugging involved to get this done because my memory stick is a version 2 USB memory stick, so you might want to go with an USB 3 stick to speed this step up (assuming you have USB 3 ports on your computer)

 

Here is a screen grab of my main alphabetical directory on my memory stick. Depending on your music library you may bunch other letter groupings together.  The goal is to have the listed artists broken into manageable chunks so you only need to rotate the whizzie wheel a time or two to get to the artist you want to play

.

 

Hope this helps anyone wanting to go to a  dedicated USB music stick for their bike and like me was stuck with the problem translating all my iTunes m4a file to mp3 even the DRM protected ones

 

[Cap]

4 hours ago, Paul De said:

 

...I did not want to do this next step with the desktop machine I use to manage my music files on my home network, for fear the iTunes software would do something terrible to my primary library ...

 

 

 

Been there, done that.  Many years ago I had a nifty little iPod with a massive 8Gb of memory.  I filled it with my favorite tunes, and set it to shuffle play because I didn't have a way to skip tracks while riding.  I think at the time I was using Starcom wired headset speakers.  My buddies and I would share music in the evenings while in our motel room.  One of them put an Alanis Morrissette album on my iPod.  OMG!  I spent the next day listening to this woman scream about her miserable ex-boyfriend, while she was stalking him and sneaking into his old apartment.  Yikes.  And somehow it shuffled itself to the top of the list several times during the next day of riding.  Just shoot me.

 

So, that night, I hooked up my iPod to my laptop, and removed all the Alanis Morissette.  But somehow, iTunes decided that I really wanted to clone the songs rather than delete them.  The next day, I was again forced to listen to the psycho woman.  And so it went, everytime I connected to my PC, iTunes would find even more copies of the music.  When we got back from the trip, I tossed the iPod in a drawer and never used it again.  It is cursed! 

 

Cap

 

[Bill_Walker]

On 11/13/2020 at 9:26 AM, Paul De said:

Here is a screen grab of my main alphabetical directory on my memory stick

How do you handle playlists?

[Paul De]

15 hours ago, Bill_Walker said:

How do you handle playlists?

So far on this USB thumb drive I haven't set them up. but I believe I could create another folder for them.  You still have the genre option on the whizzie wheel that I have typically used.  I could however pull up that USB drive on my alternate iTunes set up on my lap top and do them.  Truth be told the only play lists I have created are the lazy man's iTunes Genius  function to create them.

[Kirbo40]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but have a question. I have a 64 GB usb drive on my 2017 RT and it works fine, but my Itunes library has grown to 148GB. So i bought a 256GB drive and formatted it to fat32 and loaded a few albums on it and plugged it in the bike. Got NO USB on the display. So is 128GB the limit? Or am I doing something else wrong? I did convert them to MP3. Have the folders labeled and organized just like the 64GB that works. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Kirbo40

[dirtrider]

19 hours ago, Kirbo40 said:

Sorry to revive an old thread, but have a question. I have a 64 GB usb drive on my 2017 RT and it works fine, but my Itunes library has grown to 148GB. So i bought a 256GB drive and formatted it to fat32 and loaded a few albums on it and plugged it in the bike. Got NO USB on the display. So is 128GB the limit? Or am I doing something else wrong? I did convert them to MP3. Have the folders labeled and organized just like the 64GB that works. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Kirbo40

Afternoon Kirbo40

 

Formatting a 256GB  drive to FAT 32 can cause issues, you might try formatting it to  NTFS then put a couple of songs on it for a quick test. Not sure that your motorcycle can read NTFS but might be worth a try.