Excellent thread! Could someone please address a specific question? I am planning to use a micro thumb drive to listen to a "talking book" on my trip next week. I will be accessing the audio playback via the USB port inside the console.

When we stop for fuel/food, will the story resume where we left off?

I know I said "a" question, however, I would be very pleased to hear that there also is a way to fast forward or fast reverse whatever is on this thumb drive.

Just askin....sam

Hi Sam
If its the same as my 535d, audio files resume from where you leave them. I have had several audiobooks and they do continue.
Hope that helps

Hmmmm, road trip with an audio book . . . I'm envious! I haven't had the "start/stop" experience so can't help there, but I'm pretty sure holding the "track forward/track back" buttons should fast forward and reverse.

Nahoa wrote

Hmmmm, road trip with an audio book . . . I'm envious! I haven't had the "start/stop" experience so can't help there, but I'm pretty sure holding the "track forward/track back" buttons should fast forward and reverse.

Yes correct, they lay them out like a music album but with chapters of course and ff/rew works as with music

Hi All
I use a 32GB USB stick for music but the location of the USB socket in the armrest is very bad in the sense that if you put a heavy item in there like a camera you are likely to break the usb stick. I purchased a short 6" lead and connect the usb stick to the end of this, so less likely to break an expensive stick

Makes the compartment more user friendly too. Mines a bit awkward to locate, with a lead that would be a better option IMO.

Hi guys;

Old thread but still :-)
I would have a problem with playing the music from the USB stick. Namely when I plug it in the armrest system recognizes the USB but the catch is that it sees only the first album on the USB drive. Rest it does not recognize.
Any suggestion how to overcome this?

Many thanks in advance!

Could be a number of things:
- format used on the USB drive
- format used for the audio files
- bit rate of the audio files (the manual suggests it may not like >256kbps)
- the layout of the files

I recently used a 32GB Sandisk Ultra with no problems. I created a folder called MUSIC and copied over a mix of MP3 and m4a files in varying bit rates. The file layout was MUSIC\Artist name\Album\*.*

It took a while to index initially but was fine after that. The only slight issue was that displaying album art was not consistent but that's probably more about how I sourced it. Some came with digital downloads from eMusic, Bleep.com, GooglePlay and Amazon and some was retrieved for my CD collection ripped at 320kbps (none of it came from file shares).

I use a 128gb stick (£23) with 6800 songs on it. Plays fine but only 10% of album covers show up on Business Nav. I just copied the folders over from ITunes.

I think I need to get them tagged correctly

bimmermat wrote

One more disadvantage:

You can't FFW or Rewind while playing a track

2015 X3 28i; center console USB: Discovered, completely by accident, that you can jump back to the beginning of a current track by depressing the right hand scroll on the steering wheel (the one you use to scroll presets) twice. First push, name of current song appears on dash; second push, goes to beginning of track. All songs (whether by genre, album or artist) play only in alphabetical order, which is a little irritating, and still no cover art.

MinnJim wrote

2015 X3 28i; center console USB: Discovered, completely by accident, that you can jump back to the beginning of a current track by depressing the right hand scroll on the steering wheel (the one you use to scroll presets) twice. First push, name of current song appears on dash; second push, goes to beginning of track. All songs (whether by genre, album or artist) play only in alphabetical order, which is a little irritating, and still no cover art.

WorksopOWLS wrote

I use a 128gb stick (£23) with 6800 songs on it. Plays fine but only 10% of album covers show up on Business Nav. I just copied the folders over from ITunes.

I think I need to get them tagged correctly

iTunes tags the art work differently(separate folder) then say, Windows Media Player. In WMP make sure your music is all tagged with the art work, then use something like "ID3 Album Art Fixer". As far as iTunes you need to load the album into a Tag Editor and manually find and paste the art work; so its basically in a WMP tag format.

I use a 64gb usb stick in the center console of my 2014 X3 2.0d, and, after a bit of work on the Mp3 tags, everything works just fine.
There is only a very annoying bug in the random play function: once I turn off the car and than I turn it on again, the reproduction correctly starts from the same track-same point that I was listening to.
But then - not always but most of the times - the following track is one specific song (always the same) and the sequence of tracks played after that first one also is the same.
I realized that this happens when the device makes a sort of reboot, and has to load again the entire USB stick music content.
The probability of that happening is not dependent on the amount of time in which the car was off (some times it reboots after a few minutes, in other cases it doesn't after hours).

Is there anyone who knows a way to fix this issue?
Thanks!