USB A USB B Not Connected

[Ian Key]

...and why does the update remove it when the sensor must have been fitted in the first place

 

[CarlMG4]

The alternative to this for anyone struggling with USB playback/AA - is to use Bluetooth on a phone or tablet to stream music that way.

The music can either be saved locally on the device or streamed via your usual method.

This isn't as 'instant' as having a USB ready to play your songs, but you also have full control over playlists and albums readily.

I personally don't need AA via USB, and won't use it often at all because the cars Maps system seems to be good enough, and can stream music via Bluetooth or USB easily enough.

There are options

 

[Rolfe]

My car (SE SR) is only six days out from the dealer and I was assured that the latest software had been installed like that morning. I have the outside temperature display.

 

[siteguru]

You can confirm exactly what Infotainment software version you have, via the Settings > System menu.

 

[Davn]

Losing the CD player was one of the reasons I didn't want to change my car! I realised that if I got a new car there would be no CD player in it.

However, I have a lot of CDs and would like to listen to them in the car. As far as I know it is not illegal to make a copy of a music file you have bought and paid for, for your own use. And if it is, then frankly I don't care. I used to copy CDs on to my iPod and play them in the car like that, because it saved having to change the discs manually at the end of each side. But the car stopped talking to the iPod and rather than investigate this I just went back to shoving the actual discs into the slot.

I'm not interested in "the latest music", or "songs", I'm interested in German opera, 18th and 19th century choral music and Renaissance polyphony. Among other things. I don't really know what's on Amazon Music, and I'm not an Amazon Prime member.

It sounds as if all this is dependant on having a phone that talks to the car, and since we've just established that mine won't, then it's all off until I get one that does. I suppose I also need an unlimited data plan too, if all the music is coming off the internet. And what happens when the car is somewhere without a mobile signal?

It all seems a bit unnecessary when I have the music in digital form already, and there are USB devices which surely would feed these files to the car - as my iPod did in my previous car - if only I knew how to go about it.

Well, at least the FM radio works. Beautifully.

Now I wonder if one off theses would work

 

[Rolfe]

Dunno. Does it have a USB connection?

I was wondering the same, because I have something like that from decades back. I haven't used it for years and I'm not sure I even know where it is, and I'd be surprised if it was possible to feed it to a USB port, but a new one might work.

I'd rather rip the CD files to a stick or an iPod simply to save changing the CD after every side. But I've been doing that in the Golf since it stopped talking to its iPod, so it's certainly a thought.

 

[Davn]

Dunno. Does it have a USB connection?

I was wondering the same, because I have something like that from decades back. I haven't used it for years and I'm not sure I even know where it is, and I'd be surprised if it was possible to feed it to a USB port, but a new one might work.

I'd rather rip the CD files to a stick or an iPod simply to save changing the CD after every side. But I've been doing that in the Golf since it stopped talking to its iPod, so it's certainly a thought.

I'm the same I have a stick with 120 albums on but I've not been able to use it as the car will not see the folders only the tracks, I think the trophy will change the settings but my SE won't.
You can still buy them on Amazon that's where I got the pic from but didn't see if they had usb connections.

 

[Rolfe]

I'll look into it. I wonder if this is something they might improve with a software update in future?

 

[Buster72]

My car (SE SR) is only six days out from the dealer and I was assured that the latest software had been installed like that morning. I have the outside temperature display.

Should be R13.

 

[Davn]

I'll look into it. I wonder if this is something they might improve with a software update in future?

Hopefully

 

[Rolfe]

My computer guru tells me it's not feasible to put Android 10 on the phone I have. Looks as if it's going to be new phone time. Not right now though, because having just paid for the car (unexpectedly - my insurance decided to write off my previous car on account of a couple of scraped panels) the pips are squeaking slightly.

So, no AA, no possibility to use the phone to play media. No real functionality to play from a USB stick, by the sound of this. DAB radio doesn't work.

Thank goodness the FM radio is working. It's like 1990 all over again.

 

[Diggsy]

My computer guru tells me it's not feasible to put Android 10 on the phone I have. Looks as if it's going to be new phone time. Not right now though, because having just paid for the car (unexpectedly - my insurance decided to write off my previous car on account of a couple of scraped panels) the pips are squeaking slightly.

So, no AA, no possibility to use the phone to play media. No real functionality to play from a USB stick, by the sound of this. DAB radio doesn't work.

Thank goodness the FM radio is working. It's like 1990 all over again.

Just a thought, could you put music on your phone and plug it in and play the music as if it’s a memory stick as such?

 

[Rolfe]

Who knows. I have no idea how to "put music on my phone". I do a lot with it, but I don't use it like an iPod.

 

[Rolfe]

Good news, I think. Just on an impulse, I plugged my iPod into the USB port on the MG. I promptly got a message saying "iPod detected", which was a lot more than I had expected! I got a list of "songs" which was very much less than what is actually on that iPod, but what was there played perfectly, and it was prepared to go on to the next track automatically when it had played the first one. Sound quality was excellent.

The bad news is that it wasn't seeing most of what is on the iPod. This seems to be the same issue that Carl brought up with the folders, and I'm not sure if it's something that's just confined to the SE. There may be some way to find other stuff that's on the iPod that I haven't figured out yet, but even if there isn't, I'm perfectly prepared to figure out how the system decides which "songs" it's going to see and pre-load what I want into that position on the iPod before setting out on a long journey.

I'm pretty sure this will work until such time as I get a new phone that will actually condescend to talk to the car, and get to grips with what audio that can provide.

 

[Davn]

Good news, I think. Just on an impulse, I plugged my iPod into the USB port on the MG. I promptly got a message saying "iPod detected", which was a lot more than I had expected! I got a list of "songs" which was very much less than what is actually on that iPod, but what was there played perfectly, and it was prepared to go on to the next track automatically when it had played the first one. Sound quality was excellent.

The bad news is that it wasn't seeing most of what is on the iPod. This seems to be the same issue that Carl brought up with the folders, and I'm not sure if it's something that's just confined to the SE. There may be some way to find other stuff that's on the iPod that I haven't figured out yet, but even if there isn't, I'm perfectly prepared to figure out how the system decides which "songs" it's going to see and pre-load what I want into that position on the iPod before setting out on a long journey.

I'm pretty sure this will work until such time as I get a new phone that will actually condescend to talk to the car, and get to grips with what audio that can provide.

At least better than you had before

 

[Rolfe]

Currently struggling with newly-downloaded iTunes. It's ages since I used it because it was such a pig it was easier just to play the damn CDs themselves.

I think I see what the car has done. It has winkled out the files that were in MP3 format (only a few) and ignored all the files which weren't, that is all the CD transfers. It doesn't seem to matter much where on the iPod these were stored. Some of them show up in iTunes while some were in other folders, but the car system just fished out anything it could play and presented these in alphabetical order.

I'm not sure there's any great advantage to using an iPod for this, because I think it's treating it just as it would treat an ordinary USB stick. If I want to play my CDs I think I'll have to re-import them in MP3 format rather than the format the iPod uses.

This is all quite constructive because I hadn't looked at or tried to organise my iPod contents for years. I didn't even have iTunes on this computer and I've had this computer for about 7 years. On the other hand it looks like it's start-again time if I want to get the music playing on the MG4, and it's probably just as easy to use a USB stick as an iPod.

If what it's going to do is play every MP3 it can find in alphabetical order, I just need to think a bit about how to name the tracks so that I get them to play correctly. Progress is happening.

 

[Rolfe]

SUCCESS. I'm reporting this just in case anyone else decides to try what I just tried.

Maybe iTunes is not the best programme to be doing this with, but hey, I tortured it into submission in the end. It does have the big advantage that when you get it fixed all the information from GraceNotes displayes on the player in the car, even when reading from a basic USB stick.

As far as I can see, all the CD files I had copied in the past are in .m4a format. I can't see a way to convert these to .mp3, but iTunes will let you copy the original discs directly into mp3, so I took that route. (I'm not sure if there is a way of converting m4a to mp3 that I haven't found, to save me re-copying a lot of discs, but one thing at a time.)

I copied a couple of discs, taking advantage of the GraceNotes facility to import titles and artists and track names and so on, and that was all fine. However, at first I could find no way at all to change the file names to get the alphabetical order the same as the order I wanted them to play in. I changed them in iTunes, and when I copied them to a USB device (iPod or USB stick) they reverted. I changed them in the USB itself, and that made no difference.

However, I did manage it in the end by tracking down the files to their location on my C drive and changing the filenames from there. That seems to be the only place where it can be done - iTunes itself keeps the original file names and is only letting you change the track titles. But this does work. When I then copied the files over to the USB devices they retained the file names I wanted, and we are in business.

There is a slight hesitation when the player moves from one track to the next, but the VW iPod player had a glitch there too which I think was even worse - the very start of each track tended to be slightly clipped. Otherwise it's just peachy.

I am standardising filenames with the composer's name first, then the name of the work, then the track number. I've also added the track name, for example "Mendelssohn Requiem 01 Selig sind die Toten". However, I'm not sure it's necessary to name the track in the filename, because the GraceNotes information has it. I'm going to experiment with this a bit before I start wholesale copying.

I now have a very confused iPlayer, because it has no idea where all its files are, but that actually doesn't matter for present purposes.

I think by doing it this way any amount of music can be stored on a big USB stick, and it will come up coherently arranged by composer and work.

 

[siteguru]

There are many ways to convert M4A to MP3:

m4a to mp3 converter - Google Search

There are also many apps that will help you manage your music library ... one I use is MP3TAG - this offers a facility to bulk-rename files based on the track attributes (tags). There are some standard rename settings, but you can also create your own. This would then rename all the tracks in your music library based on the rules you set.

 

[Davn]

SUCCESS. I'm reporting this just in case anyone else decides to try what I just tried.

Maybe iTunes is not the best programme to be doing this with, but hey, I tortured it into submission in the end. It does have the big advantage that when you get it fixed all the information from GraceNotes displayes on the player in the car.

As far as I can see, all the CD files I had copied in the past are in .m4a format. I can't see a way to convert these to .mp3, but iTunes will let you copy the original discs directly into mp3, so I took that route. (I'm not sure if there is a way of converting m4a to mp3 that I haven't found, to save me re-copying a lot of discs, but one thing at a time.)

I copies a couple of discs, taking advantage of the GraceNotes facility to import titles and artists and track names and so on, and that was all fine. However, at first I could find no way at all to change the file names to get the alphabetical order the same as the order I wanted them to play in. I changed them in iTunes, and when I copied them to a USB device (iPod or USB stick) they reverted. I changed them in the USB itself, and that made no difference.

However, I did manage it in the end by tracking down the files to their location on my C drive and changing the filenames from there. That seems to be the only place where it can be done - iTunes itself keeps the original file names and is only letting you change the track titles. But this does work. When I then copied the files over to the USB devices they retained the file names I wanted, and we are in business.

There is a slight hesitation when the player moves from one track to the next, but the VW iPod player had a glitch there too which I think was even worse - the very start of each track tended to be slightly clipped. Otherwise it's just peachy.

I am standardising filenames with the composer's name first, then the name of the work, then the track number. I've also added the track name, for example "Mendelssohn Requiem 01 Selig sind die Toten". However, I'm not sure it's necessary to name the track in the filename, because the GraceNotes information has it. I'm going to experiment with this a bit before I start wholesale copying.

I now have a very confused iPlayer, because it has no idea where all its files are, but that actually doesn't matter for present purposes.

I think by doing it this way any amount of music can be stored on a big USB stick, and it will come up coherently arranged by composer and work.

Wow a lot of work let us know if it works

 

[Rolfe]

I just drove a nearly 80 miles round trip and listened to most of Das Rheingold on the journey. It was absolutely fine. Yes, there is a slight discontinuity when it moves from one track to the next, which you don't get when playing the CD itself or when playing on an actual iPod, but it did much the same thing when being played through the Golf's audio system which was reading the iPod folders, m4a files and playlists. It's not even audible every time, it depends on what the music is doing. And of course in music with discrete movements or song numbers, you won't notice it at all.

When the Golf was able to communicate with its iPod it was very unintuitive as to how to find a particular playlist, and to be honest I think this simple list of tracks without any use of folders at all is as good as anything. I only have three CDs on the USB stick at the moment, and maybe when I have dozens it will be different, but at the moment it's working well. If the sheer number of tracks does get difficult to deal with then splitting the library up into more, smaller USB sticks is probably the way to go.

Unexpectedly the Golf's iPod turned out to be salvageable. It went through the washing machine some time in early 2009 and the screen never worked again. It spent the next 13+ years inside the armrest of the car, because obviously it was possble to operate it from the car's screen, but I wasn't that surprised when it eventually stopped working. I just started carrying the CDs themselves in the car. However when I retrieved the iPod, charged it up and plugged it into my computer, iTunes reported that the data was entirely corrupt but offered to fix the system. After about an hour it said that it had detected a new iPod, and the thing was back to factory settings, although without its corrupted music files of course. I wonder if the screen can be fixed?

Other members have suggested that the MG's system can cope with a certain level of folders in the Trophy edition, and if so it's a bit odd that this hasn't been enabled for the SE, but if you're clever with the file-names it doesn't really matter. Just, if you're using iTunes, change the filenames directly in the appropriate folder on the C drive, not in iTunes itself and not (surprisingly) after they've been transferred to the USB device.

There are many ways to convert M4A to MP3:

m4a to mp3 converter - Google Search

There are also many apps that will help you manage your music library ... one I use is MP3TAG - this offers a facility to bulk-rename files based on the track attributes (tags). There are some standard rename settings, but you can also create your own. This would then rename all the tracks in your music library based on the rules you set.

Thanks for that, I'll have a look. I think I'd rather rename the files manually, but avoiding having to re-import all these CDs to get them into mp3 will be a big help.

I was always a bit dubious about what I was doing with the CDs on the Golf after the iPod in the armrest failed. I had the next CD to hand, but still, ejecting one and posting the next into the slot while driving isn't really the safest of manoeuvres. I should really have looked at fixing the iPod or using a USB stick - the car had a connector for that as well - but because the CD player was there I just took the easy way out. It's probably better not to have a player, on safety grounds.