[MR2]

When I plugged in an USB disk containing my music collection in my 2025 M2, I discovered that multiple artists and albums did not show up in the car's search engine.

At first I thought there was a problem with the disk, but the same issue surfaced after trying 2 different disks. So the issue must be due to some inherent limitation of the car's audio system.

Upon a careful reading of the NEC manual, I was surprised to find that the car can only handle about 16,000 titles (my disk contains over 50,000 titles). So this must be the cause of the above issue.

I wonder whether there is a way to work around this limitation? After all, why can't the car play directly from the USB disk, instead of having to first transmit the information to be saved in the car before playing?

[logjamexcalibur]

I feel like this is a common problem across car manufacturers. Ultimately, most will be playing music from their phone so I guess brands don’t feel the need to implement what would seem like a simple fix.

[MR2]

It suddenly dawned on me that one can completely bypass the iDrive USB audio limitation by using an old phone that takes a MC card, such as the Galaxy Note 9, which has been lying around in my drawer for years. One can essentially use the phone as a music player but outputing the audio to the iDrive via BT.

It's working like a charm. I have my entire music collection (over 50000 tracks) on a 1tb MC card at my finger tips in the car.

[PP3121]

I will have to verify, but I almost only use the USB to play music. I cannot recall the amount of data, but I have a 2 TB thumb drive I am using. I, too, have much of my music collection on my thumb drive. Other than a few issues with some tracks not playing (ones that I have converted into a single file), I have not had any other issues. Most of my files are FLAC. I am not sure if that makes any difference.

[mhe406]

When you are using FLAC Files via USB, do the album covers show up on the display? All of them? If so, how did you encode the covers into the flac files?

[PP3121]

Originally Posted by mhe406

When you are using FLAC Files via USB, do the album covers show up on the display? All of them? If so, how did you encode the covers into the flac files?

Ripping original CD imported the covers directly with track titles. However, not all covers have displayed, and I cannot seem to figure that out.

For other rips, I used Audio Monkey to add the track titles and an image. The image must abide by the image parameters in order to be read properly. Again, I have had success with some appearing and others not. At first, it bothered me, but I have gotten used to seeing a generic cover. Most importantly for me is the music...

[Pbnj240]

Originally Posted by mhe406

When you are using FLAC Files via USB, do the album covers show up on the display? All of them? If so, how did you encode the covers into the flac files?

I had all kinds of troubles with cover art showing up with some FLAC files and some MP3 files.

Eventually I tried forcing cover art size to 200x200 during export to USB (Using MusicBee) and that solved all issues. All cover art is embedded in the music files.

A somewhat higher resolution might work as well but I didn't try as the picture quality in the displays is totally fine to me.

[mhe406]

Thank you for your replies. You seem to have exactly the same symptoms as I see it in my car. Some cover show up, some don't. But I never tried 200x200. Will do so this weekend.