znod

Hi Friends:

The "can or will my car ever be able to play MP3's" question comes up with frequency. I tried to put together a brief answer to this question pertinent to the US 04 and through mid-year 05 545i's and, I presume, other 5-Series cars of this genre. My answer was based on info das provided on a related thread. Here is the answer I concocted.

"I think the answer depends partly on your hardware. I don't think any 04's have the right hardware. With the right hardware, 19.02.03 will allow MP3 provided one has Pro Nav/CCC (apparently, Car Communication Computer)--which as I understand the issue is the standard NAV in the US on at least on the E60's. If one's car does not have the right hardware, then it is doubtful that he or she will ever be able to play MP3's since a software update alone will not likely do the trick. das says: 'as of right now, my Week 40 vehicle with Nav Pro/CCC and E060-05-09-535 (CIP 19.02.03) can play MP3s in the single slot CD player.' I think a build in week 40 of 2005 is the key for having the right hardware."

And, at the time of my answer, I had not tried to play an MP3 in my June of 05 purchased 545i. Later, the following info turned up on a thread.

big ipaq: "E60s, regardless of their production year, that have M-ASK and pro radio, have MP3 with the latest software. Mine does. Iceman explained this already on more than one ocasions."

BigGrey: "I have Nav Pro. How do i know if i have a pro radio?"

Iceman: "Nav Pro comes with Radio Pro!"

BigGrey: "Ok then: i have radio pro, but no mp3 playback... sad.gif . Tried all variations and cd formats and 128/192/254 bit stream with no success. Maybe with 20 CIP... We will see..."

Iceman: "That's correct. You have nav pro, so you have radio pro... and this means you need to wait for the new software."

So, what's the point? Well, I ripped a CD with Music Match Juke Box, burned the resulting MP3 files to a CD, put the CD in my single-CD slot, and, to my surprise, it played. It seems to me that my car may not satisfy the necessary criteria that have been mentioned before in at least two ways:

1. My car was built before June 05; thus, if "newer" hardware is an issue, then I would guess that I don' have it and
2. I have only CIP 19.01.01 (my car recently was "updated" to 19.01.01, but I don't actually know what came in my car).

I do have pro NAV (i.e., US NAV) and, thus, apparently, pro Radio. I have seen M-ASK referred to as "the central computer." Do I necessarily have M-ASK? How would I know? CCC, as indicated, apparently refers to "Car Communication Computer." I presume I have CCC, since my car "communicates" in various ways. But, OK, then do I necessarily have CCC? How would I know?

And, the bottom line is that I am wondering if anyone can put all the pieces that I have mentioned above, and maybe more, together to provide an integrated picture of when one should expect his or her US E60 to be able to play MP3's (i.e., What are the actual necessary conditions that must be satisfied?) Thanks for any, and all, attempts.

swajames

Don, so it looks like your "older" MY05 with US spec navigation DOES play MP3? Mine should be same spec as yours, and I just got the v19 update - will try it tomorrow and report back.

dgjk

vnod - I know this is way off topic, but when I was reading your thread I looked at your profile and pictures of your ride
Nice car
Were you really born in 1906?

znod

I hope it works for you. I'll be interested in seeing what happens. Good luck. And, I take it that you mean that you now have at least 19.01.01. Right? Oops, now I see that you have 19.2, but I don't know what that is--19.02.0X???

znod

Thank you for the compliment on my car. Nope, not really born in 1906. I wanted my birthday to show up on our calendar, and the year of birth is not essential to doing so. So, for slightly more annonymity, I chose 1906 for my birth year. Others have phony birth years for similar reasons. As I recall, Rudy set his "public" birth year to be the same as the build year for his car (or one or more of his cars) since they share the same birth month and day.

dgjk

after reading some of your other threads I was going to say it would be cool to see a 99 year old doing 0-60 tests
as far as anonimity - I'm not very anonymos - anyone that reads my posts will probably no who I am

by the ways = this is a great post and I am interested in the results becasue I would like to know.

I would like to see a table
for example:
04 no
05 with pro nav no
06 without nav - yes

as far as that goes what is the difference b/n pro and business nav and ccc and m-ask?

znod

Annonymity probably is not necessary, but there are crazies out there, present company excluded, of course. Yes, I told pretty much all I know about the things you mention above. I too would like as much clarification as anyone, in the know, knows. My table entry would be something like:

Pre-week 40 build 05--Correct Hardware--Pro NAV--Pro Radio--Correct CCC (I guess)---Correct M-ASK (I quess)

Oh, and, I will be doing 0-60 tests when I am 99.

JStraw

Vnod: Could you pls check the contents of the CD you burned? I did the samething as you did - I had ripped a few CDs to my hard drive in MP3 format. When I burned them using Music Match Jukebox burner - it actually burned the songs in CDA (CD Audio) format (the songs had CDA extention rather than MP3). I then burned another one, but this time I made sure that the songs were burned in MP3 format. And my conclusion: the MP3 CD did not play in the in-dash CD player. The first one (CDA format) did.

Let me know what you see on your CD.

znod

Vnod: Could you pls check the contents of the CD you burned? I did the samething as you did - I had ripped a few CDs to my hard drive in MP3 format. When I burned them using Music Match Jukebox burner - it actually burned the songs in CDA (CD Audio) format (the songs had CDA extention rather than MP3). I then burned another one, but this time I made sure that the songs were burned in MP3 format. And my conclusion: the MP3 CD did not play in the in-dash CD player. The first one (CDA format) did.

Let me know what you see on your CD.
[/quote]I know what you are saying. When I look at the disk, I see the CDA extension, but, yes, the CD was burned from MP3's. I did not notice before that the extensions for the tunes on the CD were CDA. I simply assumed that the files were burned the way they were stored on my computer.

So, then, most likely, my car won't play MP3's. And, I would imagine that the qualitative difference between the CDA's and the MP3's would be significant. For example, one of the CDA files is only 2 KB, while the corresponding MP3 file is 9.25 MB. Do you know much about the difference in the two types of files? I virtually never fiddle with MP3's so much of the non-issue I apparently have raised is due to my lack of "MP3 practice."

Can MP3's be burned as CDA's in such a way that the CDA's are of equivalent quality to the MP3's? If so, then a difference that makes no difference is no difference. I'll check all of this out tomorrow, but, for now, what more do you know about the CDA format in relation to the MP3 format?

derrickj

You are correct, you can not play MP3's. This is a common misconception that MP3's burned to a CD create an MP3 disk and has created a lot of confusion on this board. The primary difference between the two is compression. You can only fit about 10-15 CD on a disk versus, oh I don't remember, probably 40 MP3's on a disk.