M5 hard drive

[nybimmerfan]

Has anybody explored the possibility of replacing the harddrive with a bigger one? There is only 20.4 Gigabytes of storage for multimedia (music). My iPhone5 (64GB) has 40GB of music that I would like to transfer. Also, what is the fastest way of tranferring music files to the harddrive as using a USB stick seems to be very slow.

[jmh]

In theory it might be possible (Alekshop has supposedly upgraded iDrive HDs in the past) but I suspect you might run into problems down the road. Such as assumptions BMW sw/equipment makes on drive configuration/partitioning as it also stores NAV/Language info etc on the same disk. Also firmware compatibility might become an issue etc.
I honestly would just use an iTouch via the media adapter as it is the best integration and also provides better sound than the music stored on the internal HDD. Music you transfer from external audio sources onto the internal HDD will be sampled at lower bitrates than you can get on your iTouch/iPod (256kb/s) or via MOG (380kb/s)

[stealth.pilot]

Originally Posted by jmh

I honestly would just use an iTouch via the media adapter as it is the best integration and also provides better sound than the music stored on the internal HDD. Music you transfer from external audio sources onto the internal HDD will be sampled at lower bitrates than you can get on your iTouch/iPod (256kb/s) or via MOG (380kb/s)

This MOG sounds very good. I just looked it up.

Could you explain how it integrates with the BMW? Their website says using BMW Apps. But I don't see it in the Connected App.

Also does your data connection have enough stability for 320kbps even during rush hour?

[emmfive]

Originally Posted by stealth.pilot

This MOG sounds very good. I just looked it up.

Could you explain how it integrates with the BMW? Their website says using BMW Apps. But I don't see it in the Connected App.

Also does your data connection have enough stability for 320kbps even during rush hour?

I have to open MOG on my phone before I cradle it. Then it shows up as an available app. I have a shortcut key set for MOG to simplify things a little. You can then navigate playlists through idrive and see album art. The big downside is I have to pull my phone out of the cradle to text.

I have downloaded the MOG playlists to my phone so I don't often use data when I'm in the car, so I can't comment on that.

[Rob///M5]

For best results, download your favorite tunes to your device using Mog. Then you will be playing 320Kbps. Streaming is a bit lower quality, though there are some quality options in the Mog settings menus. Mog is a little finicky when plugged in to the car, but sounds best that way. Bluetooth works as expected with Mog and sounds pretty darn good.

Best $10 a month you ever spent

Originally Posted by stealth.pilot

This MOG sounds very good. I just looked it up.

Could you explain how it integrates with the BMW? Their website says using BMW Apps. But I don't see it in the Connected App.

Also does your data connection have enough stability for 320kbps even during rush hour?

[jmh]

Yes you want to download your music to the device. The nice thing with MOG is that you can access all your music/favorites/playlists via a web browser or native app from any device (ie you mark a song/artist/album etc on one device and you'll have access to it from any other device).
Once you have your device in the cradle you just start MOG and it's available via Connected Drive.
It is not yet as polished as iTunes but very close , on the other side there are features I actually like better with MOG (marking favorites in the car, play queue etc) .
I have used it over the dataconnection from my WiFi hotspot in the car and it worked fine , but downloaded is definitely the way to go.
Oh and as Rob mentioned it's a great deal for 10$ a month (unlimited downloads)

[mauricef]

While not big enough to hold your 40GB of music. I leave one of these stuck into my armrest USB port.

http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/cruzer-fit/

I set the mode to random play. It is like having a radio station of my own music, complete with cover art.

[nybimmerfan]

Originally Posted by jmh

Music you transfer from external audio sources onto the internal HDD will be sampled at lower bitrates than you can get on your iTouch/iPod (256kb/s) or via MOG (380kb/s)

All my music in the iPhone5 are in ALAC format. The BMW Multimedia player does not recognize lossless ALAC (or FLAC) files but it recognizes and plays lossless WMA files. I did a straight conversion for several albums from lossless ALAC to lossless WMA, then placed them in a USB stick and imported them into the internal harddrive. If the imported files are resampled to lower bitrates shouldn't the resulting files be smaller? As it turns out, the files placed in the harddrive via import are similar in size to those on the USB stick. Is there a way to get detailed info for those files imported onto the internal harddrive?

[nybimmerfan]

OK, just a bit of info. I just finished importing my favorite tracks from the USB drive to the internal harddrive music files in lossless WMA. Per the info regarding the remaining disk space, I get 7049MB (7.049GB) so from the original 20480MB(20.48GB) the total occupied by the files exported to the harddrive (imported from the USB) is 13421MB(13.421GB). The total size of the WMA files in the USB drive is approximately 14GB. So it is possible that files imported from the USB (at least in lossless WMA format) are not resampled or if they are then it may be in a similar format to the lossless WMA and not to lossy mp3 or aac. For all we know it could be lossless ogg, but since I don't know of any mechanism to display detailed info on the stored files in the BMW drive, we can not be certain as to the exact format those files have been written. I want to believe that they are stored in the same format as the original -- lossless WMA. So folks, there you have it!