MY10 R36 - upgraded 9W7 Stereo AVRCP Bluetooth works a charm!

[Passat R36]

Would be really interested on the DIY RVC if you have the time to write it up. It's next on my list.

I will write up if I get to that point but not anytime soon. Car Needs some PS3 s and a wheel alignment after that in a couple of month first

[Passat R36]

Yes the Fiscon works fine for the phone and worked well on the FIS and Nav for contacts and dialling but it's only mono and working through front speakers only for BT Audio streaming, no offence but it sounds worse than AM radio. 9W7 is a huge improvement in sound quality plus full text and MFSW control and Nav touch screen control for music.

Yes, you are right, 9w7 is the best as I said and iPhone IS much faster in any aspect. Browsing the music on the large SD card sometime is a nightmare. Maybe I should connect my old iPad Classic to the MDI. Will the iPod Classic drain the battery if I left it connected to the MDI all the time? Any experience? I have not tried yet. Cheers.

[Passat R36]

Yeah Passat R36. I am actually in the throws of purchasing a reversing camera. Gonna attempt to install myself once I get it. I just have to work out which side of the car to pull all the cords down, that's all. I'm hoping that it shouldn't be too hard but I really haven't done any googling yet on installation of it.

The airbags next to each side of the rear seat back rest worry me a lot. They are on the way of running cable down.

[damo_t]

I will write up if I get to that point but not anytime soon. Car Needs some PS3 s and a wheel alignment after that in a couple of month first

Not a problem. You must be driving it hard in 'S' mode. I know I have been on occassion.

[damo_t]

Yes, you are right, 9w7 is the best as I said and iPhone IS much faster in any aspect. Browsing the music on the large SD card sometime is a nightmare. Maybe I should connect my old iPad Classic to the MDI. Will the iPod Classic drain the battery if I left it connected to the MDI all the time? Any experience? I have not tried yet. Cheers.

I've left the iPod classic connected via MDI for extended periods and didn't even think of the potential for battery drain. I would hazard a guess that it is miniscule, but may rotate it with my USB MDI connection more frequently in the future.

[R36VW]

Yes, you are right, 9w7 is the best as I said and iPhone IS much faster in any aspect. Browsing the music on the large SD card sometime is a nightmare. Maybe I should connect my old iPad Classic to the MDI. Will the iPod Classic drain the battery if I left it connected to the MDI all the time? Any experience? I have not tried yet. Cheers.

Yes the main issue with running Ipod classic off MDI is that if you don't run it for a couple days the ipod battery does go flat and you have to unplug it an plug it back in again to get it start up.

For what its worth a large hard drive with a music id3 file structure is simpler.
Im using id3browser to automatically catalogue my music on the HDD and create folders for id3 (m3u) based browsing, very similar to what the ipod classic does. It creates artist, album, genre, year and a whole bunch of other customisable id3 folder structures that you would navigate exactly the same as on the ipod classic with alphanumeric indexes and it doesn't matter what your music folder structure is because your using the id3 based folder structure to find your music... when you find what you want, you select the m3u playlist and the RNS 510 loads it up an plays the files in the playlist even if they're in completely different folders.

I also have custom playlists with favourites, newest etc in a separate folder I created using jriver which I use to sync with my music server. Jriver copies and syncs all the music and my custom playlists across to the HDD and then I run id3browser to create my id3 based folder structure. I'll post some pics later so you know what im talking about. Its pretty cool as an alternative to an iPhone or ipod, but as I said that's the old way of doing things now, and I will only update the HDD once a month or so now I can stream everything and navigate my music much faster on the iPhone either by touch or with siri.

I can say "play similar songs" to siri or "play more by this artist" and siri will change the iPhone playlist on the fly with out doing more than holding the home button for a couple seconds. It accesses whats stored on my icloud Match account and streams everything so I don't even need to load the iPhone up with music.

[Passat R36]

Not a problem. You must be driving it hard in 'S' mode. I know I have been on occassion.

LOL, you know what, I have not tried the S model yet since I bought the R36 in middle of Feb 2014.
Mine still runs the original CSC3 ContiSeal tyres, still plenty meat left but the insides of rear tyres are worn badly. What I did was rotating them to the front to get more life out of them and then change a set of 4 PS3.

I must try the S mode and LC sometime soon, haha, cheers.

[Passat R36]

Yes the main issue with running Ipod classic off MDI is that if you don't run it for a couple days the ipod battery does go flat and you have to unplug it an plug it back in again to get it start up.

For what its worth a large hard drive with a music id3 file structure is simpler.
Im using id3browser to automatically catalogue my music on the HDD and create folders for id3 (m3u) based browsing, very similar to what the ipod classic does. It creates artist, album, genre, year and a whole bunch of other customisable id3 folder structures that you would navigate exactly the same as on the ipod classic with alphanumeric indexes and it doesn't matter what your music folder structure is because your using the id3 based folder structure to find your music... when you find what you want, you select the m3u playlist and the RNS 510 loads it up an plays the files in the playlist even if they're in completely different folders.

I also have custom playlists with favourites, newest etc in a separate folder I created using jriver which I use to sync with my music server. Jriver copies and syncs all the music and my custom playlists across to the HDD and then I run id3browser to create my id3 based folder structure. I'll post some pics later so you know what im talking about. Its pretty cool as an alternative to an iPhone or ipod, but as I said that's the old way of doing things now, and I will only update the HDD once a month or so now I can stream everything and navigate my music much faster on the iPhone either by touch or with siri.

I can say play similar songs to siri or play more by this artist and siri will change the iPhone playlist on the fly with out doing more than holding the home button for a couple seconds. It accesses whats stored on my icloud Match account and streams everything so I don't even need to load the iPhone up with music.

you made me want a 9w7....bad....

[R36VW]

Here's my old way of managing music using id3browser with a 500GB drive connected to MDI. (most recent stuff was always kept on SD and HDD updated every week or so or when I had time)

Running the id3 scan on my computer with the USB3 HDD to create the playlists and folders. 6 minutes to index and complete the playlist structures for 16000 mp3s and 145GB of music.


There's even a gui for the command line and batch file noobz.


Example batch files and the program which runs stand alone from the USB drive. (no installation)


Here's the resulting output (the playlist folder only, the others are the custom ones I create with Jriver when I sync the USB HDD with my media server - My music is where all the mp3s are syncd using jriver and the playlist folder is where all the mp3 can be played from when using id3 browsing)



Here's where I start to drill down to my music when im using the RNS 510 to find music.
Some of my favourite playlist are also stored in here.




next post....

[R36VW]

Ok so I decided I want to play some foo fighters..
I navigate to artists and then F




Navigate down to Foo



Ok I found the artist and the album I want (only foo fighters under foo.. if id chosen another 3 letter alpha index it might bring up a few artists.)
On the RNS 510 I can "touch" the playlist for Echoes, silence, patience & grace and it will load up and start playing straight away.




Here's what the playlist contains


As you can see that's a fair bit of work but still made managing and navigating a large library a lot easier on the RNS 510 than without id3 based browsing. When I used to update it would just take me 10 minutes unless I was creating new custom playlists because I used a fast usb3 drive it would sync pretty fast.

Certainly this doesn't even compare to the simple elegance of asking Siri to play something "out of the cloud" for you and then have it displayed on your NAV and MFD and be able to skip tracks from the MFSW.

[nermal]

I've also setup my music by A-B, C-D etc and then by artist and then album - using Musicbrainz Picard. It makes browsing faster on the sluggish RNS-510.

It would be great to be able to browse by different ID3 tags (artist, genre, track etc) - like most modern MP3 players. Or even better, if there was a way to program an app for it yourself.

[R36VW]

I've also setup my music by A-B, C-D etc and then by artist and then album - using Musicbrainz Picard. It makes browsing faster on the sluggish RNS-510.

It would be great to be able to browse by different ID3 tags (artist, genre, track etc) - like most modern MP3 players. Or even better, if there was a way to program an app for it yourself.

Yes that's one way of doing it with structured music folders but that's a bit of work in itself to maintain and it doesn't really give you much flexibility for accessing your music. Its also slower to navigate on the 510 than when you use id3 browsing. Its better than nothing, but id3 browsing is faster and with id3browser you get any possible ID3 tag you can think of to create folder structures and playlists. Its very powerful scripting, and once you have a few batch files sorted and working you can combine them all into one and just run it when ever you load more music up and it'll reindex and create the new folders and playlists including by artist, genre, or whatever you want to set it up for. There's also the gui with a bunch of premade batch files for all the common tag sorting styles, artist, album, genre etc.

[damo_t]

Here's my old way of managing music using id3browser with a 500GB drive connected to MDI. (most recent stuff was always kept on SD and HDD updated every week or so or when I had time)

Running the id3 scan on my computer with the USB3 HDD to create the playlists and folders. 6 minutes to index and complete the playlist structures for 16000 mp3s and 145GB of music.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]9155[/ATTACH]

There's even a gui for the command line and batch file noobz.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]9156[/ATTACH]

Example batch files and the program which runs stand alone from the USB drive. (no installation)
[ATTACH=CONFIG]9157[/ATTACH]

Here's the resulting output (the playlist folder only, the others are the custom ones I create with Jriver when I sync the USB HDD with my media server - My music is where all the mp3s are syncd using jriver and the playlist folder is where all the mp3 can be played from when using id3 browsing)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9158[/ATTACH]

Here's where I start to drill down to my music when im using the RNS 510 to find music.
Some of my favourite playlist are also stored in here.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9159[/ATTACH]


next post....

Very cool, and really appreciate the concise post. I'm definitely going to look into this method.

[nermal]

Yes that's one way of doing it with structured music folders but that's a bit of work in itself to maintain and it doesn't really give you much flexibility for accessing your music. Its also slower to navigate on the 510 than when you use id3 browsing. Its better than nothing, but id3 browsing is faster and with id3browser you get any possible ID3 tag you can think of to create folder structures and playlists. Its very powerful scripting, and once you have a few batch files sorted and working you can combine them all into one and just run it when ever you load more music up and it'll reindex and create the new folders and playlists including by artist, genre, or whatever you want to set it up for. There's also the gui with a bunch of premade batch files for all the common tag sorting styles, artist, album, genre etc.

Does the RNS-510 support ID3 browsing? Maybe that feature is in newer firmware than mine.

One problem I have is the time it takes to update the HDD when I change the layout scheme (have to burn a bunch of DVDs)

[R36VW]

Does the RNS-510 support ID3 browsing? Maybe that feature is in newer firmware than mine.

One problem I have is the time it takes to update the HDD when I change the layout scheme (have to burn a bunch of DVDs)

Its not id3 browsing built into the 510 as such, you need to create the playlists and folder structure with a separate program on a PC with id3browser and then the 510 can navigate the folders and playlists and play the playlists.

By creating the id3 lists and folders externally its the same as id3browsing but the 510 cant create them on the fly from just a bunch of music on a HDD.

Even the ipod doesnt make its own database of music, it still needs an external program (iTunes) to create the playlists and sync the files and create a local databased on the ipod.

Think of id3browser as the playlist maker. id3browser keeps a database on the usb HDD too when you run it, which is not that different to what iTunes and the ipod does, except the iphone and ipod can read their local database that iTunes creates, and the RNS 510 cant read a database for music, but it can play playlists and folder structures created from id3 tags just fine. The 510 is quite happy to navigate the folders and play playlists. (M3U playlists created on the PC with id3browser and put into folders based on the rules you put into batchfiles or in the gui)

As I said you decide what structure you want and its not really that different to how the ipod classic would work plugged into the MDI except you have a lot more choices for automating different structures with id3browser compared to the standard ipod classic sort criteria.

BTW Just use a usb drive on the MDI its more convenient than dragging DVD's out to the car.

If anyone has trouble finding a copy of id3browser I can load up a zip file with the program and my batch files to MS onedrive and give you a link. (PS its a free program incase any mods are wondering!)