fkaufman

Interestingly, I had the practically identical issue of importing the contact list from my phone to the MMI. It would say importing xxx items but stop after importing a few hundred. It turned out to be one of the entries in my contacts. By deleting that entry, it has imported the whole list. I then added that entry back manually and it worked fine. I still don't know what the problem was with that particular item, it looked fine in all respects. Here is the investigation report on the issue.

Gangee

I thought the issue had something to do protected audio. So I spent 130 bucks, upgraded my iTunes tracks to unlimited DRM.

That wasn't the problem.

So now I'm going to try importing 50 songs at a time, in an effort to find the song it doesn't like.

This is bs. 70k for a car and they can't do better than this? The engineers who designed this ought to take a lesson in error reporting.

OK. So one of my songs is causing the problem? Couldn't they at least have displayed what song(s) is causing the import to quit? Or even better, skip the song that's causing the import problem, then display a report at the end of the import, showing which songs it didn't like.

Gangee

OK, so this was a real problem.

I had to send my SD card to Audi to get the fix.

Here's the letter from Audi:

Dear Mr. Gangee:

I’m sorry for your difficulty importing songs to the Jukebox in your 2012 Audi A7. I appreciate your willingness to let us look at your SD card to help determine what was happening. Following is the process I used to discover your issue:

A backup of your SD Card was made to allow me to make changes to the files contained within, without losing any of your data.
Your SD Card was placed into one of our fleet A7 vehicles as is, and an import of all files was started in order to reproduce the concern. *I noticed the import stopped after 495 files had been copied, just as you had mentioned.

I inspected the contents of your SD Card, and found a lot of files on the card that are not supported by our MMI system, which seemed to be restricting the import to 495 songs. These files consisted of protected audio and video files, random hidden folders and hidden 0kB copies of each audio file. My assumption is that these were the result of copying the music folder from another audio player and the files were system files the previous player had utilized.

I removed these unsupported files from your card and retried the import in our A7. This time the import stopped after 1,000 files were copied.

I then copied all of your files into seven different folders, each consisting of about 450 files. The import was then retried again, and all of your music was successfully imported.

Based on what I found, it looks as if you were experiencing the following two separate issues:

1. The presence of unsupported files on the SD card
2. A Jukebox limitation of 1,000 files per directory for importing
3. A further unfortunate fact is that the 1,000 file Jukebox import limitation is not present in any of our Owner’s Manuals. This is obviously an error on our part, which we will work to correct in future Manuals. This is one reason that you were able to play all of your files from the SD Card but could not import all of them, as playing from an SD Card allows for up to 5,000 songs per directory.

I’ve enclosed your SD Card, which contains all of your valid audio files on the root directory. An additional folder titled “Miscellaneous” was created. This is where I placed all of the files I had originally removed, so you will be easily able to see the files I am talking about that were causing the concern.

In addition, I’ve also enclosed a Class 10 32GB SD Card formatted correctly with all of your music for importing to your A7. Simply place it into your vehicle and start. We feel it is the least we can do after the issues you experienced. Your new Class 10 SD card will import to the system a bit faster, and you should be enjoying your music from the Jukebox in no time.

I’d also like to thank you for bringing this concern to our attention. It highlighted some discrepancies in the information we are providing to owners such as you, and we will work to correct it so future Audi enthusiasts can enjoy their vehicles with a clear understanding of the features.

Thank you for your patience. If you have any future concerns or anytime we may assist you, please feel free to contact my colleagues in Audi Customer Relations at +1 866 892 2834. Our team dedicated to the A7 is happy to be there for you 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

Best regards,

Gangee

I'm running OS X on a MacBook Pro. I use iTunes.

Now here's the skinny:

1. The "unsupported files" were protected audio that I included by mistake. This was not the problem.

2. The "hidden files" were native OS system files to the card. You can't get rid of those.

There's a couple of bugs here.

1. You can't import more than 1000 files (songs) at a time. The manual says you can, it's wrong. You can't. The Audi dude found that out.

2. You need to create folders on the SD card to have the import go right. Then copy less than 1000 songs into each folder.

3. If you try dumping 1000 songs into the root of the SD card you'll most likely run into the same problems I did, because the import program isn't smart enough to ignore the native OS system files on the card.

Here's the fix:
1. To import 3000 songs, or 20 GB of songs, create a few folders on your SD card. I created 5 folders on my SD card -- "First 500", "Second 500", "Third 500", etc.

2. I copied between 500 and 856 "Purchased AAC audio file" (.m4a) format songs into each folder.

3. When I did my import, I did one folder at a time. I was then able to import 2856 songs.

4. I also included songs I've copied into my library that I've imported from CD's -- "AAC audio file" (.m4a) format. They imported fine.

Summary:
1. The manual is wrong. There's a limit of 1000 songs on each import, as the Audi dude testified.

2. The import program is...not written in a manner that'd make it out of our office, that's for sure. I'd call it buggy at best.

3. 2 months later, solved.

4. I like the idea of the Jukebox, so I obsessed over getting this resolved. The idea of calling up music via voice is neato. And the Jukebox blows away using the MMI cord.

I knew it was a bug.

I think they did a horrible job of implementation with the Jukebox. Maybe a software upgrade is coming? Nah. That'd be "The 2014 A7".

5. Proof positive that there is no correlation between price paid for car and reliability. Never has been, not as long as I've been buying cars.

I can't believe no one has run into this yet.

3 months later, all they needed to do was tell me to create a few different folders. Of course I'm pissed I didn't come up with this on my own...

6. I still love my car.

snagitseven

"1. The "unsupported files" were protected audio that I included by mistake. This was not the problem.

2. The "hidden files" were native OS system files to the card. You can't get rid of those."


1) Are you saying then that protected files will copy to the card and load to the jukebox or that they won't transfer but were not the problem as you shouldn't have included them in the first place?

2) How did you remove the hidden iTunes files? Did you avoid them by by copying only the individual song files from your iTunes Music folder to the created folders on the card?

Gangee

Hidden OS files for any OS that I know of are always in the root. So the way to avoid them being scanned during import is to create folders.

RaudiA7

I appreciate all the info and hard work here. I certainly understand the frustrations with trying to communicate between different devices, etc.

I have not yet attempted to use the jukebox, but would like to do so. I own all my music on CD and import into itunes. I could use some simple instructions on the export. It sounds like you export a playlist onto the sd card from inside itunes? Or are you opening your itunes folder and cutting and pasting files?

ACHiPo289

I didn't run into any limitation with the number of songs, but I did run into an issue loading more songs once I'd already loaded about 6GB on the HDD.

On a PC, I dragged the music from the iTunes library into the SD card, and then just uploaded them into the car. It worked great, but when I went to add some more music using the same process, it went through the motions of uploading, but the upload failed.

It's not a big deal--I just left the SD card in the slot and play music directly from the SD card, but it's a mystery I'd like to solve.

Gangee

Good morning!

Import instructions:

1. Check how much free space you have in your Jukebox. On mine, I had 20GB free. Delete the Jukebox to free up as much space as possible.

2. Create a play list in iTunes. Remove all protected files and unsupported files. Make sure the play list is < 3000 songs and isn't more than the amount of free space you have in your Jukebox.

3. Use a Class 4 or higher SD card. Class 10 is best, because the import takes less time.

4. Divide the number of songs you're importing by 500 and create that many folders on your SD card. So if you're importing 2000 songs you'd create 4 folders on your SD card; First 500, Second 500, Third 500, Fourth 500.

5. From your play list, select song numbers 1 to 500 and copy them into the folder on your SD card named, "First 500". Then select songs 501 to 1000 and copy them into the folder on your SD card named "Second 500", etc.

6. In Jukebox choose Import. Set the source to your SD card. Navigate to the folder named First 500 and choose "All". When the Import from First 500 is done it'll say, "500 songs imported successfully". If not, you goofed and included protected or unsupported files in your import.

Let me know how it goes!

davey001

Thanks so much Mr. Gangee! 3 years on and your advice is more than alive and kicking and good enough to help me out. And I too can attest to improved sound quality going from IPod to Jukebox. thanks again!