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Columbus System - Putting my Library on SD Cards

41K views 44 replies 21 participants last post by  Zach 
#1 ·
Hopefully someone can advise and this is the right place to ask.

Looking to put my fairly large CD Library on SD cards to plug into the 2 SD Card slots. I want to put into the best format for quality rather than going to put as much as possible on the card(s). Plan to do this before the car arrives in July so looking to get ahead and start the process soon.

Can anyone advise the best format to use and a data rate I should select for optimum quality? I know that most will just opt for MP3 but wanted to check if other formats are supported and whether there is any benefit of using them.

Also, can the readers take 128GB SD cards? Some slots on other devices seem to be limited to only reading 32 or 64 GB.

Last question, I read somewhere on the forum that the Columbus system offers the option of ripping a disc when you insert it. That will then get saved onto the limited memory. Is it then possible to transfer it over to the SD cards or not? Probably want to keep the system memory as free as possible for system upgrades.

Thanks for any advice.
:)
 
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#27 ·
Ellebees said:
Now that hat I have my bear can update. Put my music library, 350 cds on a 128 GB Toshiba SD card. Saved everything in flac format and used up about 103 GB. Works perfectly but think that I didn't save some properly as some cds have no song titles. Album artwork is also on screen.
Takes a bit of getting used to to access what you want to listen to but it is great to have the selection.
Good to know. I have all mine recorded as FLAC files but will probably convert to MP4 for the car, no benefit for FLAC in that environment and saves space.

One stupid question, can you see all the files as the manual states:

"In the list, the first 1000 entries (titles, directories etc.) are displayed with the oldest creation date."

I have more than 1,000 tracks so I won't see them all but I am guessing to can see all the album's and artists (assuming there's less that 1,000 and you can sort by album and artist - my vRS doesn't have the Columbus system so not familiar with the system setup).
 
#28 ·
You can get various views. By artist, album, music genre etc. As these can end up a bit disjointed when you have collaborations on albums I wasn't too happy. Genre is all also all over the place but that's due to the CD ripping not the bear.
I have chosen to view as file folders, as saved. It's in alphabetical order by folder. I may resort on the card to make it easier as with over 80 artists, the time to scroll down is annoying. You can also open any folder and do a random shuffle which is great.
I had read that it can only read so many files, hence kept as flac files. That was less files on the card. Still have expansion room with the other SD slot.
 
#29 ·
Can anyone tell me how the system sounds Columbus with the canton system.
At the moment I have the canton speaker system in my Octavia but only with the Amuntsun. I find the sound lacking in bass even when the bass is turned up high in the settings, not impressed with the sound at all my be the canton not designed to go with the Amuntsun sysem.
I don't want to waste money on having the canton fitted if it's going to sound rubbish.

Any recommendations welcome &#x1f44d-1f3fb;
 
#30 ·
I wound the bass right up on the Canton yesterday with Abba playing (very bassy) and it actually hurt my ears! Not huge volume just max bass. Is that enough for you? :lol:
 
#32 ·
I wouldn't pay for the Canton upgrade having lived with it for almost 2 months. Pales in comparison to other systems I have had, most recently the stock first gen Jaguar Premium Luxury XF system. My gripe with the Canton system is that it colours the audio and is far too bright. The subwoofer does very little and is muddy.
 
#33 ·
MoominPapa said:
I wouldn't pay for the Canton upgrade having lived with it for almost 2 months. Pales in comparison to other systems I have had, most recently the stock first gen Jaguar Premium Luxury XF system. My gripe with the Canton system is that it colours the audio and is far too bright. The subwoofer does very little and is muddy.
I think your right i found the same in my Octavia with the canton, the speech is a pain in the butt when the music has finished am constantly turning the volume up to hear the announcement then down when the music starts. Also the bass is rubbish in mine too I got it turned up to max and it still does very little.
My wife has just the normal sound system in her Fabia and that sounds a lot better &#x1f44d-1f3fb;.
I think it was a waste of money having it fitted so when I order my kodiaq shan't bother can spend the money on better things.
I'm going to lease one this time anyway &#x1f44d-1f3fb;
 
#34 ·
Ellebees said:
Now that hat I have my bear can update. Put my music library, 350 cds on a 128 GB Toshiba SD card. Saved everything in flac format and used up about 103 GB. Works perfectly but think that I didn't save some properly as some cds have no song titles. Album artwork is also on screen.
Takes a bit of getting used to to access what you want to listen to but it is great to have the selection.
Hi, new member here. Picking up my Kodiaq this Friday 11 Aug. It's been a long wait. Got some questions though that I hope some of you may be able to help with. The cited post and other posts pretty much answer these questions, but still some doubt remains...

We went to see the dealer last Sat to prep for handover and their tech guy explained the car's connect service and infotainment system to us.
He told me and the wife that the SD card slots in the glove compartment are for SatNav maps and service functionality only. Any music we want to play through the onboard system we should either play through a paired phone, be it BlueTooth or USB wired or we could insert a USB flash drive somewhere.

Q: Ours is an SE-L. Can I presume that unless we spec-ed otherwise (we didn't) our Kodiaq will have the Columbus system?
Q: Are there other SD card slots on this [Columbus] system that are not in the glove compartment? And I mean; one for the music collection.
Q: If we have to go the USB flash drive route, where is the slot? I cannot remember spotting one.

Any help greatly appreciated
 
#35 ·
iwarv

If you have the Columbus system you will have a box in the glove compartment with two SD card slots. I believe that if you are also post week 22 build then you will also get a SIM card slot.

I loaded my whole library on and put it into the slot. On the screen you select "media" and then "source". You will have the options of Bluetooth, SD1, SD2 as well as USB. Hence don't think that your dealerships knows what they are talking about. The Columbus system has 64GB of inbuilt storage which I believe will be used for map updates etc. There is no other SD slot in the car. The USB slot is in the central console where the cigarette lighter and phone pocket is. I think that on some European models there is also a USB slot in the rear but not sure if that is just to power phones / tablets or actually connected to the infotainment as well.

Pretty sure that the SEL comes with Sat Nav included and you won't need to use your phone. Of course you can but what's the point?
 
#37 ·
Whilst not perfect the standard system is pretty decent. The extra for Canton is not really worth it imho. You cannot get a real audiophile experience in any car due to external sound / vibration factors. By playing with the sound settings you can trial probably find a sound or more than one that suits your taste in music / spoken word.

Don't forget to play with the fader positioning. I have it set up for good loud sound when I am alone in the car and reset when carrying others to be a bit more sedate.
 
#39 ·
#42 ·
cimontero said:
You are using a 256 GB sd card SDXC. Please, tell me the format: FAT, exFAT o NTFS. I'm using an Admundsen system and I'annoyed: my 256 sdxc card doesn't work (error shown).
Anything over 32mb on an SD card is exFAT as standard and works no problem.
 
#43 ·
Just to chip in my 2p worth on what I know is an old thread reborn, however it might help someone avoid the frustrations I encountered.

I've been fully Apple for some time now, so a lot of my music (certainly anything from a CD) is in AAC format on my Mac, all of which is on an old 64GB iPod Touch with a non-responsive touch screen (£8 on eBay!) or some of it on my iPhone 7. I found the Kodiaq just doesn't like either the iPod or the AAC files at all. It will play them through Bluetooth or via USB from my old 64GB iPod touch, however the former relies on me actually connecting my phone (I don't keep the bluetooth on all the time) and the iPod was nowhere near as good as it was in my previous 2016 Land Rover or 2008 Audi A5 where it just worked seamlessly. In the Kodiak, it's very slow to load the list of artists or albums from the iPod via USB and most of the artwork doesn't load at all and just gives you a generic picture based on the category of music, a lot of which seems to be "Alternative & Punk" where you get a horrible picture of some shirtless bloke clutching a microphone.

I therefore resorted to using the SD slots and bought a 128GB micro SDXC card from Currys because they had a Sandisk one on offer for only £32 (supposedly £58 off!). It was branded as being for a Nintendo Switch and had Mario all over the packaging and indeed the card itself is red, however it works just fine as it's just a blank micro SDXC card.

Initially I just copied my music library across and it appeared to load fine, but then I found that whilst the car would recognise the artist and album titles, for all of the AAC encoded music, it then said "No playable files found" (or something like that).

I therefore had to go through the very laborious and tedious process of converting all of my music to MP3. I used iTunes for this which did it fine, but is a pain as the duplicate has to be in the same location in the folder structure of my Mac and I then had to move all of the MP3 files out to a duplicate folder structure. A real pain, but once it's all done I could then just copy it across to the micro SDXC card, pop it into the full-size SD Card adapter and then into the car. All works perfectly and the artwork now works perfectly, which it wouldn't from the iPod via USB.

My only complaint for the artwork is that for any images which aren't square, rather than just show a smaller image (in height mostly), the Kodiaq stretches the image to make it square. Not a major issue, but annoying none the less. I haven't found a way around this as yet.

Hope that helps someone if they're encountering the same frustrations!
 
#44 ·
I use a Sandisk 128gb SD card too with no issues. Access speed is key to this but most cards are good enough for music data.

I ripped the files as FLAC in format for quality but converted them to MP4 for the Kodiaq to save space as FLAC are about 3 times the size and the quality is good enough for a car environment.

None of this was done on iTunes or Apple products, in fact I only use one Apple product which is an iPad as they are good. All other Apple products are in my view overpriced and quite often using outdated technology compared to other platforms.
 
#45 ·
AAC files from my iPhone via Apple Music download work fine in the car. I'm just a Spotify user mainly though.

For people using SD Cards and not happy with the meta tags or lack of cover art, I highly recommend a program called 'Musicbrainz Picard'. Leaps and bounds better than MP3Tag which most people use. Mostly automated and uses a large online database for metatagging.
 
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