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      08-23-2007, 05:52 AM   #1
astensland
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My experience with 6FL and iPod

I have an E92 (june production) with the 6FL option installed. I do NOT have iDrive. I will here try to give you my experiences with this after a month of use. The iPod I have is the 80GB Video iPod.
Generally I think the 6FL option performs pretty good. But there are some annoying things that I have noticed:

1. The iPod suddenly changes to the radio or CD player even though I do not touch any buttons. Happens randomly, and not very often. There are already alot of threads that already discuss this issue. Not sure if there are any solutions to this problem yet though.

2. The browsing is slow. When you want to scroll from an artist that starts with the letter A to for example U2, it takes a while. This might be the iPod itself, but hopefully there will be a software update at a later stage that improves this.

3. Scenario: I start my car and start driving. I want to listen to U2, so I scroll myself to death until I finally reach artist U2. I choose the album, and then song. I reach my destination, turn off my car and get out. After a while I get back into the car and start driving again. The iPod resumes the song that it was playing when the car was turned off. So far so good. BUT it does not remember in which album folder or which artist folder it is playing from. This means that the "curr" selection that will take you into the current song folder is not visible. All I have available is the "up arrow" which will take me back to the top under artists, starting with the letter A again. So if I want to continue listening to U2, but another album, I will have to scroll all the way down againg. Extremely annoying.

In my head it should have remebered not only which song you were playing before the car was turned off, it should also have remembered the "browse path" where that song resides. So in the given scenario, I would have expected to be able to press the "curr" button, which would take me to the song in the album folder. I would then be able to press the "up arrow" to browse to all albums under artist U2. If I then pressed the "up arrow" again, this would take me to the artists, with artist U2 currently selected. This is how it is on the iPod itself.

4. Same as point 3, but only for playlists. Say you play a playlist with for example 100 songs in it. You scroll down towards the end, because there is a particular song you want to listen to there. After the car has been restarted, it will continue playing this song, but you will not have the "curr" button available. This means that it does not remember which playlist you are in. So if you want to listen to song number 80 (of the 100) you will have to select the correct playlist all over again, and then scroll down to the correct song.

In my head it should have remembered which playlist it was playing, so that when you pressed the "curr" button it would show the songs in the list, with the current song selected. Again, this is how it is on the iPod itself.


So in my opinion the 6FL is still a good choice, but it seems to be a bit premature. Hopefully there will be some software updates to address these issues. If some of these point above are not really any issue, it is just that I am doing something wrong (some settings somewhere?) then please let me know It would be greatly appreciated.
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      08-23-2007, 06:07 AM   #2
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I agree that there is some room for improvement, albeit within the limitations of the iPod itself. My experience is not quite the same though. I have been fortunate not to have the FM switching issue during playing, as many have. I tend to listen most often to playlists, and my system does indeed remember which playlist I was listening to, and in fact it will continue to loop that playlist unless I change it - even after long periods of the system being off. However, when re-started it will display only the current track in the list by default. This is easily fixed if you wish to see the whole list again by using your back arrow in the iDrive, but not sure how you would do it without ... try the info button?

I'm sure there are some subtle differences between those with iDrive and those without, so my comments may not be wholly relevant to you.

Whenever I'm mildly annoyed by it, I simply recall (no, not a few of my favorite things) the days when I had to open the console and use the wheel on the iPod... and then I don't feel so bad (to rejoin the Sound of Music reference).
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      08-23-2007, 06:17 AM   #3
astensland
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Hehe, I agree that it is much better than to actually use the scroll wheel on the iPod itself
The iDrive interface is probably very different (even though I have not seen it) from the standard radio display interface. We have a "curr" button (I assume it is short for current) that will take you to whereever you are within the artist/album/song hierarchy. Also we have a "up arrow" button that we use to go one step up in the hierarchy, for example from the song to the albums, from the albums to the artists etc. The problem is that after the car has been turned off, the "curr" button disappears, and if you use the "up arrow" it will take you to the top of the list (artists or albums starting with the letter A). Very annoying when my favourite artist at the moment is Danish band Volbeat......
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      08-23-2007, 11:01 AM   #4
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Your only solution: more ABBA and A-ha, and less Volbeat and U2.

I'm still living in the pre-6FL world, and need to use the iPod scroll wheel to get from top to bottom. Not fun either.

Thanks for the write-up and feedback.
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      08-24-2007, 07:02 PM   #5
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astensland, thanks very much for your review. Would you be so kind and answer some questions of mine?

1. When you say scrolling is slow, what does that mean exactly? Is it more like 1 or 2 lines per second or more like 10 lines per second? So to scroll through 50 albums, does that take more like 5 seconds or more like half a minute?

2. I heard that when in random mode and you want to skip a song (by pressing next on the steering wheel or on the radio), it doesn't play the next randomly chosen song, but the next song in the list. So if you're listening to the third song of an album and press the "Next" button , the next song is not some random song, but song 4, then song 5, 6, and so on. The only way to keep it random is to let the song play until the end.

3. I also read that if you listen to some songs in random order, this order is always the same. So the next time you play those same songs again randomly, the order of the songs is not a new, different, random order, but the same order like last time you had it on random.

Can you confirm those problems?

Thanks very much
Olli
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      08-28-2007, 04:36 PM   #6
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olli_g, sorry for the late response. I have been away for a few days. But to answer your questions:

1. We are not talking minutes here, it is not that slow
I would say that I use about 30 seconds (roughly) to scroll to the bottom of my artist list which is about 200 artists. It is not a big problem, but it would have been nice if it was faster, even better if it accelerated like the iPod depending on how fast you turn the knob (wheel).

2. That is correct. It does not play random if you skip to the next song, then it will just pick the next song on the list. It will only play random if you listen to the whole song. At least as far as I have figured out.

3. Not sure about this one, as I often skip manually after a few minutes of a song. But I would not be surprised if that was the case. Maybe some other members of this forum has some input on this question???


Quote:
Originally Posted by olli_g View Post
astensland, thanks very much for your review. Would you be so kind and answer some questions of mine?

1. When you say scrolling is slow, what does that mean exactly? Is it more like 1 or 2 lines per second or more like 10 lines per second? So to scroll through 50 albums, does that take more like 5 seconds or more like half a minute?

2. I heard that when in random mode and you want to skip a song (by pressing next on the steering wheel or on the radio), it doesn't play the next randomly chosen song, but the next song in the list. So if you're listening to the third song of an album and press the "Next" button , the next song is not some random song, but song 4, then song 5, 6, and so on. The only way to keep it random is to let the song play until the end.

3. I also read that if you listen to some songs in random order, this order is always the same. So the next time you play those same songs again randomly, the order of the songs is not a new, different, random order, but the same order like last time you had it on random.

Can you confirm those problems?

Thanks very much
Olli
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      08-28-2007, 08:02 PM   #7
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@astensland: Thanks very much for your response. I have one question though: do you have the special BMW Y-cable for the iPod?

Concerning the second point: over at this thread there are some that can skip to the next random song (users JeremyDS and jmonier), and others that skip to the next, non-random song in the list like you (user 100mph). This is really inexplicable.
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      08-29-2007, 10:37 AM   #8
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Yes, I have the BMW iPOD adapter Y-cable. I guess my conclution to all this is that the software is a bit premature, and hopefully there will be an update soon that fixes or at least improves some of the points mentioned above. I hope some of the BMW software developers read this forum


Quote:
Originally Posted by olli_g View Post
@astensland: Thanks very much for your response. I have one question though: do you have the special BMW Y-cable for the iPod?

Concerning the second point: over at this thread there are some that can skip to the next random song (users JeremyDS and jmonier), and others that skip to the next, non-random song in the list like you (user 100mph). This is really inexplicable.
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      08-30-2007, 07:06 AM   #9
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Another issue that I have discovered, is that the scrolling hangs sometimes. It has happened 4-5 times, and every time it has happened I was browsing songs in a playlist. What happens is that the whole interface just freezes (but the current song keeps playing). I am not able to scroll up or down. The only thing I can do is to press the "return" arrow, which will take me back to the "main" menu where I have to select "lists" and then the correct playlist again. Then you start at the top of the list again, and have to scroll down to wherever you were when it froze.
As I mentioned, this has only happened 4-5 times. Anyone else experienced this?
I don't have iDrive, only the little screen on the radio itself....
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      08-31-2007, 05:14 AM   #10
astensland
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And yet another thing I have discovered. There seems to be a problem with the iPod shutdown. When I turn off my car, it seems that the iPod is not turned off. This means that if I am away from my car for a while, the iPod battery is flat when I come back. I guess this is not healthy for the iPod battery, and it is also annoying if you want to take the iPod out of the car and it is almost out of power. This has to be a bug somewhere in the software, I mean the iPod should definitly power off when you turn off the car (at least after a few minutes of stand-by)...... Anyone else experienced this?

EDIT: typo....
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      10-14-2007, 05:27 PM   #11
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bump ... any solution to the slow IPOD scrolling with Idrive? I have 21 gigs of music so needless to say I don't make it past G very often.
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      10-14-2007, 08:00 PM   #12
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I have about 18 gigs of music. Like some other forum members, I use the genre "hack". You have to give up real genre information, but it works very well for navigating a large music collection. Basically put all your music in genres named after each letter of the alphabet.
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      10-14-2007, 08:27 PM   #13
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Upgrade your progman.
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      10-15-2007, 08:04 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gloster View Post
I have about 18 gigs of music. Like some other forum members, I use the genre "hack". You have to give up real genre information, but it works very well for navigating a large music collection. Basically put all your music in genres named after each letter of the alphabet.
Dude - a lot of work but sounds like it is worth it. Thnx
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      10-15-2007, 08:09 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinobien View Post
Dude - a lot of work but sounds like it is worth it. Thnx
Yeah .. a lot of work for nothing .... I have 140GB of music so once again ... Upgrade your progman.
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      10-15-2007, 08:15 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rebirth24 View Post
Yeah .. a lot of work for nothing .... I have 140GB of music so once again ... Upgrade your progman.
You mean program ... who does this .... BMW? First I heard of a new program that makes the IPOD scroll faster. Nice .. any details?
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      10-15-2007, 08:28 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinobien View Post
You mean program ... who does this .... BMW? First I heard of a new program that makes the IPOD scroll faster. Nice .. any details?
Nope ... I had it right. Search the site.
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      10-15-2007, 09:31 PM   #18
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i read your previous posts - looks like the scrolling issue on Idrive is not any better ... is that true?
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      10-15-2007, 09:39 PM   #19
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Is that what I said? Oh .. guess it isnt any better ... as I said Upgrade your progman.
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      10-16-2007, 08:25 AM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinobien View Post
Dude - a lot of work but sounds like it is worth it. Thnx
Even with thousands of songs, it probably took me no more than 10 minutes to set all the genres to letters. iTunes lets you pick multiple songs at once and change all of their genres together.

So, I just had to sort the songs by artist, pick a group of them 26 times and type in their new letter genre.
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      11-14-2007, 05:29 PM   #21
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Question The elusive BMW Y-cable (among other things)

Hi Folks,

I wandered over here from M3Post.

I picked up my new car last week and I must say that I am far from impressed with BMW's implementation of iPod integration.

I have the 6FL option, along with iDrive. The infamous Y-cable is not supplied as standard in the U.K. (They do give you a USB-extension cable for reasons best known to themselves: needless to say it is neither use nor ornament).

So, I'm currently using 6FL with a standard iPod USB cable and a brand new iPod classic.

I have identified the following problems so far:
  1. It takes about 10 mins for the song data to become visible via iDrive - in the meantime, all you can do is browse the idiosyncratic iPod file system
  2. Some .mp3 files (these files do NOT have DRM), while playing happily on iTunes and iPod, will not play on the head unit
  3. I understand that protected .mp3 files and AAC files will not play in this configuration (not a problem for me)
  4. The head unit does not "do" gapless play (i.e. it cocks up your live albums etc.)
  5. All the "The -----" artists are group under "T" exaccerbating the scrolling issue already discussed in this thread
  6. The folk at the Apple store on Regent Street have never heard of the BMW Y-cable

Please can someone confirm whether all of the above issues are solved by the Y-cable? I know that the trade-off is that the audio is then sent to the head unit via a (probably cheap and nasty stereo cable to/from the armrest): are there any other drawbacks to BMW's suggested configuration (other than the obscene £30 price-tag for something that damn well should have been included from the outset?).

Many thanks for your help.
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      11-14-2007, 05:56 PM   #22
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1 is a characteristic of the USB only connection. The head unit has to index your entire music collection and that may take time. With the Y-cable, you use the indexing already in the iPod and it comes up quickly.

6: The Y-cable is a specific BMW part so I wouldn't expect the Apple store (or anybody else outside BMW) to have it.

With the Y-cable the iPod handles playing internally so I would expect your items 2-5 to operate the same as the iPod standalone. (With USB only, the head unit sees the iPod simply as a very large MP3 CD and you're stuck with the (poor) BMW implementation.)
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