[jocanfer]

I would like to bring to everybody’s attention a CD/MP3 playback problem that apparently affects to ALL CD/Radio in-dash units installed with the new 2008 BMW models.

Over the past three months that I’ve had a new 2008 335xi Coupe I noticed the following issues with the CD/Radio unit:

- The unit could not perform continuous playback of commercial audio CDs where there is no gap between songs (such as in a mix CD or a live CD) Instead, the unit pauses between songs during a second or two disrupting the continuous flow of the music.

- The unit could not play MP3 CDs without errors. Playback of MP3 CDs is affected by random bursts of a loud, piercing noise and/or loss of audio for several seconds.

To me, gapless playback of CDs and proper decoding and playback of MP3 are standard and expected features of any unit advertising as a CD/MP3 player, so to make sure that my audio CDs and MP3 CDs were not defective I tested them on my wife’s 2007 BMW 335Xi Sedan, on a friend’s 2006 VW Jetta, on my laptop and on my DVD/CD/MP3 player at home. In all cases they performed with NO problems at all. Furthermore, I’ve had the chance during the last two weeks to test other 2007 models (X3, 3 Series Wagon) and in both performance was flawless as well.

So I took the car to my dealer last week assuming a defective CD/Radio unit. After having my car for three days (which included ordering a new CD/Radio unit) I was informed by the dealer of the following:

- The new CD/Radio unit showed the same problem

- The dealer could reproduce non gapless playback problem in all the 2008 cars they tested in the showroom

- That after contacting again BMW of NA technical support they got this response “Radio cutting in between continuous play tracks IS A NORMAL CONDITION with the new HD radios in the 2008 cars. 2007 vehicles like wife’s car is not an HD radio”

To me this answer is not acceptable. This is NOT a normal condition. BMW 2007 models don’t have these issues nor any other CD/MP3 unit (car or stand-alone) that I have ever used for that matter. This is clearly a design problem with the 2008 audio system.

I contacted BMW of NA. They basically told me to put up with it “Sorry, 2007 and 2008 are different units…your feedback will be taken into account for future models”.

Some people may feel that this is not a big deal, but I spend 2 to 3 hours in the car every day and having a substandard audio unit really bothers me (even more when I know that earlier models perform just fine!)

Maybe if BMW receives enough complaints they will pay some attention and come up with a fix. So if there are 2008 model owners out there experiencing these issues and would like then fixed please send a complaint to BMW of NA.

Thanks for reading this rather long post…

J

[CRZ410S]

If I understood what you were saying this occurs in only HD Radio head units? I have an 08 (no HD) and do not have that problem. I wonder why the HD affect it?

[JO3]

aw crap. I ordered my car with HD Radio. The car hasn't arrived yet, but when it does, I'll be sure to test this out and let you know if I have the same problem.

[jocanfer]

Sorry this was confusing in my post. I DO NOT have the HD radio option in my car, however BMW NA response is as I stated (2008 is an HD radio blah blah) I brought this to the attention to BMW of NA when I contacted them to complain and they basically re-phrased the sentence stating "2008 radios are different than 2007 radios so performance is different" After pressing a little harder, the Customer Representative stated that "they would send my complaint to engineering but that there was not guarantee of anything and if any modification was issued I would learn about it via my dealer"

My personal opinion is that this is a Firmware or DSP desing problem with the 2008 unit as a result of the redesign to support HD radio or other features and for the time being BMW does not want to acknowledge the problem or spend the time to develop a fix.

I will definitively be interested to know if other 2008 users experience these problems as well. Thanks

[NuovoTech]

The dealer could reproduce non gapless playback problem in all the 2008 cars they tested in the showroom

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by the phrase "non gapless", to me that implies "with gaps"? I'm guessing that in the USA the 2008 Professional Radio(#663) is the same HeadUnit regardless of HD Radio or Premium HiFi options. IE for the latter the trunk amplifier/MOST connection changes.

Did BMW explain why it seemed "normal" to them that the HD radio would cut-in during a completely different head unit function? IE CD playback vs radio tuner, seems like those 2 input functions would be mutually exclusive!

[GreenThree]

This is going to be an uphill battle...

The audio is the only thing that is not perfect about my car. It is bearable, but for what you pay for a $40K car, should be better IMO

[jocanfer]

Originally Posted by NuovoTech

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by the phrase "non gapless", to me that implies "with gaps"? I'm guessing that in the USA the 2008 Professional Radio(#663) is the same HeadUnit regardless of HD Radio or Premium HiFi options. IE for the latter the trunk amplifier/MOST connection changes.

Did BMW explain why it seemed "normal" to them that the HD radio would cut-in during a completely different head unit function? IE CD playback vs radio tuner, seems like those 2 input functions would be mutually exclusive!

1) The question about "gapless playback"

OK. Here is verbatim the definition from Wikipedia of "gapless playback"

"Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks without intervening silence or clicks at the point of the track change. Gapless playback is naive to compact discs or gramophone records, but is not always available with other formats that employ compressed digital audio. This may be a source of annoyance to listeners of music where tracks segue into each other, such as some classical music (opera in particular), progressive rock, and electronic music."

For a very detailed discussion on this matter I suggest reading of the whole article "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback"

So the problem with the 2008 CD unit is that it does NOT support a feature that is native to standard Audio CD technology. The unit in fact behaves like a unsophisticated MP3 player (MP3 compression does not support gapless playback natively and only newer models of players such as the new iPOD classic and nano models have implemented SW workarounds to be able to perform gapless playback)

Thats what I meant by the unit being "non gapless playback". Sorry if the term was confusing. The unit ALWAYS leaves a gap between songs no matter if the CD audio was designed to play gapless or not. BMW can call it whatever they want, this is a design flaw of their 2008 CD unit.

The other issue with these units is the substandard CD MP3 decoding which produces plenty of digital artifacts during playback. None of this is present on all non 2008 cars I've driven over the past 3 months.

2) HD Radio comment

Again, sorry if my explanation was confusing with the reference to "HD radio". HD radio has nothing to do with the problems. What BMW told my service department was that "2008 cars have a new HD radio unit" and that this was "a known behavior" in these units. Well, my car DOES NOT HAVE the HD RADIO option. What they REALLY meant is that the CD/RADIO unit (the unit as a whole) is a NEW design for the 2008 cars. The "known behavior" means that the problem is caused by badly designed Digital Signal Processing of the audio coming from the CD unit.

Hope this clarifies the questions....


What they me was a little biut confusing. I replied to this on a different forum. I am posting my response here (edited)

[noonystock]

I haven't played enough mp3 CDs to really comment on that point (though I have played a few and did not experience the problem you describe).

I did, however, specifically test out your "gapless" CD problem, and can report that it doesn't seem to be an issue for me. Test CD: Madonna - Confessions On A Dance Floor. Based on your description and diagnostic steps, it seems like the problem is associated with your specific headunit, despite your dealer's claims to the contrary. Yes, the "gapless" playback attribute is inherent to the Audio CD format, and any device capable of playing Audio CDs should be able to reproduce "gapless" playback. Don't really know what else to suggest...from your posting, it's not clear if you've got iDrive or not...I do. Maybe it's only an issue with non-iDrive headunits? Taking this assumption one step further, by random coincidence, were all the "test" cars in the showroom also non-iDrive? In any case, I can assure you there's at least one 2008 E92 out there (with iDrive) that can deliver "gapless" Audio CD playback. Good luck!

[Streetfish]

I have an 08 non-idrive unit that has this skipping sounds between tracks

[jocanfer]

Mine is non i-drive, non HD radio. Just plain stock CD/Radio. Interesting. Could this be an issue associated to non i-drive units and if so, why?

A couple comments:

- The statements about this being "a 2008 radio unit behavior" are from BMWNA technical support not from my dealer.

- BMWNA sent a new CD/radio unit and it behaved exactly the same with the continuous mix CDs

[noonystock]

Originally Posted by jocanfer

Mine is non i-drive, non HD radio. Just plain stock CD/Radio. Interesting. Could this be an issue associated to non i-drive units and if so, why? Great question...that's the point I was trying to bring out. I haven't got a clue as to why...just trying to provide some helpful analytical guidance to assist diagnosis.

A couple comments:

- The statements about this being "a 2008 radio unit behavior" are from BMWNA technical support not from my dealer. Yeah sorry I missed that nuance...regardless of who's saying it, however, I smell bullshit ;-) I would go back to BMWNA and refute their claim, citing that my (iDrive) 2008 radio doesn't have the problem, so it's clearly not as straightforward as "2008 radio unit behavior". Why should ANY version of a 2008 BMW CD player not support gapless playback, especially when other 2008 versions do? Let's see how they explain that away.

- BMWNA sent a new CD/radio unit and it behaved exactly the same with the continuous mix CDs

Again, I wish I could be more helpful. I'll likely be shot down for suggesting this...it's an extremely unlikely explanation, and admittedly I'm grasping at straws trying to help. So hold your fire, guys! Is it possible that on the non-iDrive headunit, there's a setting somewhere that controls the gap between tracks? It could either be user configurable, or perhaps it's something that a tech can set. I'm thinking about the feature in iTunes that allows you to control the duration of the gaps between tracks when you burn a CD from a playlist. Again, I hesitate to even suggest this because it's so "out there", but, I know this problem would drive me nuts...just trying to help. I suppose you could ask them to replace your unit with one from a pre-2008 vehicle, too, but I'm guessing that you, like me, would be against that on principle.

Going back to the tests you mentioned on other cars in the showroom, were these in fact all non-iDrive cars that exhibited the gap? Did you test in only 3-series, or did you also include 5-series, etc.? I'd say as soon as you find one 2008 non-iDrive BMW that supports gapless playback, regardless of model, BMWNA's argument falls apart. Good luck!

[solefald]

Originally Posted by jocanfer

- The unit could not perform continuous playback of commercial audio CDs where there is no gap between songs (such as in a mix CD or a live CD) Instead, the unit pauses between songs during a second or two disrupting the continuous flow of the music.

This drives me ABSOLUTELY NUTS! The only solution i found is to use iPod instead. It seems to work fine off iPod and does not stop between the tracks.

BMW "Professional" cd player is the biggest POS i have ever seen, and I used to be a car stereo installer, so I have seen alot of crappy head units ($64 Jensen from Cragen Auto being one of them).

Anyway, my 2 other complains about it are:
- No display of track/song time
- ABSOLUTELY NO VOLUME DISPLAY (WTF????)


as far as sound problems off CD's, try burning your music at 4x/8x, change media and try to stay away from VBR mp3s. This should help. I have been DJing for years and it is a pretty common problem with DJ CD players...

[BK]

That is very strange. As you mention in your post, it's not an issue for the earlier cars. Mine is a 2006, and it plays back CDs normally and without gaps.

So there's no indication that BMW can fix this via software? It's not an elegant solution, but until it is fixed, if this were happening to me, I would put songs that flow into each other onto a single track to keep the continuous play going. That's pretty lame that you'd have to do that, though.

[jocanfer]

Originally Posted by solefald

This drives me ABSOLUTELY NUTS! The only solution i found is to use iPod instead. It seems to work fine off iPod and does not stop between the tracks.

BMW "Professional" cd player is the biggest POS i have ever seen, and I used to be a car stereo installer, so I have seen alot of crappy head units ($64 Jensen from Cragen Auto being one of them).

Anyway, my 2 other complains about it are:
- No display of track/song time
- ABSOLUTELY NO VOLUME DISPLAY (WTF????)


as far as sound problems off CD's, try burning your music at 4x/8x, change media and try to stay away from VBR mp3s. This should help. I have been DJing for years and it is a pretty common problem with DJ CD players...

Hey Solefald you are totally spot on in all your complaints about the unit! I happen to DJ as a hobby (just for friends -not pro at all!) and probably 80% of the music I listen to are CD mixes so I totally understand how you feel. Now about your iPOD comment, I think it works because iPOD already has processed the MP3 files to be played continuously. I won't go into a long explanation but the new iPOD generations and iTunes v7 have (finally) implemented mp3 gapless playback support. There is a good overview of gapless playback and mp3 on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback) as well as an overview of gapless playback on iPOD/iTunes at the apple support website (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1797?viewlocale=en_US) So all the work is done in the iPOD and the only thing the BMW unit does is streaming the data from the iPOD and that's why it works. I am pretty convinced that this issue is strictly limited at how the CD data is processed by the CD/Radio unit (and for the feedback received so far, specificall non-iDRive CD units!)

To all. I really appreciate the feedback. I hope I get more replies to this message with the users experience...in fact I am thinking that I should create a new post just asking the question "does your 2008 bimmer CD unit support standard Audio CD gapless playback?" and ask people to specify the type of unit they have and when they purchased the car. If I get enough input, I would use the data with BMW to try again to push them to develop a solution.

Couple more comments:

[noonystock] "I suppose you could ask them to replace your unit with one from a pre-2008 vehicle" In fact, when I talked to BMWNA on the phone I suggested to have my 2008 unit replaced by a 2007 unit...the very unhelpful customer service representative did not even consider that idea...their point being the "there is nothing wrong with the unit, it works how it works"

[Solefald] Your feedback on mp3 CD...I have already implemented all your advice. My MP3 CDs are burned at 8x and 192kbps CBR...and they play just fine in the 2007 unit while in the 2008 they play with all the issues I mentioned. The problem with this issue is that all my MP3 CDs are long continuous mixes (single files of 100 to 200 Mb) and the issues I described while always happen, happen randomly (i.e. after listening for 1/2 hour) so I have not been able to "show it" to the dealer...so at this point, I am just focusing on the gapless problem -by far a much worse issue in my view...

[noonystock]

OK, here's another farfetched idea. We've already established that gapless playback is an attribute of the Audio CD standard. It was that standard which fueled broad consumer uptake of audio CDs in the 1980s and beyond. As I understand it, all hardware manufactured and sold to play audio CDs must comply with that standard (that's the point of a standard, eh? ;-) Based on your situation, BMW seems to be out of compliance having sold you hardware which does not support (at least this specific aspect of) the Audio CD standard. Identify the association that oversees manufacturer/seller compliance with the Audio CD standard (there must be one, e.g. RIAA for the recording industry in general) and report BMW for selling non-compliant hardware...

[jocanfer]

Originally Posted by noonystock

OK, here's another farfetched idea. We've already established that gapless playback is an attribute of the Audio CD standard. It was that standard which fueled broad consumer uptake of audio CDs in the 1980s and beyond. As I understand it, all hardware manufactured and sold to play audio CDs must comply with that standard (that's the point of a standard, eh? ;-) Based on your situation, BMW seems to be out of compliance having sold you hardware which does not support (at least this specific aspect of) the Audio CD standard. Identify the association that oversees manufacturer/seller compliance with the Audio CD standard (there must be one, e.g. RIAA for the recording industry in general) and report BMW for selling non-compliant hardware...

You know...that may be an idea worth researching...at least it will give me some more technical jargon to throw at BMW the next time I contact them LOL

[solefald]

ok, this no-gapless-playback shit is starting to piss me off. to work around that, i burned few cd's as 1 track (no gaps), and this fixed the original problem, but introduced another, even more annoying one. now when i get back to the car, sometimes the cd starts playing where it left off, but sometimes it just starts from the beginning! and since this "professional" (my ass) cd player has absolutely no track time display i have no idea how far i listened to it....

I just made an appointment to with a dealer to have this POS cd player looked at. Not sure if they will be able to fix it (probably not), but maybe they will activate my alarm for free, as a courtesy

[jocanfer]

Originally Posted by solefald

I just made an appointment to with a dealer to have this POS cd player looked at. Not sure if they will be able to fix it (probably not), but maybe they will activate my alarm for free, as a courtesy

So....I saw your post on the alarm activation thread...your foreman was going to do "some inquiries" about this issue with the continuous CDs...did they ever get back to you with an explanation? I really would love to hear what they had to say....

I just told another pissed-off guy on another forum that I don't think they will ever address the problem in the current models...from what I've seen in the forums over the past 3 months or so, there are just not enough complaints about this problem...

[1WickedE90]

This post is exactly why I'm going to rip out the POS stock system & replace it with an aftermarket setup. Head unit/speakers/amp/sub, the whole works. Just waiting for JL Audio to finish the Stealthbox for E9x models.

[WSurfer]

Originally Posted by solefald

...but introduced another, even more annoying one. now when i get back to the car, sometimes the cd starts playing where it left off, but sometimes it just starts from the beginning!

Hello!

I've got the same problems with my BMW professional CD Radio.
And this issue, that CD starts playing track from beginning, happens every time when I leave the car and lock it for about an hour or more.

I've searched user manuals but I can't find how to turn off this feature (or bug), so if anyone knows how to disable this function please let me know.


Thanks and regards,
WSurfer

[BK]

Originally Posted by WSurfer

Hello!

I've got the same problems with my BMW professional CD Radio.
And this issue, that CD starts playing track from beginning, happens every time when I leave the car and lock it for about an hour or more.

I've searched user manuals but I can't find how to turn off this feature (or bug), so if anyone knows how to disable this function please let me know.


Thanks and regards,
WSurfer

Get your software updated. That fixes this issue (at least on US cars).

[abarrena]

I found the solution to this problem. Thanks to Eric Wedel (a colleague of mine) who suggested to remove the "ID3" tags from my MP3 songs. So that's what I did and that solved my problem.

There is no need to update your software on your BMW. Well, I guess you could but I didn't have to do that in order to get my 2008 BMW 328i to play MP3s.

Follow this link and that should do it:

http://www.dalepreston.com/Blog/2007...-id3-tags.html

Good luck.

Alberto Barrena