SD card music mystery '15 GSW

The car's manual states that the SD card can only handle 1,000 files. So I put about 800 of my favorite songs on an SD card and started listening in my '15 GSW. In shuffle mode, I noticed that I was getting an annoying amount of repeat songs for a source with 800+ files. Then I noticed that it only plays artists beginning with A through P. Nothing beyond that, alphabetically. Anyone have any clue what's going on here or why? I think the SD source is a brilliant idea but it's pretty maddening to only get what seems to be half capacity.

Oldboatdriver said:

The car's manual states that the SD card can only handle 1,000 files. So I put about 800 of my favorite songs on an SD card and started listening in my '15 GSW. In shuffle mode, I noticed that I was getting an annoying amount of repeat songs for a source with 800+ files. Then I noticed that it only plays artists beginning with A through P. Nothing beyond that, alphabetically. Anyone have any clue what's going on here or why? I think the SD source is a brilliant idea but it's pretty maddening to only get what seems to be half capacity.

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Subscribing as this has been an issue for me on my Pioneer as well, haven't tried the VW yet. My Pioneer has to "load" the card info into the unit once you select "SD" and it takes a good bit of time if I have a really loaded up card. Until it is fully loaded I get strange popping noises on the audio during playback. As a workaround I let it fully load before I play it. It needs to be re-loaded each drive cycle. If I load a card very lightly there will be no problems. The other issue is that the OSD sometimes shows the wrong artist, or album artwork, it gets them mixed up. It's been kind of a headache and I am reluctant to try the VW. Now my iPod works fine in the VW and on my Pioneer but funny thing with that is in my Infiniti if I plug the iPod in my playlists get messed up in the iPod and I will have to re-sync it with iTunes to straighten it out.

Note that I am using SanDisk Ultra Plus cards (XC)

All of these issues have me gun shy of trying more messing around.

Hmm. So the VW SD drive may have to "load" 800 songs every trip? If so, I can see why it never gets beyond "P" in alphabetical order since you'd likely have to be on a long trip to get everything loaded up. If true, that seems like a pretty stupid system.

Oldboatdriver said:

Hmm. So the VW SD drive may have to "load" 800 songs every trip? If so, I can see why it never gets beyond "P" in alphabetical order since you'd likely have to be on a long trip to get everything loaded up. If true, that seems like a pretty stupid system.

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It could also be that your tracks are longer than average or larger files and there isn't room in the system. A lot of my tracks are Jazz songs which can be very long compared to pop and I normally compress at 320 kbps. Maybe they figured 800 files at 3-4 minutes each compressed at 160kbps? What is your compression rate?

Dunno, where would I find that? I have a few long files. Max 9 minutes probably.

Oldboatdriver said:

Dunno, where would I find that? I have a few long files. Max 9 minutes probably.

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You would have to look at your bitrate where you saved the songs, in iTunes or whatever program you used. If you bought the songs they are most likely 160 as that is the default but if you ripped them from your own cds you can choose a higher bitrate all the way to lossless if you want but it does make the files a lot bigger

Ah, OK, I thought you were talking about an SD card rate. The songs are anywhere from 120K-320K. I notice some play at a louder volume than others, presumably the higher quality songs. Perhaps I should dumb them all down to a lower rate and reload? Not sure how to do that. As you can see, I'm a computer whiz!

Oldboatdriver said:

Ah, OK, I thought you were talking about an SD card rate. The songs are anywhere from 120K-320K. I notice some play at a louder volume than others, presumably the higher quality songs. Perhaps I should dumb them all down to a lower rate and reload? Not sure how to do that. As you can see, I'm a computer whiz!

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I'm always fuzzy on that stuff too and I usually bumble through it till I figure it out. iTunes has a converter that allows you to change formats and bitrates but you have to do it one song at a time. I've stuck with iTunes through the years because it's easy.

Sorry, a bit off topic but, is it just me, or are there WAY, WAY too many SD storage slots in our cars? Was this car designed by a photographer?

Mine only has one that I'm aware of.

Oldboatdriver said:

Mine only has one that I'm aware of.

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Pretty sure Beeah meant storage slots for spare SD cards, not the reader slot. If you don't have navigation, then you'll only have one SD reader slot in the glove box. If you have navigation, then there are two SD reader slots in the glove box.

Regarding the original topic, that seems odd to me. I just checked my SD card and I have 2,344 music files for a total of 9.84 GB of data. It seems to work fine for me, though occasionally it will say "SD Card Error" for like 10 seconds before it loads the music on the SD card... it still always works after that. I'm nearing 4 years with roughly the same amount of music on the card.

Does the class and speed rating of the SD card matter in this case? What are the specs on the cards you are using?

Maybe they're not a fan of ZZ top


Dedicated aux/bluetooth device might be best unfortunately, but at least you could add spotify to it.

demagxc said:

Does the class and speed rating of the SD card matter in this case? What are the specs on the cards you are using?

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Yeah, I suppose that could make a difference. The SD card I have in my '15 Sportwagen is a Kingston Class 10 30 MB/s card with 16 GB capacity, so it's just over half filled.

On the '15 models, passat, not sure about gold and jetta, they only play mp3, wma and wav files. Will not play mp4 like apple products use. If you have any mp4, you can convert them to mp3 and they play fine. Just a thought.

CrazyMonkey said:

Pretty sure Beeah meant storage slots for spare SD cards, not the reader slot. If you don't have navigation, then you'll only have one SD reader slot in the glove box. If you have navigation, then there are two SD reader slots in the glove box.
Regarding the original topic, that seems odd to me. I just checked my SD card and I have 2,344 music files for a total of 9.84 GB of data. It seems to work fine for me, though occasionally it will say "SD Card Error" for like 10 seconds before it loads the music on the SD card... it still always works after that. I'm nearing 4 years with roughly the same amount of music on the card.

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There are no less then 4 in my glove box, not including the actual SD card slot, and at least 1 in the storage box to the left of the steering wheel. I also don't have NAV.

I'll find more!

Beeah said:

There are no less then 4 in my glove box, not including the actual SD card slot, and at least 1 in the storage box to the left of the steering wheel. I also don't have NAV.
I'll find more!

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Yeah, there are a bunch of storage slots. It's kinda weird. I don't have navigation either, so just the one reader slot.