Scirocco Central

My Scirocco is on order and I was wondering if you get track listings come up on the RCD 510 display when you access your music from a USB stick via the MDI lead under the armrest?

I'd really like to know before I shell out on an expensive, high-capacity stick.

Can anybody post any photo's of what is displayed when you play music from an SD card, iPod or USB stick.

Cheers
Gary_Monkey

p.s. Does anybody on this forum have a 'pdf manual' for the RCD510 unit? I've looked high and low on google.. but nothing.

Hi Gary_Monkey,

I did the same on Google and couldn't find a thing. I did however find a rather sruffy pdf (it's been photocopied) of the RNS510 manual which I saved. For the most part, I'm assuming that the non satnav / DVD sections will be relevant and accurate for the RCD510 (with the exception of SD card capacity linitations).

If you' like to PM me with an e-mail address I could e-mail it for you.

I populated my 16GB USB stick using windows media player.

Windows media player downloads all the track / artist / album names etc from the internet when you rip a CD and automatically arranges all the data in compatible folders.

Just save / copy these files directly onto the USB stick and the RCD / RNS 510 will read it........

As long as you use a music format that the headunit can decode from the memory stick. Windows Media Audio Variable Bitrate (WMA VBR) files or (MP3 VBR) are the best quality the head unit can decode. MP3 are generally more compatible if you are thinking of using the music files elsewhere as well as the car.

If you want the best sound quality you will need an ipod with Lossless audio files, the ipod does all the hard work (decoding) and supplies the head unit with the most authentic signal lossless. This is the best route to make the most of the car audio although you will need a 160 GB ipod to carry a reasonable amount of albums round at anyone time.

As the acoustic properties of a car are not ideal i find a cheap 16GB USB stick with MP3 VBR files good enough, especially through the Dynaudio system. To me when compared directly to a CD (lossless) it sounded very faithful, i am sure others may disagree.

jonallen628 wrote:I populated my 16GB USB stick using windows media player.

Windows media player downloads all the track / artist / album names etc from the internet when you rip a CD and automatically arranges all the data in compatible folders.

Just save / copy these files directly onto the USB stick and the RCD / RNS 510 will read it........

As long as you use a music format that the headunit can decode from the memory stick. Windows Media Audio Variable Bitrate (WMA VBR) files or (MP3 VBR) are the best quality the head unit can decode. MP3 are generally more compatible if you are thinking of using the music files elsewhere as well as the car.

If you want the best sound quality you will need an ipod with Lossless audio files, the ipod does all the hard work (decoding) and supplies the head unit with the most authentic signal lossless. This is the best route to make the most of the car audio although you will need a 160 GB ipod to carry a reasonable amount of albums round at anyone time.

As the acoustic properties of a car are not ideal i find a cheap 16GB USB stick with MP3 VBR files good enough, especially through the Dynaudio system. To me when compared directly to a CD (lossless) it sounded very faithful, i am sure others may disagree.

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DSC00235.JPG

Jon,
Thanks so much for your effort of taking photo's of the unit's interface. It looks pretty straightforward.

I'm an Apple Mac user so don't use Windows Media Player. Do you just dump a load of MP3 music files onto an SD Card, USB stick or portable hard drive and the RCD 510 will read them and display tracks on screen (as per attached photo)? Do you have to carefully place each artist into different folders for the RCD 510 to display them properly on screen?

Sorry for all the questions. All I want to know is whether to purchase a new SD card, USB stick, portable hard drive or get a new iPod and which one works best on the RCD 510 unit.

I've heard that the RCD 510 can be twitchy reading SD-HC cards for example. I don't want to buy something that won't work seamlessly with the RCD 510 when I finally take delivery of the car.

Cheers
Gary_Monkey

The artist name and song titel is taken from the MP3-tag (inside the file). The actual name of the file and folder has no influence on what is displayed when the music plays (the top picture above).

You can pick which folder to play, and then it plays the files in that folder in alphabetical order.
Or You can pick a single file to be played.

Thanks Bianco,

Useful info that's not included in the manual as far as I can see. All the work I've done adding the tag data to MP3's generated from vinyl won't be wasted then!

I only use an Apple computer and all my music (in iTunes) is in AAC format and not MP3.
If your music files are in AAC format too then I believe the only way you can listen to them on the RCD510 is by buying an iPod and connecting it via the iPod cable that should come free with your car.
You could always change the AAC files into MP3 format within iTunes and then load them to a memory stick or hard drive to attach to the car but I think that changing the file format of music files (i.e. from AAC to MP3 or vice versa) always results in a slight loss of quality.

I have an 80gb iPod in my car and it does work very well.
It's easy to access play lists and tracks etc. though I'm sure it is with a good memory stick or HD too.
I have 55 gig of music on mine and mostly just leave it on Mix (random play).

The only criticism I have of the RCD510/iPod set up is that for mix albums (i.e. a dance music mix album ripped from CD where the tracks are seamlessly joined together by a DJ) there is always a jerky pause between the tracks and the mix is definitely not seamless.
I had an Alpine head unit with full ipod connectivity in my old car and mix albums on that used to run totally smoothly with no gap between the tracks.
This last bit not relevant to you of coarse if you haven't got lots of DJ mix albums in your collection.

nickp,

Google 'itunes gapless playback' and see if any of the articles help you... Just a thought.

nickp wrote:I only use an Apple computer and all my music (in iTunes) is in AAC format and not MP3.
If your music files are in AAC format too then I believe the only way you can listen to them on the RCD510 is by buying an iPod and connecting it via the iPod cable that should come free with your car.
You could always change the AAC files into MP3 format within iTunes and then load them to a memory stick or hard drive to attach to the car but I think that changing the file format of music files (i.e. from AAC to MP3 or vice versa) always results in a slight loss of quality.

I have an 80gb iPod in my car and it does work very well.
It's easy to access play lists and tracks etc. though I'm sure it is with a good memory stick or HD too.
I have 55 gig of music on mine and mostly just leave it on Mix (random play).

The only criticism I have of the RCD510/iPod set up is that for mix albums (i.e. a dance music mix album ripped from CD where the tracks are seamlessly joined together by a DJ) there is always a jerky pause between the tracks and the mix is definitely not seamless.
I had an Alpine head unit with full ipod connectivity in my old car and mix albums on that used to run totally smoothly with no gap between the tracks.
This last bit not relevant to you of coarse if you haven't got lots of DJ mix albums in your collection.

The "jerky pause" (is that a new dance craze?) is also annyingly noticable on albums such as Pink Floyd's "The Wall", and Marillion's "Brave", where the artist intended the music to flow seamlessly, but the tracks are listed seperately for reference.

As well as playing folders you can also create playlist files (.m3u) with apps like WinAmp and play them as well. I'd also stronly favour the USB stick option over SD card as the latter is a lot slower to access.

Thanks for all the help guys.
I think I'll go for a 16GB USB stick for when my car actually arrives. Faster read/access speed.
I get the idea about how the RCD510 reads the folder structure now. Ta.

Cheers
Gary_Monkey

Thanks for good information. However, one more question.. If you're using USB stick with Media-IN how fast music starts to play after car has been started?

I do not have Media-IN in my Scirocco at the moment so I have to use SD card (16Gb, Class6). The problem with my configuration is that scanning of the SD card takes about 1-2 minutes and my RCD-510 scans the card every single time after I have started the car. Pretty frustrating. So hopefully USB stick with Media-IN is faster?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Jkasta Welcome!

from what everyone has found so far usb's are alot faster to access than sd cards (see http://www.sciroccocentral.co.uk/forum/ ... usb#p20602)

S

I've been using an 8GB Sandisk Cruzer USB stick and found that it takes less than 10 seconds from starting up to playing. This is about half the time my SD card was taking and it carries on from where it left off. Likewise accessing the directory structure seems to be quicker with a USB stick.

Thank you. Sounds excellent! I think I'll buy Media-IN.

Gary_Monkey wrote:p.s. Does anybody on this forum have a 'pdf manual' for the RCD510 unit? I've looked high and low on google.. but nothing.

We do now Gary thanks to trix's effort of getting all the images for the forum...

http://www.sendspace.com/file/11dhz0

jkasta wrote:Thank you. Sounds excellent! I think I'll buy Media-IN.

Maybe one more thing worth a try before you buy:
I have discovered that if I give up the directory structure and drop all the files directly into the root directory it starts playing much faster.
I have 16G worth of files in there and it takes 10-30 seconds to start playing after I start the engine.
I keep wondering how come each startup time is different, after all it's the same SD with the same content.

I trust the guys with the USB know what they're talking about and it probably is a better solution if you already have the MDI interface.
But just like you I don't have it as a default and these interfaces doesn't come cheep.
So I find my solution satisfying enough.

Yes, moving all files to one directory really helped but anyway.. I purchased Media-IN and now I'm more than happy. Music starts to play really fast after car has been started. Also browsing the memory stick is really fast now.

tmeypaz wrote:

jkasta wrote:Thank you. Sounds excellent! I think I'll buy Media-IN.

Maybe one more thing worth a try before you buy:
I have discovered that if I give up the directory structure and drop all the files directly into the root directory it starts playing much faster.
I have 16G worth of files in there and it takes 10-30 seconds to start playing after I start the engine.
I keep wondering how come each startup time is different, after all it's the same SD with the same content.

I trust the guys with the USB know what they're talking about and it probably is a better solution if you already have the MDI interface.
But just like you I don't have it as a default and these interfaces doesn't come cheep.
So I find my solution satisfying enough.

tmeypaz wrote:Maybe one more thing worth a try before you buy:
I have discovered that if I give up the directory structure and drop all the files directly into the root directory it starts playing much faster.

I've tried doing that on my SD card and it certainly does access the card a lot quicker.
The downside is that all the tracks are played in alphabetical order only. There is no way to select tracks by an artist or from one album. Ends up being a sort of alphabet soup mix.

hey, quick question. so it plays songs in alphabetical order? what if i want a specific order?? i have always had my songs organized by newest first, oldest last. how could i make my scirocco play them in that order? and i want to use an SD card, i know that i could use a playlist on an ipod but i dont want to use an ipod