All my music is now hi-res – all FLAC files.

Just wondered if anyone plays FLAC through the USB input in their BMW?

Never driven a BMW but if it doesn’t support FLAC are you really going to notice the difference between FLAC and 320kbps MP3 on a car hifi with engine and road noise added?

I don’t have any MP3 stuff. Spent quite a while getting all my stuff as FLAC.

Certainly not going to spend ages reformatting it all back into MP3. Was bad enough first time around!

What does it go on to in the car?
iTunes for one will put anything onto an iPod, iPhone etc on to MP3 format without touching the original.

There is software out there that will do the same for a usb stick, it just encodes it to MP3 as it writes it.

FWIW, my focus won’t play flac off a usb stick. Don’t have a Beemer!

If it doesn’t work you don’t have to reformat all your music, just make a copy at a different format. You won’t notice a difference in a car audio system between MP3 or flac at the same bitrate In a car.

I have over 300 albums transferred as FLAC onto microSD cards that play through my portable hi-res player.

About 200GB.

Was hoping I could just plug these into the USB in the BMW then wouldn’t have to bother with transferring onto more cards as MP3.

Was hoping I could just plug these into the USB in the BMW then wouldn’t have to bother with transferring onto more cards as MP3.

I just got to say, why on earth don’t you just plug the damn thing in and try it? It’s the only way you’ll find out, it’s highly unlikely you’ll find anyone else with a Beemer and a fancy player stuffed with FLAC files.
FWIW, I have some FLAC files along with some Lossless mixed in with the mostly 320Kb AAC files on my Classic, and I can discern no significant differences between them; there’s far greater differences between various 320Kb files due to the variations in the original mastering, which a hi-res file is likely to exaggerate.

I don’t have a BMW – that’s why.
Looking in to buying one, but intrigued whether they play FLAC or not and whether that depended on age, model etc? If it does then that may determine what I buy.

Discussion here on the subject.
I suppose the age of the car may be an issue but my F31 plays anything through the connected ipod and stream via Bluetooth from my phone.

I’d suspect not.

However what I’d be doing is using Media Monkey to transfer your lossless library to one media card at the sampled bit rate of your choice.

However what I’d be doing is using Media Monkey to transfer your lossless library to one media card at the sampled bit rate of your choice.

Oooh could you explain how that works? I too have a lot of music stored as flac on a portable drive. What I’d like to be able to do is transfer the files to my ipod so I can play them in the car.

I don’t have a BMW – that’s why.
Looking in to buying one, but intrigued whether they play FLAC or not and whether that depended on age, model etc? If it does then that may determine what I buy.

As your hi-res player is portable, why not take it along to your BMW dealer when you do your test drive?

freester +1

Get MediaMonkey or similar to do a conversion. Set it up, leave it running.

There is no need to re-rip the information from the original CDs.

Oooh could you explain how that works?

1.Highlight the tracks you want to convert, select Tools -> Convert Format.

2. Important! – select a new location for the new files ( I use a folder “music” for FLAC and “mp3_music” for stuff for the car.

3. Go and make a cuppa ( or 3 ) – it will take some time to convert 200Gb .

Media Monkey no good for Mac unfortunately.

I’ll take a card with me next week to a dealer and test it out.

1.Highlight the tracks you want to convert, select Tools -> Convert Format.

2. Important! – select a new location for the new files ( I use a folder “music” for FLAC and “mp3_music” for stuff for the car.

3. Go and make a cuppa ( or 3 ) – it will take some time to convert 200Gb .

Thanks. So if I set the destination folder as the itunes library, convert to aac, then sync my ipod, that should work?

I spent ages encoding all my digital music (WAV) into FLAC years ago. Mainly due to HDD space. Storage isn’t so much of an issue these days so I’m considering changing it all back to WAV.

Oh yeah, I use a great little free prog called ‘Traders Little Helper’ for encoding/decoding…

Mine plays them fine, straight of a memory stick plugged into the usb in the armrest.

2013 F10 5 series with the widescreen navigation system.

Media Monkey no good for Mac unfortunately.

There is a free program called Max which will do much the same thing.

http://sbooth.org/Max/