Multimedia storage and format questions

[Pogo333]

Hello People,
I'm waiting to recieve my new SEL 115/DSG Polo and look forward to the famed 8" multimedia screen.

I really like musci and want to set up my music storage in advance so I have some technical questions for those of you who already have it:

1. Storage, I'm guessing it has USB input, do you know what's the biggest storage I can attach? 32GB? 64Gb? A hard drive? Is there an SD card slot? if so again what's the max size?

2. Formats - what file system should it be? ExFAT, other? Lastly, I assume it plays MP3s how about FLAC? Or ALAC if it supports iphone? (from a storage device not an iphone).

Thank you very much, I can't wait!

[Paul_Barnett]

I dont know the answers to most of those questions, but would like to.

But as part of my test drive, I plugged in a usb 128gb flash drive, formatted as fat32 (vfat) and full of mp3 files. it worked fine.

if I have the choice, (I'm waiting for an SEL too), I'd like to use a large SD card (in order to free up a USB slot), with FLAC files, and formatted
as anything other than xxFatxx (eg ext4 or ntfs) simply to speed up the copying of files from a pc, (ideally via rsync). I'm expecting to do
experiments when the car finally arrives

[Leif]

There are two SD card slots inside the glove box of all places. Yes you can attach an external USB storage device. However, the manual is awful. They do not mention an external hard drive, it might be supported, and make no mention of file formats or maximum storage size. There are also some card storage slots, which is handy. And you can attach a device via USB and play back audio. CarPlay is superb, but not totally reliable. Only use Apple cables.

[Leif]

I inserted my 64 GB USB stick this morning, and it was able to read the FAT filing system and play songs. Basically you get to see a list of files in the current folder, and you can navigate around as you might expect. It looks like there is a 64 bit CPU behind the scenes. Whether it can read other filing systems, who knows, but you would hope so. I suspect it can read an external hard drive too. I suppose that would be a cheaper alternative to an £800 iPhone!

[Leif]

Incidentally, if it can read 64 GB that should mean that it can address massive amounts of memory i.e. anything you can throw at it.

[JohnF]

Don't make things over complicated when using the infotainment screen! I think it depends on whether you often need to have your smart phone connected up.

I've tried music on my smartphone using Android Auto and also on a SD card. It depends on whether you want to use Google Maps or Waze at the same time as playing music. If you do then why bother with a SD card when you've already got music on your phone?

If you play music using the "media" button whilst using Waze I've found that the volume on both are different (ie music fairly loud and Waze too quiet) Using music and satnav from the phone however does not give this problem so that's my preference.

[Paul_Barnett]

If anyone is still interested..

My new polo finally arrived. I now have some more answers.

1. It is happy with a 256gb micro-usb (with adapter) in slot SD2 (SD1 is used for the satnav
maps). It is happy with VFAT or NTFS format (I'll try EXT2/2/3 in due course).

2. As well as MP3, it happily reads 16/44 and 24/96 FLAC , but not 24/192 FLAC.

Coming from USB VFAT formatted storage of MP3s in my old polo, this is a major step up.

I no longer have to do a mass-convert of my FLAC files to MP3, and I don't have to use VFAT.

(The advantage of NTFS over VFAT is that it is much much quicker to sync from a PC, and I don't have to
edit directory and file names to remove allegedly illegal characters.)

[antz81]

Thank you for the update.
I will be collecting mine on the 1st of November and had asked about this already. I may just experiment with the flac files as even in 24bit 96khz some are still well over 100Mb and want to be sure that wont be an issue.

[silverhairs]

VW have video's (you-tube) out that cover things like your radio, playback and things like that, they also cover adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, wipers I think they have about 30 odd video's that cover a wide range of things useful if your new to VW.