Barry45RPM

Does anyone have a recommendation for what Brand size, read/write speeds on an SD card I should buy for trouble free listening off the card since the 2015 no longer comes with a cd changer in the head unit, but instead has SD Card & USB Flash Drive capability. Come to think of it what size Flash drive should I consider... (I want a good balance between capacity and cost.)

Strafzettel

SanDisk is a good brand, so is Sony and Lexar. You only need high speed cards if you're shooting video or high speed photos with an expensive camera but to play mp3's the slowest speed should do it. The size depends on how much music you have. I have 2400 songs on my 32GB card, that's all I have.

Barry45RPM

Perfect! Thanks!

GregGebhardt

What format does one put the music on the SD cards. DO I just copy from the CD directly to the SD card, plug it in and play?

Barry45RPM

Do you just copy wall the songs you want to the card or do you make folders labeled for album titles & put individual songs into these several folders?

GregGebhardt

I am asking

Just looking for how to move music to the SD card to play in my ML350

Strafzettel

The songs on a regular music CD are in WAV format. Most CD's have 650 - 700MB capacity and assuming you have 20 tracks on a CD, each song is about 35MB in size. MP3 is a compressed format where a 35MB song gets compressed to about 3.5MB depending on high much compression you want. The more you compress, the more quality you lose that way. I can hear the quality difference between CD's and MP3's with the Harman/Kardon system in my ML, with the standard sound system I think it's hardly noticeable. You can copy and convert the music from CD to MP3 on your computer in one step with programs like free rip mp3 http://www.freerip.com/
When the music has been converted to MP3 you can copy it on the SD Card. I would not create folders because the command system doesn't seem to see mp3's that are in folders.

Strafzettel

Don't create folders, the command system won't see songs in folders.

cyclrder

You can "rip" a CD directly to the hard drive in the head unit... I believe it is 80GB... That will store an entire music collection. That is why they took the changer out. It sounds as good as the original CD.

Also, the Bluetooth hookup using my windows phone with Pandora sounds great.... And lastly, an iPod touch/phone played through the media interface is probably the preferred way to enjoy music.

The head unit does an excellent job of accessing all of these sources Ina transparent manner (though, the music hard drive forces you to use folders)

Strafzettel

It's only 10GB assuming you have the Premium Package which I don't have. Not sure how many people still buy CD's these days I get most of my music via Google Play or itunes. I have been using my phone to stream music too.

cyclrder

I stand corrected. Thank you for the update... I clearly glanced over the specs and assumed the 80GB hard drive was for the audio... Not the Navigation.

Nothing worse than erroneous crap information being spewed out over the internet from some toilet jockey trying to be smarter than everyone else... If you wanna see that, head over to the AMG C63 and E63 forum for that!

Strafzettel

I like your humor!

LilSilverBullet

My SD cards has multiple folders in multi-level. e.g. [Root] -> Artist -> Albums and the COMAND can see the folders and songs just fine.

Strafzettel

Ok, I didn't phrase that properly. I either wasn't able to play the songs in those folders or Command was only playing the ones in the root but something didn't work that made decide not to use folders and keep all songs in the root.

Strafzettel

Never mind what I said about the folders. I just tested it and I could navigate and scroll through fine. It didn't work like that in my 2012 C350 and apparently I haven't tested it properly again since.

husabeast

I have multitude of mp3s on cds that are in artists folders. The Command sees and plays them fine. My problem is trying to record to the hard drive. The rec function does not show up. It shows up fine if I insert a normal music cd. I have tried putting songs on SD card to no avail. Any suggestions?

shortspark

I use cds, SD cards (several brands) and USB flash drives (several brands) and everything works just fine. But I hate doing things two or three times so what I have started to do is play my music through the Aux using my MP3 players (Sony). I take my MP3 players with me everywhere so while they are in the car and arranged just as I like them, I simply use the music system in the ML for the sound and control all my functions from the player itself. As someone else pointed out above, a phone or tablet would do the same thing as a dedicated MP3 player. It just seems much easier to work with.

Barry45RPM

I asked about all of this because all 2015 COMANDs are now single CD... no more CD Changer. In my 07 E550 I have a total of 7 CDs loaded... 6 in the changer and 1 in the single slot. Now I'll have to migrate to USB or SD Card storage.