G'day you lot,

Only had our 250 CDI for 4 weeks or so and Loving it, but haven't managed to find out how to load cd's onto hard drive? Like it's not a burning issue given we have Ipod connectivity and USB's etc., but I'd like to know anyways. When I throw a CD in and go into music register all the options to save music to hd are there, but they're greyed out and non accessible, am I missing something?

Thanks

I'm no expert, but it sounds like it's not recognizing the disc. I assume you have tried more than one disc. I've also heard that some discs have to be inverted under some circumstances, but I have no details.

There is a more than 200 page Mercedes manual available in pdf somewhere that goes into great depth on the many functions of the Comand system, including the music register. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it on the MB website. It's called "Mercedes Benz COMAND Operator's Manual." This is separate from and in addition to the car's equally lengthy Owner's Manual.

Perhaps you will have better luck finding it than I did. Or you can ask your dealer about it.

If you continue to have problems, it may also pay to check with the dealer about any recent software updates.

Please report back if you are successful getting it working. My car is on the way!

First question I have is...are these commercial CDs you're loading or CD-Rs? If they're CD-Rs that could be the problem.All I know is that my system works perfectly with commercial CDs...I haven't yet tried using a CD-R.

G'day, Yup I agree it's not recognizing the disc, I've tried foraging through the appropriate manuals supplied but haven't unearthed the info I'm seeking YET lol, enjoy your car when it arrives, totally amazing car.

Hi, thanks for the reply and yes they're commercial CD's I've tried as well as CD-R. I contacted the dealer in Sydney and he suggested I use software called Handbrake to rip my music from Itunes and load it after burning the desired mp3 files to disc, but haven't been able to make that happen either. As in I can't even get a file from Itunes to go into Handbrake?

Frustrating and annoying, even though most likely the simple solution is to have a designated Ipod in the car with everything on it, I just don't like not being able to use ALL the options available, and saving some tunes to the HD "shouldn't" be difficult, or am I asking too much lol.

I am also having problems with loading cd's onto the register in my new E500.
My dealer in Sydney suggested I use usb's & forget about the register,but when you pay $200,000.00 for a car you would expect everything to work as it should.
It can be done by ripping the cd to your computer and then burning it onto a blank cd using NCH express burning software BUT instead of burning it as a "audio cd" burn it as a "data cd".When I did this the music register accepted it and allowed me to save it on the hard drive.
I would love to know if this would also work in your case.
My wife has just purchased a C250 and there are no problems at all with loading cds to the register.

Contrary to what it says in the manual you cannot load and store mp3 audio files onto the hard drive. The only thing you can store are .wav format disks. It will read and play wma, mp3 etc formats but it won't store them. The crazy thing is when it stores .wav formats it then compresses them.

All the above applies to a 2012 US spec E coupe. Possibly non US bound cars are different.

If I may offer a suggestion: get a large capacity USB flash drive (16GB is very inexpensive these days) or a USB hard drive and fill that up with MP3s (needs to be MP3s not WMA or AAC) and attach that to the USB connector in the glove compartment. Then use Bluetooth audio streaming for the iPhone/iPod/other device.

Thanks for that, but isn't that the same as plugging in a "tom tom" navigation device because the navigation unit doesn't work.It does not fix the prolem.

You're quite right Tony. I was just sharing how I setup audio. Probably because I have a 2010, which only has a 6GB hard drive, and the fact that I use very few CDs, I didn't find the feature useful.

Since the same CD works in your wife's car, I would ask the dealer to apply any available firmware updates to your COMAND system. Also, I think that if you go into Engineering Mode (End Call + # + 1) one of the screens has the exact manufacturer and manufacturer of the DVD drive. It would be interesting to see if the one in your car and the one in your wife's are the same. If there not, this might explain the discrepancy.

I will attempt to do that.
Even though my car & my wife's are both 2011 models, mine was purchased 6 weeks before hers and yet our dealer says the command system in mine is approx 18 months older than hers.It is still part of the cars features & I think it should work.
Prior to purchasing this car I compared it to the BMW550 which I found to be very comparable.It had a 10gb hard drive & if I remember rightly, a 10 inch screen.That particular dealer told me all I had to was to feed in the cds & load them onto the hard drive. As I live in the country,this was important to me because no more did I have to carry with me loads of cds on my long distance travels.I know it sounds trivial,but my Mercedes dealer assured me I could do the same with the E500,so with a few other points in its favour, I elected to swap both our cars from BMW to Mercedes.I am still waiting on my dealer to give me his solution.
Thanks for your comments & I'll let you know how I get on.

Hi Tony, you and I are very much on the same page on this one.

We live in Mount Gambier SA (rural area) and enjoy music. So it’s a must have, like you I believe if it’s a feature of the vehicle and it should ‘work’, I shouldn’t have to reformat my music collection into whatever format’s required to then burn my music onto blank CDs before the cars system will recognise and accept them.

As others have alluded on here there is the option of running your music from a large capacity USB stick, which is what we do. Am I satisfied with that, yes and no! It sorts the music problem out, but the point being, these are top end luxury vehicles that are supposed to make things easier Not Harder. Your analogy re plugging in a ‘tom tom’ because the sat nav won’t work is a Perfect example.

Tony, we too purchased from Mercedes Benz Sydney and did the trek up there to make it all happen. Try contacting Tony Grace up there, great bloke and he knows his stuff, he sent me the info on what format to convert to and make it all work, but to be honest I can’t be bothered to spend my w/e’s and hours of going through the motions to make something work on a $125,000.00 car that is lauded as a ‘feature’.

If you send me your email address, I’ll send you the info that Tony Grace from MBS sent through to me.

Cheers

Thanks for your reply.

Our email is sheelaghmarsh@bigpond.com
Look forward to your info.
regards

Have since tried to contact Tony at Mb Sydney but he has left the industry -whereabouts unknown.
Hope you still have info.
regards

Hope I'm not missing some of what you guys are saying here. I have no problem recording cds to my hard drive at all. (2012E Cab) It records in about 10 minutes for an entire album and includes cover art on the display as well. (no idea how it does that--even on 15 year old discs) When you load a cd it gives you the option to record it. And recordings are easy to call up on the register. Wonder why the dealer isn't able to walk you through it. Again, apologies if I am missing what you are describing, as this seems pretty simple...

They are talking about writing formats such as mp3 wma etc. to the hard drive. Your CD's are in something like wav format.
The manual states you can copy to the hard disk mp3. wma etc. It can't.

The original poster and another poster seem to be unable to copy some audio CDs. The question is not about copying compressed audio formats.

It unclear from the posts what the format is. Audio Cd's mean different things to different people.