Just a small issue but it would be nice if the CD player worked. Just bought a 2008 S550 that's perfect in every way but the CD player says Read Error, meaning it can't read CDs. There is also a slot for a Compact Flash card, but the thing inside that the card would plug into is gone! Almost lost a card in there, it's just an open slot. How hard is it to get the CD player to work in these cars? If it's too involved, I'll forget about it. The radio works perfectly.

 

CD player will not play a cd has more than 70 mins music burnt.
Choose the right cd and right format first.
Mine can not play dvd because i dont know the format to burn on the dvd.

​​​​​​Search pcmcia on eBay or amazon for sd. Or just try the android touchscreen.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/PCMCIA-to-S...0-2221eea86a32

 

All DVD media is written to in the UDF filesystem specification. There are more than one revision of it, but if the software you are using the author your DVD media is average at best, it should automatically configure all of the settings required for the project your are creating. You can play DVD-Video discs, DVD-data discs in which you would write an MP3 hierarchy of files to, typically creating a folder structure like the following:
\
Coldplay
\ Ghost Stories
\ T01 Magic
\ T02 Sky Full Of Stars
\ T03 Ink
\ Viva La Vida
\ T01 Life In Technicolor
\ T02 Cemeteries Of London
Eagles
\ Their Greatest Hits Vol. 1
\ T01 Hotel California
.
.
.
.
Led Zeppelin
\ Led Zeppelin IV
\ T01 Black Dog

This should give you an idea how to structure your folders of MP3 content on your SSD/HDD and a convenient naming structure. The COMAND will play MP3 files up to 320kbps CBR or VBR.

One of the best and likely least used features of the NTG 3 and 3.5 as well as later COMAND units is their ability to process high resolution lossless multi-channel audio, which is the DVD-Audio format that you likely see beneath the Audio menu that you have likely seen before but rarely if ever selected it. The DVD-Audio (or DVD-A as it is commonly called) was intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc, which was two channel stereo with a digital sampling rate of 44,100 samples per second, and a 16-bit dynamic range. In contrast, the DVD-A format would allow up to 192,000 sample rate, and 96-bit. There are also multiple versions of the recording - many DVD-Audio disc have standard PCM Stereo for systems that do not have surround speakers but maintain the high resolution detail in the recording, and some have DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. HDTracks.com offers a good catalog of high resolution albums for purchase, as a standard Compact Disc does not have the capacity to store the digital data needed to store the increased detail of the high resolution recordings. For example, this album: https://www.hdtracks.com/led-zeppelin-x-led-zeppelin is 96k sampling rate and 24-bit, and will give you a noticeably increase in sound quality compared to a Compact Disc or especially MP3s, however a standard CD Player will not read a DVD format due to its increased density, so you can only enjoy these near studio master versions of albums on high-end home audio equipment, a PC or Macintosh with compatible software connected to your home audio system, or on a DVD-Audio optical disc that the 07+ S-Class is compatible with. The format is for all intents and purposes, dead, as with all optical media as companies want more and more to only rent their intellectual property to you with a subscription and and restrict you from by once and use many methods of owning music.

DVD-Audio was launched at about the same time Napster was released on the Internet for free, so young music fans of course were drawn directly to Napster, downloading 96k MP3s and writing them to CD-Rs and most could have cared less about the sound quality, and this stole the limelight from DVD-A so after some of the more popular recordings were released in the DVD-A format, it died a slow death, although I do believe there are a very limited amount of artists that still choose to release their material on that format, but now they have to choose between Blu-ray audio discs which has replaced DVD-A. Sony of course had to contribute to that potential market with the Super Audio CD, and to most people the quality was very similar, so if your favorite artist released their album on SACD or DVD-A was primarily dependent on the record company they had signed with.

In any event, I encourage people to search on eBay for their favorite artists and see if any of their all time favorites were released on DVD-A. In many cases, you will find they were, and they cost no more than a standard CD would today. It brings out the best in the Logic 7 system in the S-Class (however - always turn OFF Logic 7 when listening to DVD-A or anything in DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1 whether it be a movie or an audio-only disc - otherwise the Logic 7 alters the mastering of the recording and reduces the sound quality and imaging the material is supposed to have).

 

(Deleted due to poor formatting.)

 

When I first bought the car just in time for New Years, I just put in a few store bought music CDs, I think Rod Stewart, Rush, Elton John, Aerosmith, just to hear them play... it won't read those. So I haven't tried a DVD. I did try inserting the CDs right side up and up side down, ..no read. I think the laser quit? Or there's a little rubber belt that the motor turns to spin the discs that may be broken. The radio sounds awesome however, it's the Harmon Kardon 14 speaker 600 Watt job. It would be nice to have it play music CDs. There is an Apple Ipod cord in the glove box; Can this be adapted to work with an Android phone? That would be awesome because I have about 70 Giga Bytes of music in my phone!! Thanks Everyone!

 

2010 S550 — Sudden, unexpected loss of electronics. Dealer diagnosed: Battery completely dead (unable to charge) -replaced. Alternator malfunction (short) -replaced. Now, everything works (am/fm-satellite radio, media) except cd-player which no longer operates & only shows ‘no readable disc’ — All existing discs ejected & reinserted (same message); other discs (same message).

 

the drives in most in car entrainment systems are just $15 rubbish. Around the time these car's were designed not all disc types had been created (the disc reflective recordable material has been through many iterations) But OLD drive firmware (and or old drive lasers) don't necessarily understand later materials used. Every CD / DVD reads from the inside out (opposite to a record player), where the inner most section has data on the disc telling the player how to interpret the disc inserted. A good drive where someone cared might have got new firmware that became available, where it told the player what the new material was and how it behaves, allowing the laser to read later discs. But that's rare.

When you keep throwing in discs it doesn't really understand it makes the player wear itself out till it gives up. When this has happened the only fix is to repair the laser or replace the drive (but this is expensive and now unusual) - not impossible not even unique to this car but a rare fix

 

You need a PCMIA adapter to use the card slot. But one one Ebay for $10, and plug your CF card in to the adapter. Be sure to convert your music files to mp.3 before putting on the CF card...works fine from there.