I put all my music on a flash drive and had no problems copying then to the hard drive.

 

Thanks, can I do it directly without using a flash drive?

 

I think this was the model I used when I copied my music to my Macan's Jukebox...was easy and quick.
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How To Copy Music to the Hard Drive Jukebox | Porsche PCM

https://youtu.be/Xk8NnENYzOw​

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Not sure but might work (worth a try anyway) to plug your ipod/phone (with the music you want to load to the Jukebox) into the USB Port and follow the same procedure.

 

yes USB drive is the way to go. Never saw the video before but its spot on to what I do to load up the jukebox.

 

Many thanks guys!

 

I have a 2017 GTS. I have a jukebox question. I see it has a 10G limit and says it can upload 3000 songs. Really? I tried loading 800 or so iTunes songs and there was WAY too little room. I think it was something like 14G on the USB drive.

Space has never been an issue before. MY 2014 Carrera came with 40G jukebox!

Questions:
1. Do you guys all have just 10G too?
2. How come I can't get anywhere near the 3000 songs? I'd settle for half that. Are there other formats of music "smaller" than iTunes? Do you not use Jukebox?
3. What way do most of you play and control your music?

Note: I do have Apple Car Play, but have never used it before. For as many sources of media this car has I sure can't find a solution I like.

 

I haven't used the jukebox yet, but plan to play around this weekend with some 16bit quality files on an SD card. CarPlay works great with the Apple Music app, so if you have the music loaded on your phone, or streaming, you don't have to worry about the jukebox size limitation.

 

I have not tried the Jukebox but do use both SD cards slots for albums. Used them in my Touareg.


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Thanks, I'll give that a try. I never used them in the TDI, I always had an old massive iPod hooked up in the glove box.

 

I have a 2017 with the 10GB hard drive and I just loaded 543 songs from iTunes onto a flash drive then onto the Juke box. It was only 2.58GB so I sill have about 3/4 of the hard drive that is still empty. The amount you can fit all depends on the format of the songs. Mine were all AAC audio files from iTunes which is a highly compressed version when compared to WAV (mostly uncompressed), MP3 (slightly compressed, etc.

The best way to go is to go into iTunes and select the songs you want and copy them to a flash drive then use the flash drive to load the Juke Box. I've tried using CDs and my iPhone/iPod but by far the best way is the flash drive.

 

I am having problem importing songs to juke box. I used the Option button but do not see "import to juke box" as indicated in the owner's manual. .

You are not alone! When we got the car (MY17) I was very surprised that it did display Thai song titles, meaning the correct Thai font. Also importing songs to jukebox worked flawlessly. Then I didn't play any Thai music in the car for months, had lots of other songs in the jukebox. One day I realized that PCM wouldn't display the Thai fonts, all I saw where placeholder squares.

Hmmmm ok? So I started to do some testing using different ID3 tags, different sources and so on, result - somehow the jukebox software couldn't cope with it's library anymore, no matter what I tried, the import to jukebox function was not available anymore, also songs couldn't be deleted where it was previously possible to do so. While I have no evidence it felt like the jukebox indexer was somehow stuck on the test files I fed into its library, because there were over 50 Albums with Asian fonts stored.

Only after I executed a PCM factory reset things went back to working again. Quite a bummer though because you lose some car data collected over time (trip data and so on), also for some days the digital dash display went totally black depending on the screen to display after the reset. I have since switched to using SD Cards for music storage only, the whole bring music into the car experience has greatly profited from this step, handling is easier and faster.

 

I will try using the SD cards, I haven't looked to see what size I can use yet. I suppose I have to read the manual. :0 I think I will also give the jukebox another try, just to see how many songs I can, indeed, upload. (I have no idea what size files they are.) CarPlay seems pretty cool but I may not always have the phone plugged in. I guess you can't have too many options!

 

Any tips on how to load songs onto the SD card using folders and NOT using iTunes? Right now I use Windows Media Player to burn MP3's to the SD card, but I'm struggling to figure out how to use folders so that I can organize my music...

 

For those that are wondering about the SD cards, this is what I use, it works flawlessly, and is quick.
128GB Kingston SDA3
http://www.kingston.com/en/flash/sd_cards/sda3

I tried the built in jukebox, but it is very slow and 10GB just isn't enough.

For tag management (displaying in the car), mp3tag is free and works great. (Works with flac files as well)
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

One tip, if you have 2 albums named the same, even with them in separate folders, they will show under the same album in the car. Add something to it like "Disc 2" to the album title if you want to separate it in a folder of its own.

 

For those that are wondering about the SD cards, this is what I use, it works flawlessly, and is quick.
128GB Kingston SDA3
SDHC/SDXC UHS-I U3 SD Card - 32GB-256GB | Kingston

I tried the built in jukebox, but it is very slow and 10GB just isn't enough.

For tag management (displaying in the car), mp3tag is free and works great. (Works with flac files as well)
Mp3tag - the universal Tag Editor (ID3v2, MP4, OGG, FLAC, ...)

One tip, if you have 2 albums named the same, even with them in separate folders, they will show under the same album in the car. Add something to it like "Disc 2" to the album title if you want to separate it in a folder of its own.

Realize that there are hard limits on the number of tracks you can put on a card. The PCM will only recognize 10,000 tracks on a single piece of media. It's covered in another thread:

http://www.macanforum.com/forum/electronics/124241-pcm-sd-card-limits.html

So using 128gb cards may be overkill depending on the audio format being used.

 

I'm sure The Brit will chime as he does it all from iTunes to SD without a third-party app. I use Playlist Export for iTunes. It's $5 from the Mac App Store. Works quite well.


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I started this thread almost a year ago. After reading so much input, I just want to thank all of you for the info. I have learned quite a bit!

 

A new round of buyers (me this time) begin to feel your pain!

 

As predicted here is my chime.
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MACAN AUDIO

Options
Standard, Bose or Burmeister
Listen to them all if considering upgrading for the base system fitted to your Macan variant. Take anSD card or USB stick with a few of your favourite music tracks and to get the best out of your listening encode the MP3 files from a CD at a high data rate such as 320 kBps. You may want to obtain a FLAC music file and recreate the test as I explain later.

Preparing your music for in car listening
This depends upon your listening preferences:-
Music can be placed on a USB memory stick or SD cards (2slots currently available)
Music can be transferred into the inbuilt 10Gb Jukebox
Music can be streamed from mobile telephone
iPod or similar will connect up directly to the PCM

If your music is already digital then it is simply a case of copying the music albums/tracks onto the memory device and inserting the device into the car.

If your music is on CD then you can rip the discs to folders on your PC or Mac.
iTunes is a free download and you can use this to rip your CDs to a specific folder, do change the standard encoding format and data rate to MP3 and 320kBps for the highest quality. Once you have ripped the CDs copy the whole Music folder which contains all the ripped albums to the memory device and you are good to go.

If your digital music is oldish rips them you may wish to download MP3TAG and use this freeware to check the data that there is on each album and that it is consistent between the tracks, t may well be that it needs editing and this software will do that. Generally if album art is not being displayed in car then the PCM will use the Data SIM to go online to Gracenote and it will download the artwork. The software will also enable you to download album art (800x800 max) that Gracenote does not find and place the jpg file in the album folder and link each track to the jpg file. Once you have checked the albums copy all the music onto the memory device.

If you use Playlists or would like to within iTunes you can create your own Playlists. Once you have created one you can export it as an M3U file into the root of your Music folder as a belt and braces situation as the iTunes Playlist will be in the iTunes sub-folder within your Music folder and also within this sub-folder iTunes will have placed copies of the album artwork that it has found. iTunes also has a Genius mode, enable it in Preferences, select a specific favourite track and select Create Genius Playlist, it uses your selected track to add other similar style tracks, or at least that is the theory.

Do note that other CD ripping software is available and many do a better job than iTunes, I only suggest this as its free easy and certainly compatible with the PCM.

CD audio is sampled at 44.1kHz/s 16 bit stereo therefore if considering re-encoding it to a Lossless file if you try to increase the sampling rate it will not produce the quality of file you expect, you would be better advised downloading a new FLAC file at the sampling rate that you desire.

Playing your Music in Car
Insert the memory device in the appropriate slot, select media source and you are good to go. Once you have your music playing spend some time adjusting the balance, fade, base, trebble etc to get the quality of audio that suits your taste. With a Bose system do also check the Surround mode or uncheck it to see which is best for you.

You also have the option of transferring the music to the Jukebox, but remember it is only 10Gb and can take quite a few attempts to get the music all transferred. I would only initiate the transfer once all the album art has been correctly assigned and that the PCM is accurately displaying the albums/artists, do not that compilation albums may cause issues if you have not checked and corrected the data with MP3TAG.

Porsche Communication Management (PCM)
Technical data: Audio and video files from MY17 manual

Supported media

SD cards up to 128 GB

DVD drive Audio CDs up to 80 min., CD ROMs up to 700 MB, DVD±R/RW, Standard Video DVD, Video DVD compatible DVD Audio

Portable players MTP Player, USB 2.0 devices of “USB Device Subclass 1 and 6” such as, for example, USB sticks, USB MP3 players without special driver software, external USB Flash memory and hard drives

DVD changers Audio CDs up to 80 min., standard video DVDs, video DVD-compatible DVD Audio

File system

SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC memory cards

USB mass storage exFAT, FAT or FAT32, NTFS file systems with a maximum of 4 partitions

DVD drive ISO9660, Joliet, UDF

Format

MPEG 1/2 Layer 3; Windows Media Audio 9 and 10; MPEG 2/4; FLAC, MPEG 1/2; ISO-MPEG4; DivX 3, 4 and 5; Xvid; ISO-MPEG4 H.264 (MPEG4 AVC); Windows Media Video 9

File extension

.mp3 (does not apply to DVD changer); .wma; .asf; .m4a; .m4b; .aac; .flac; .mpg; .mpeg; .avi; .mp4; .m4v; .mov; .wmv

Playlists

.M3U; .PLS; .WPL; .M3U8; .ASX

Characteristics

max. 320 kbit/s and 48 kHz sampling frequency; max. 2,000 kbit/s and 720x576 px. at max. 25 fps

Number of files

DVD drive max. 1,000 files DVD

Jukebox (max. 10 GB storage space) max. 3,000 files can be copied

USB mass storage and memory cards max. 10,000 files per medium

Metadata

Album covers up to 800 x 800 pixels; GIF, JPG and PNG formats or via Gracenote database

Video DVD region codes

Code 1: USA, Canada and US Colonies

Code 2: Europe, Greenland, South Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, Japan

Code 3: Southeast Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong

Audio Comparison Test
I took one of my FLAC audio files and put it into one of my Audio editing programmes (Adobe Audition for those interested) and converted it into mp3 files with various encoding bitrates, and as a matter of interest I encoded the FLAC as AIFF and WAV to see what file size they produced

Source as a FLAC of file size 85,444kB

MP3 encoding data rate ----- File size in kB
96 ---- 2,264
160 --- 5,435
320 ---- 10,863

As a matter of interest I encoded the source into a WAV file and it was 208,394

Also being fully lossless the AIFF encoding gave a file size 208,394

With another forum member we sat in my Bose equipped Macan and listened to the FLAC and mp3 files.

FLAC was a clear winner with rich tones and a clarity of the brass instruments that the mp3's failed to come near.

MP3 at 320 gave a perfectly listenable file for most music but even at the high data rate there was a lack of clarity in the tonal quality and a slight edge to the brass.

As the MP3 data rate was lowered the audio quality got worst as expected, with the 96 file listenable but not something you would want to do regularly on a £800 Macan extra, you would certainly want the higher quality media files.

Whist it was certainly not to lab standard of testing it was an interesting exercise to actually be able to hear the difference and for me and my old ears I was pleasantly surprised that I could discern as much difference as I did.

 

To the Admin.

I suggest to "sticky" this very helpful & comprehensive info!

 

I must be technically challenged because I still can't figure out how to get music in the Jukebox...

All the YouTube videos show the same thing...connect your flash drive to the USB port, press USB on the head unit and voila!... Problem is, the only USB port I see is in the central storage holder. I've connected my android phone (with 5.6 GB of music files) to it but nothing happens. Also, my head unit does not display a USB button option to press....

 

Make sure the phone is in file transfer mode, and that you're using an actual data USB cable, not just one for charging. Take that same cable and plug your phone into your PC. See if you can browse the phone from the PC. If not then it's the cable.

I've never used the phone as an import source for the PCM. I've always used either the in-dash SD card slots or an actual thumb or hard drive in the center console USB socket.

 

Aha! Didn't realize there was a difference between charging cable and data cable..will check, thanks!

Once the PCM recognizes the cable I should see the USB option?

 

Music played via an SD card or on the Jukebox is much better than the radio, if downloaded at high quality. My friend showed me this over the weekend, and my driving experience has changed. I love the Bose system.

 

I have read this thread and several others, several times, and frankly can’t fathom all the file types, decoding, SIM card vs. Jukebox vs. flash drive etc. thanks to all of you for posting such detail and information - I just can’t follow most of it (especially The Brit, though I love his detailed posts). I have a more simple question: I have an iPhone with iTunes and Music Match, which is supposed to download the higher quality files to the phone (e.g. better than MP 3). I have a 2018 Macan with the Bose system. I’ve noticed when streaming music via Bluetooth it sounds much better Crisper, more separation) than the radio, Sirius, etc. Will the sound quality be even better if I plug in using the USB cable? Will the sound quality be better if I try to decipher all this encoding info to create higher quality files and save them onto flash drive or SIM card? Or is the file type of the iPhone using iTunes as good as it gets?

 

If you have Apple CarPlay on the Macan, I would recommend attaching your iPhone via USB, activating CarPlay thru your Macan's PCM, and you then should have access to your iPhone music files thru the PCM. Quality should be higher than bluetooth, but try it and see. Apple's music files are typically ACC (Apple compressed) at 256 kbps which I would rate medium quality, but probably fine for the in-vehicle listening environment.

 

Thanks for the reply. I do have Apple car play so I’ll give that a try.

 

If you like what you get thru CarPlay, then you could download your entire iTunes music library to a correctly sized SD card, and use that versus your iPhone which would give you the same audio quality. That' s what I use.

 

Thanks - I’ll give all of this a try this week. Are you playing your iTunes music directly from the SIM card, or copying the files over from the SIM to the Jukebox?

 

Directly from the card. And it's an SD card, as used in cameras for image recording, not the SIM card which is for cellular service.