[Matt Kaluzny]

I have a question for those with multimedia. I'm doing a euro delivery and looking for options for listening to music while in Germany. Sirius will not be activated and the iPod cables will not be installed until the car is back in the us.

Has anyone used the sd card ? I've found some conflicting info on sd cards. One person said 2gb is the max others have said 16gb cards work. If anyone knows or has tried this please help. Also any suggestions on how you transferred music onto the card.

In a cla forum one person said an external hard drive works being plugged into a USB port in the glove box. does the gla have this ability?

The other final option would be thru Bluetooth but if I could find an alternative that would be great.

 

[Boxster986S]

I regularly use a USB drive with music stored on it plugged into my USB port. Works great.

 

[zodiac665]

Thanks. Any issue with size of flash drive? Any file format requirements? Or would transferring from Itunes work.

 

[UKGLA AMG]

I used Scan Disk Ultra 8 GB for Personal Points of Interest i.e. Speed Camera Data base for the UK loads fine and works on 1 mile setting and below that is you can see the speed camera location on navigation map, also have Chime set to alert when approaching camera.... also save destinations to the sd card so I can use in e and s class saving time entering destinations... UK post codes not very accurate... Fat 32 works for me

 

[UKGLA AMG]

Also have Media Cable for my iphone 5 purchased from $tealer which works great with iTunes and charges phone, located in centre console... the connection is not USB... Mercedes specific if you are looking for it and works with SMS you can view text message on screen when alerted you have messages... using ios 7 hope this helps

I do not have usb in glovebox only in the centre console box with the Mercedes media connection, do not know if all cars have them present.

 

[zodiac665]

Does the media cable not come with the premium/multimedia package?

 

[UKGLA AMG]

Yes it did have a cable with 30 pin connection I bought the cable for iphone 5 did not want to use adaptors...

 

[Boxster986S]

No problems at all with flash drive. I transferred all the music files from iTunes. Just used the "show files in Windows" feature, dragged and dropped to flash drive. Disconnected drive from computer and inserted in GLA USB port.

I've also used an iPod with the media cable. Flash drive works just as well as iPod for me.

 

[zodiac665]

Thanks guys. I think the flash drive is the best option for driving around Europe until I get back and get the media cable. Cheap and doesn't take up much room. Boxster any size restrictions for the flash drive. I have about 50 gb of music, but I can trim down if needed. Thanks

 

[HumblePie]

I've got a 32gb SD card in the car at the moment. I have pretty much all my music installed on there. I keep it in there as another option for accessing my music. Since it is a flush fit in the dash it is not noticeable and has more than enough space for any of my personal music I want to listen to.

QUICK TIP: don't buy a slow SD Card (e.g. Class 2, etc.) the slower the card the slower the search/seek times. I bought a Class 10 card and it is much faster than the old Class 2/4 card I had when I wrote the post for the playlists (below)

In case you want to add playlists as well I've added a post on how you can do that with the SD Card.

How to use album art/playlists with an SD card (and likely USB sticks) [long]

Thanks.

 

[HumblePie]

I should also call out that having an SD card allows you to store personal information on the card as well like routes and POIs.

I did a quick check and for the COMMAND unit and it supports the following:

COMAND supports SD memory cards (Secure Digital), SDHC memory cards (Secure Digital High Capacity) and SDXC memory cards (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity

Assuming that they support the standard that would mean that they could support up to 2Tb (unlikely ). The largest card that I am aware of is 512Gb (@ ~$599). If you ever need that much data, you are better off trying to see if a USB external HD would work.

 

[zodiac665]

Humblepie thanks for the help and link to your write up