Audi A4: Concert Stereo; Playing SD cards?

**skidders** · 02-07-2008,11:42 AM

Hi,
Yesterday (1st July 2008) I took delivery of my shiny new A4. It's a 2 litre diesel and first impressions were somewhat marred by the fact that so far the Concert stereo won't play SD cards.

I've tried three different cards, all 4GB in size. I've tried formatting the cards, I've tried loading them with mp3 and again with WMA. I've tried a full card and an almost empty card. I can play the cards back on the computer easily. I've tried licensed WMA and unlicensed mp3.

Every time I put a card into the Concert stereo it thinks for about 30 seconds and then displays 'unreadable'.

According to the manual, the Concert installed in the car is capable of reading cards up to 4GB in size. That's a bit strange because if it can read 4GB then it is reading FAT32 filesystems and one would expect it to read cards of up to 32GB.

Anyway, the problem is that my Concert stereo can't or won't read SD Cards. Does anyone out there have similar experience, or even a fix? Or perhaps is able to point out something I've missed?

Thanks - Skidders

**dansansome** · 02-07-2008,12:14 PM

have you tried a non HDSD card such as a 1GB or less card?

in any case i would take a trip back to the dealers. the manual says it should work with a 4gb card, and you have tried 3 different cards.

welcome to the forum btw

**Sapper_728** · 04-07-2008,12:25 PM

Skidders - joined this forum as a result of doing a search and seeing your post on exactly the same problem I am encountering. Took delivery of new A4 at beginning of week with 'Concert' system installed supposedly able to read 4GB SD cards (bought one specifically) with MP3 or WMA files.
Have tried both formats and get the "Unreadable" notfication on the media display. I know the card works since I can access the files on PC and PS3.
I didn't know the car would come with the facility but the fact that it is there but does not seem to work is frustrating.
I'd be keen to find out if anyone has a fix for this.

**dansansome** · 04-07-2008,12:42 PM

to me it sounds like the reader hardware is not currently HDSD compatible. i'll bet it will work with anything 1GB and under (non high density)

take it back to the dealers and tell them. let them fix it.

**skidders** · 05-07-2008,12:01 AM

Hi,
I have found something that does work in my Concert-equipped brand spanking new A4, details as follows. The problem was the inability to play 4GB SDHC cards in the Concert stereo. SDHC = Secure Digital High Capacity, this is the label applied to any SD card that can hold more than 2GB.

1. I have tried 3 different 4GB cards, all of them failed to work.
I also put the same three cards into different A4s of current and previous models at the dealer. None of the dealer's cards read any of the 4GB SDHC cards successfully.

It may turn out to be relevant (one day) that all three of my cards were high speed cards with data transfer rates of 15-20MB per second. For now whether it's important is just unknown.

2. Having had all of these failures, I nipped out and bought a slower SD card with 2GB capacity. This card was read successfully first time by the Concert stereo - the music started playing less than a second after switching to play the media.

What's interesting is that the filesystem on the 2GB card that works is a FAT32 filesystem. This is the same filesystem that I was using on the 4GB card,. This is remarkable - the maximum size of the FAT32 filesystem is 32GB.

Speculating a little bit now, it's possible that the Concert stereo has a firmware feature that checks the size of the card and rejects anything greater than 2GB. 2GB is the maximum size of the old-style FAT filesystems.
If this speculation is accurate then I expect the dealer to upgrade the firmware as soon as possible. However, if it's a hardware limitation then I'll be downright frustrated as it can't be easily changed. Does anyone out there know if the Concert firmware can be upgraded?

By way of comparison, anyone out there with a Nikon SLR camera can testify that Nikon certify that their cameras will work with 4GB SDHC cards, but they don't say anything about other cards. However I use one with 8GB cards pretty regularly. Audi need to get their act together regarding compatibility with filesystems and memory cards, that's for sure.

Hope this helps anyone else in the same position.

**dansansome** · 07-07-2008,12:51 PM

i dont know why i bothered posting....

**norman cleary** · 30-07-2008,04:03 PM

Hi,

I've just joined this forum and I have been having the same problem with a 2GB SD card in my recently purchased 3 year old A4 3.2 quattro. The cards play fine on my PC but when inserted into the car I get the message "data corrupted" not very helpful. Sounds from what all of you have said its back to the dealer.....unless anyone know anything different?

NC

**PHSSLL** · 31-07-2008,10:54 PM

Are you guys using sdhc cards or just sd cards ?

as sdhc cards are only compatable with sdhc hardware i may be wrong but i thought you could only use standard sd cards as this is what i use in my sat nav card readers but also i only use 2 x gig cards with no probs in the last 2 years of using them i also use the fat32 file system