Well, so much for putting 35k tracks totalling 115gb onto a single 128gb SD card then. Won't work.

While the PCM supports SD cards up to 128gb in size, it's limited to no more than 10,000 tracks per card.

This perhaps explains why random folders were showing no contents while browsing through them using PCM. The files are there but PCM must be cutting them off past 10,000 tracks.

I'd kinda hoped to just copy nearly all my music tracks to it and be done. Now I'll have to pick/chose to keep it under 10k per SD card, effectively leaving more than half of my library behind.

Meanwhile, anyone know what format & filename it uses for the cover art?

I didn't poke at it for too long but it seemed like it was using genre metadata to show a 'stock' image for folders. Ignoring any folder.jpg file already present.

 

From Porsche:

The maximum number of tracks per USB device is 10,000.
A USB device may hold a maximum of 2,000 folders in total.
Each folder in turn may contain a maximum of 1,000 tracks.
The maximum directory depth is 11 levels.
Up to 8 partitions are supported.

Cumbersome option is transforming two files into one (two songs or more together), increasing the capacity. There might be softwares out there to do it. I personally wouldn't go this path, too messy.

 

Where'd you find that text?

Pg 398 of the (hard copy) Owner's manual says max 10,000 files per media, 1000 files per playlist/folder. No indication regarding the of total number of folders. Nor any mention of partitions.

As an aside, I'd love to find the Owner's Manual as a PDF (not that crippled 'good to know' app).

I wonder how this rev of the PCM treats partitions on the same card? Thus far I've only had tracks on one card, with just one partition/volume on it. I suppose I could try spreading some files across cards and see if searching spans devices. With the next step being the use of partitions. I'd be fine browsing across volumes if searching wasn't limited to that.

My media library isn't growing all that much, such that it wouldn't be terribly difficult to break it apart into some kind of chunks. Most likely alphabetical by artist. Software like J.River's Media Center helps wrangle tasks like this. It's sort of the 'swiss army knife' of media management tools. Not terribly user-friendly but really handy when you KNOW what you need done across multiple tracks and volumes. I've used it for years to copy playlists to a kiddie MP3 player, and it automagically strips the tracks to combined mono to accommodate the lame-*** single speaker in the unit. I'm guessing I could figure out something similar for prepping cards/partitions to work around PCM requirements.

 

I don't "have to" load up everything. I haven't had it at all in any of my other vehicles, as those had no options for it at all. Well, the 5-disc player in the Grand Cherokee could handle DVDs with mp3 files, but the user interface to get to them was so wretchedly awful as make it not worth the hassle. The only thing I ended up keeping in there was a DVD full of Holiday music. Speaking of which, I have to eject that before fobbing it off to Carmax...

So, yeah, I could jump through hoops and do stuff like create album-wraps with tracks combined together. Or pick-and-choose just limited selections. Or keep a fist full of SD cards in the glovebox to swap around.... Or just fall back to listening to Sirius. There's only 'so much' distraction I'm prepared to tolerate just to have music in the car.

Now, if they had Pandora available built-into PCM... then I'd be a little more interested. Or Amazon's Music service. But the 'flaming hoops' to get the a phone app-via-bluetooth-to-PCM is a bit more tedious than I'm after most of the time.

 

Porscheownermanuals.com
The data is from the MY17, not sure if it's the case here

 

Quick follow up, PCM saw two NTFS partitions on a USB thumb drive. Windows only sees the first one, of course. My previous attempts with an SD card used two FAT and FAT32 partitions.

I tried an SD card with two NTFS partitions and it only saw the first one. That was when plugged into one of the SD card slots right in the dash. When I plugged the SD card into a USB card reader, and plugged that into the USB socket in the console it saw BOTH of the NTFS partitions. Which is kinda pointless as I don't want to have a card reader sticking out of the USB socket. I suppose one with a very flush profile could work but that'd interfere with using a phone via USB (aka the garbage that is 'CarPlay').

If I had a feature request it'd be support for more than one partition in the SD card slots.

 

Hi all,
newbie here and sorry to ask basic question as I just got Cayenne.
Is this for the small slot in the middle of the PCM, and is this a microSD that can hold music?
Tks in advance.
Patrick

 

What year Cayenne? I believe if you open your PCM owners manual you'll find that slot is for a SIM card - quite commonly used in Europe, not so common here, and can't be used if the P!G doesn't have the phone module/antenna system installed.

 

Interesting thread - on my '11 CTT - I have a USB thumb drive with 4,600 tracks on it, in about 500 "folders" (directories) - and the PCM can only see 3,800 of them. I'll have to look at my manual and see if they give the layout/capacity spec's. I thought it might be that I've reached the max number of folders allowed - it could be, or it could be just some arbitrary number of tracks it can index.

 

My Cayenne a 2013 GTS PCM...will check manual also.
I was hoping in dash could be SD card similar to my prior Mercedes. Otherwise, I can use the glove compartment USB. However, then I need to switch iPhone cable to cig adaptor/bluetooth, which wouldn't be as efficient. Tks in advance for input.
Patrick

 

I use my USB thumbdrive quite a bit instead of Sirius. Maybe about 300 songs total, still picking among the "A-sides" of my favorite albums (use Murfie to digitize all my CDs).

I've only divided my music up into two folders on the USB drive and leave it in shuffle mode. It's been my experience that, on shuffle, the PCM will only select songs from the folder selected. With 500 folders, you have an average of about nine songs per folder. I don't imagine you do "shuffle mode"? Or is there a way you can cause PCM to shuffle songs from different folders randomly.

This is, I suppose, the big draw for Pandora and Amazon Music: to enjoy a variety of favorite songs or genres without having to be the DJ. What strategies do you guys use to organize music for PCM on those USB drives?

Thanks!

'12 CTT btw

 

There are such things as 12v to USB adapters that can tie into a fuse panel connection. I use this one:


Along with these charge-only right-angle USB cables (they can be plugged in either way).


I've got two of the adapters, one on the left powers a wireless charging mount for my phone, the one on the right powers a dashcam and an optional passenger USB connection. I've been working with Rennline to make a PCM mount for '17 (their previous year ones are quite nice but don't fit the PCM bezel for '17)

So you don't have to use just the factory 12v accessory or USB socket to power your devices.

 

It shuffles the songs from the different folders just fine. It first makes up a track-list, then it selects (randomly) from that list. The list contains all the tracks. I'm going through the songs now in alphabetical order.. in about 2 weeks, including a 1,500 mile trip, it's gotten midway through the "G" songs. Maybe next try will be by composer..

 

You set the track list up from your computer when building the folder database on the thumbdrive or through PCM? Have a good trip. Pack your extra ignition coils?

Steven Wright:
"Last year we drove across the country... We switched on the driving... every half mile... We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip........... I don't remember what it was..."

 

Actually - the trip was last month.. The track list is built by the PCM. It somewhat randomly seems to rebuild the list - and that takes about 90 seconds. Even after rebuilding it, it continues playing where it left off, so there must be some VRAM in the PCM that stores it (or they're saving it to the internal hard drive that the Navigation lives on..)

What I do wish was possible - would be to update the firmware on the PCM to the version that included the Jukebox function. When I had the loaner diesel for a month - I found it handy to just copy my thumbdrive to the jukebox and play from it. It seemed faster for searches and it never seemed to have to rebuild it's index. I imagine the difference in PCM's is the size of the hard drive - with the Jukebox one having some free gigs to store things in.

If I could obtain a "spare" PCM - I'd love to explore the hard drive by hooking it to a computer and see what lives there. Since the thumbdrive function supports standard PC formatting - I'd bet the harddrive is the same, meaning it might be accessible. And perhaps it could be cloned to a larger hard drive - giving some extra space to store audio files on.

I think I'll do a google on hacking the Porsche PCM - if anyone has done it - the Russian's probably have.. mebbe there is something out there..