Didn't think it would ever happen

[SlartiF430]

I bought a 2011 A8 3.0 Diesel a couple of days ago. Today, it was sunny and I had the choice of jumping in my Ferrari or hopping into the A8. It says a lot for just how brilliant the A8 is as that was the car that I chose. Such a great place to be, awesome technology and lovely to cruise about it. Truly love it.

question: it came with an AMI interface cable thingy in the armrest that gives me a USB socket (on the end of the ami cable). I assumed I could plug my iPhone 5 cable into the ami cable and control my iPhone from the dashboard. No such luck sadly (mmi screen says "not compatible" in the list of media sources). Do I need to fork out for a dedicated ami cable iphone5 cable? Can I use an iphone4 cable with an official iphone5 adapter? Any help appreciated.

[daydotz]

Sadly you need a iphone ami cable lighting or 30pin(which you can use a apple lightning to 30 pin adaptor in if you go this route avoid the non genuine ones) a genuine audi ami lighting adaptor cable is nearly £50 you can pick them up on ebay

[SlartiF430]

Guessed as much. Thanks for the info.

[Dr G]

Personally I just leave a big flash drive on the USB thingamy. Plugging phone in every time is a faff after a while.

They're wonderful cars; you'll struggle to buy anything else when the time comes to change.

[SlartiF430]

Can you put an iphone library onto the usb stick (so you get artist, album and other info?). My slight dislike of using usb drives is that you see the file name on the screen as opposed too the richer metadata.

[Dr G]

You can make playlists but it's a little bit of a faff.

Got an old iPod in a drawer somewhere that could live in the car?

[SlartiF430]

Dr G said:

You can make playlists but it's a little bit of a faff.

Got an old iPod in a drawer somewhere that could live in the car?

Yes I do. Tried that but it doesn't work either with the usb socket ami cable (assuming you need the 4th gen connector ami cable).

[roddyp]

SlartiF430 said:

Can you put an iphone library onto the usb stick (so you get artist, album and other info?).

Yes. But you have to make sure the songs are organised sensibly: A folder structure like Artist/Album/Track works well for me. There's lots of software around that can automatically organise your library based on the metadata.

Typically each file should be titled according to the track, too.

As a 16Gb drive costs well under a tenner it seems an ideal way to manage it.

[SlartiF430]

Good tip - thanks. Leaning towards spending the 50 spondooliks on an ami cable. At least my music will always be in sync and it's a lot less than I paid for the car (which is what audi marketing relies on). The other option having said that is to copy the music onto the hdd and deal with manually syncing content.

Is the hdd good for anything other than storing music btw?

[Adrian E]

I'm running my 5S via an old genuine 30 pin Audi connector with the proper Apple 30 pin to lightning fly lead (NOT the small adaptor - the one with a length of cable is needed if you use any kind of bumper on the phone) for MMI 3G in our S5. It doesn't give artwork, but neither did the genuine Lightning cable when I tried one at my local dealer! The Audi lightning cable doesn't fit the phone if you use the Apple bumper - some others might....

We have an old 8GB ipod which we've filled with stuff and leave in the AMI all the time now - I plug my phone into a charger in the armrest if I need to as that's ignition fed so doesn't need to be removed when the car is parked.

The HDD is quite handy for music if you're importing from MP3 format but it won't do m4a. I have all my music in both formats as my RNS-E won't do m4a either.

Assuming you've got SD card slots I picked up a 32GB high speed card for £16 to do firmware updates which I'll use for music as well. Slower cards can be had for half that price

[SlartiF430]

Thanks Adrian.

Just thought I'd offer this update. I was driving past Bolton Audi so stopped in for the lightning AMI cable. They took a while finding it and then handed to me. I was super chuffed until they asked me for 60 quid the cheeky little monkeys!! Anyway, we live in the tinternet age and so i pulled out my iphone, opened up ebay, showed him the same thing advertused by Huntingdon Audi for 45 quid all in and asked for a discount. They refused, so I hit the 'buy it now' button and the following morning our local postman handed over the cable. Works a treat. I take on board the comments though...for instance, a bit of a faff having to put it in the armrest and take it out. You generally don't need to take it out unless like me you get randoms SMSs, whatsapp messages and the like (I know, shouldn't be checking that stuff in a car but there are times when you're in stationary traffic or parked up).

Thanks everyone!