Not sure if that would work but you can also plug a usb drive with audio files into one of the ports in the console and the car will detect and play them.

 

Yes. I have always had a usb drive with music, even in my older BMWs. Just so sad they skipped the aux in. Would have given so many possibilities now that a CD player in a car isn't available any more.

 

iDrive is pretty locked down security-wise. No Wifi. No local resource access. No non-phone Bluetooth devices supported. I tried everything to no avail.

 

I tried a pretty advanced AD cable but as you said it didn't accept it since it wasn't a mobile phone at the end.

 

As @HofmeisterKink points out, USB is the best solution. If you rip your CDs to a lossless format like .wav, then you will obtain full CD quality playing the USB directly through the iDrive. You will even get some metadata (CD artwork, track lists etc) on the screen. These days you can also buy music online in lossless formats and write the files direct to USB. I ripped around 150 CDs to a single 128MB USB stick. Who wants to stuff around with bulky (and damageable) CDs ?

Bluetooth is probably the worst solution as its quality is poor. Some most recent BMWs don't appear to support USB audio though, but there should be a solution to pipe lossless audio through Android Auto or Apple Carplay from your phone. I believe that the audio then comes through the wi-fi connection to the car, and has superior quality to bluetooth. Not sure if it is full bandwidth. Just get rid of all the compressed stuff e.g. MP3 on your phone

The listening experience is subjective and can depend on your hearing which degrades as we age. If you personally don't notice any significant perceptual differences using lossless audio from a USB compared to compressed audio, then it's probably not worth worrying.

 

As @HofmeisterKink points out, USB is the best solution. If you rip your CDs to a lossless format like .wav, then you will obtain full CD quality playing the USB directly through the iDrive. You will even get some metadata (CD artwork, track lists etc) on the screen. These days you can also buy music online in lossless formats and write the files direct to USB. I ripped around 150 CDs to a single 128MB USB stick. Who wants to stuff around with bulky (and damageable) CDs ?

Bluetooth is probably the worst solution as its quality is poor. Some most recent BMWs don't appear to support USB audio though, but there should be a solution to pipe lossless audio through Android Auto or Apple Carplay from your phone. I believe that the audio then comes through the wi-fi connection to the car, and has superior quality to bluetooth. Not sure if it is full bandwidth. Just get rid of all the compressed stuff e.g. MP3 on your phone

The listening experience is subjective and can depend on your hearing which degrades as we age. If you personally don't notice any significant perceptual differences using lossless audio from a USB compared to compressed audio, then it's probably not worth worrying.

Considering that Spotify and Apple Music (don't know what the Android equivalent is) are built into the BMW sound system, why should any of the above even matter?

 

It may matter because (i) the content on streaming services is compressed (i.e. loss of quality) (ii) the signal goes to the vehicle via 4/5G which may itself limit bandwidth. It will be better than bluetooth audio and I do personally find that the installed apps in iDrive like spotify and radioline seem to give better quality (subjective) than using the same apps via android auto. You can test this just by switching the audio sources.

In respect of bluetooth audio, compression is (almost) not mandated in the standards so if both the TX and RX are compatible with better quality codecs, you might get full quality.

If it is true that the most recent BMWs don't have USB audio, we'll need to figure a way to get full bandwidth via android auto / apple carplay. I will start another thread on this issue.