Ray.
Where do I start?
I have my entire music collection digitally ripped, it was a long slow process.
That said it is not without potential problems, especially with older CDs where the encoded data that supports the music can be a bit off.
I wrote a long explanation of what to do on a car forum and I have included the text following, hope it helps, I can elaborate further if needed.
Whilst it is primarily written for the make and model of car I drive the spec is lifted from the cars manual and it may or may not be relative to your car, my own car uses SD cards but a memory device is a memory device. My car (Porsche Macan Turbo) has Apple Carplay connectivity as well for streaming audio in addition to two memory card slots.
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Preparing your music for in car listening
This depends upon your listening preferences:-
Music can be placed on a USB memory stick or SD cards (2slots currently available)
Music can be transferred into the inbuilt 10Gb Jukebox
Music can be streamed from mobile telephone
iPod or similar will connect up directly to the PCM
If your music is already digital then it is simply a case of copying the music albums/tracks onto the memory device and inserting the device into the car.
If your music is on CD then you can rip the discs to folders on your PC or Mac.
iTunes is a free download and you can use this to rip your CDs to a specific folder, do change the standard encoding format and data rate to MP3 and 320kBps for the highest quality. Once you have ripped the CDs copy the whole Music folder which contains all the ripped albums to the memory device and you are good to go.
If your digital music is oldish rips them you may wish to download MP3TAG and use this freeware to check the data that there is on each album and that it is consistent between the tracks, t may well be that it needs editing and this software will do that. Generally if album art is not being displayed in car then the PCM will use the Data SIM to go online to Gracenote and it will download the artwork. The software will also enable you to download album art (800x800 max) that Gracenote does not find and place the jpg file in the album folder and link each track to the jpg file. Once you have checked the albums copy all the music onto the memory device.
If you use Playlists or would like to within iTunes you can create your own Playlists. Once you have created one you can export it as an M3U file into the root of your Music folder as a belt and braces situation as the iTunes Playlist will be in the iTunes sub-folder within your Music folder and also within this sub-folder iTunes will have placed copies of the album artwork that it has found. iTunes also has a Genius mode, enable it in Preferences, select a specific favourite track and select Create Genius Playlist, it uses your selected track to add other similar style tracks, or at least that is the theory.
Do note that other CD ripping software is available and many do a better job than iTunes, I only suggest this as its free easy and certainly compatible with the PCM.
CD audio is sampled at 44.1kHz/s 16 bit stereo therefore if considering re-encoding it to a Lossless file if you try to increase the sampling rate it will not produce the quality of file you expect, you would be better advised downloading a new FLAC file at the sampling rate that you desire.
Upscaling MP3 audio files will not upscale the audio quality.
Cataloging your music if you have not already done so will help. I have a Music folder and within this folder there is a folder for each artist and then within each artists folder there is a folder per album. Now do note that ripping software may not do as expected and sometimes the ripped music may well be in a different folder entirely, this is down to the data that is written with the album and music file. MP3Tag will be needed to correct the data. The ripping software will also look for album art in a location like Gracenote, do a search youself for missing artwork and download a 800x800 max image of said artwork and place it it the album folder, then use MP3Tag to like all tracks to it. Now that you all your music in the correct format create the Playlists you want as previously described and finally copy your music collection onto an SD card or USB stick. I prefer to use SD cards myself as that keeps the only USB port in the car free for a wired connection to my mobile phone which again I prefer as I can then place the phone in the central armrest within the signal booster holder.
Playing your Music in Car
Insert the memory device in the appropriate slot, select media source and you are good to go. Once you have your music playing spend some time adjusting the balance, fade, base, trebble etc to get the quality of audio that suits your taste. With a Bose system do also check the Surround mode or uncheck it to see which is best for you.
You also have the option of transferring the music to the Jukebox, but remember it is only 10Gb and can take quite a few attempts to get the music all transferred. I would only initiate the transfer once all the album art has been correctly assigned and that the PCM is accurately displaying the albums/artists, do not that compilation albums may cause issues if you have not checked and corrected the data with MP3TAG.
Porsche Communication Management (PCM)
Technical data: Audio and video files from MY17 manual
Supported media
SD cards up to 128 GB
DVD drive Audio CDs up to 80 min., CD ROMs up to 700 MB, DVD±R/RW, Standard Video DVD, Video DVD compatible DVD Audio
Portable players MTP Player, USB 2.0 devices of “USB Device Subclass 1 and 6” such as, for example, USB sticks, USB MP3 players without special driver software, external USB Flash memory and hard drives
DVD changers Audio CDs up to 80 min., standard video DVDs, video DVD-compatible DVD Audio
File system
SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC memory cards
USB mass storage exFAT, FAT or FAT32, NTFS file systems with a maximum of 4 partitions
DVD drive ISO9660, Joliet, UDF
Format
MPEG 1/2 Layer 3; Windows Media Audio 9 and 10; MPEG 2/4; FLAC, MPEG 1/2; ISO-MPEG4; DivX 3, 4 and 5; Xvid; ISO-MPEG4 H.264 (MPEG4 AVC); Windows Media Video 9
File extension
.mp3 (does not apply to DVD changer); .wma; .asf; .m4a; .m4b; .aac; .flac; .mpg; .mpeg; .avi; .mp4; .m4v; .mov; .wmv
Playlists
.M3U; .PLS; .WPL; .M3U8; .ASX
Characteristics
max. 320 kbit/s and 48 kHz sampling frequency; max. 2,000 kbit/s and 720x576 px. at max. 25 fps
Number of files
DVD drive max. 1,000 files DVD
Jukebox (max. 10 GB storage space) max. 3,000 files can be copied
USB mass storage and memory cards max. 10,000 files per medium
Metadata
Album covers up to 800 x 800 pixels; GIF, JPG and PNG formats or via Gracenote database
Video DVD region codes
Code 1: USA, Canada and US Colonies
Code 2: Europe, Greenland, South Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, Japan
Code 3: Southeast Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong
Audio Comparison Test
I took one of my FLAC audio files and put it into one of my Audio editing programmes (Adobe Audition for those interested) and converted it into mp3 files with various encoding bitrates, and as a matter of interest I encoded the FLAC as AIFF and WAV to see what file size they produced
Source as a FLAC of file size 85,444kB
MP3 encoding data rate ----- File size in kB
96 ---- 2,264
160 --- 5,435
320 ---- 10,863
As a matter of interest I encoded the source into a WAV file and it was 208,394
Also being fully lossless the AIFF encoding gave a file size 208,394
With another forum member we sat in my Bose equipped Macan and listened to the FLAC and mp3 files.
FLAC was a clear winner with rich tones and a clarity of the brass instruments that the mp3's failed to come near.
MP3 at 320 gave a perfectly listenable file for most music but even at the high data rate there was a lack of clarity in the tonal quality and a slight edge to the brass.
As the MP3 data rate was lowered the audio quality got worst as expected, with the 96 file listenable but not something you would want to do regularly on a £800 Macan extra, you would certainly want the higher quality media files.
Whist it was certainly not to lab standard of testing it was an interesting exercise to actually be able to hear the difference and for me and my old ears I was pleasantly surprised that I could discern as much difference as I did.
FINALLY a tip on FLAC format audio. Do a search online for free FLAC music files, one such source is the hdtracks site (I have no affiliations too then but have bought FLAC albums and songs off their site) where a sampler compilation is available. You can download this and use he files check out the quality of this format within your car or within a car at your dealers. Useful to compare Standard audio v Bose v Burmeister if you are considering upgrading