Transferring music to a usb stick and or SD cardD

[RAC/OPS]

So I have my new Passat, and it will play my music via bluetooth, but I can only control the music via the iphone (illegal to touch it while driving), or I can put stuff on a memory stick or SD card and the car audio system can control it.

I foolishly thought that I could just copy and paste tracks from itunes onto it, but this doesn't work. I'm thinking from a similar now closed thread that the music has to be mp3 format.

How do I do this please?

I have access to both pc and mac, is either any easier or does it make no difference?

Thanks!

[TWT]

Look in the manual and find out what types of file are accepted.All stereos should do mp3,but I use .wav (uncompressed) files for mine.Arrange your tunes into folders on your PC/Mac and then copy/paste to the USB stick.Plug stick in and select stereo to appropriate input and then select folder/artist/track as desired.That's how it works on my Mitsubishi Lancer,I presume it would be similar on a Passat

[vulcanised]

I use Format Factory to convert to MP3 it's simple and it's very fast. (Oh, and it's free)

[OFSO]

I have a rather sizeable drive plugged into my Mondeo: my music sources are invariably from YouTube, converted from .mpeg4 (which is video-plus-sound) to .mp3 (audio only) using Real Player's own converter, divided by me into files, and...thats it. Occasionally I may copy music off my Android phone, no probs as it's already in .mp3. Create a file on the PC desktop called "converted files" and stick it all in there.

Then, you might find if you are lucky that your car will bluetooth your PC if parked very near to the house, otherwise you have to bring the hard drive indoors and load it up when plugged into the PC.

My car's reproducer very occasionally hiccups, perhaps because of the size of the hard drive, and needs switching off and being allowed to calm down, but the system on the Ford couldn't be simpler.

There are a large number of software programs out there which will convert pretty well anything to anything else: just find the one that's easiest to use.

Good luck !

[mixture]

I use Format Factory to convert to MP3 it's simple and it's very fast. (Oh, and it's free)

Erm, iTunes already stores as MP3 ?

[bnt]

Erm, iTunes already stores as MP3 ?
Not necessarily. It will work with MP3s if you have them, but the format for tunes downloaded from the iTunes Store is M4A (http://www.m4a.com/itunes-m4a-music/). There are all kinds of M4A to MP3 conversion options, but some may not work with the "rights management" on iTunes downloads.

(That site has more details about the format, but don't fall for the "MP3s sound inferior" nonsense. The sound quality depends on how you encode them, and that applies to all lossy compression formats, including M4A. Where possible I use VBR 0 encoding on MP3s, I can afford the disk space.)

[Shunter]

iTunes hasn't applied DRM to music downloads for years...