Hi all,

First off, I want to thank everyone on the forum for the fantastic contributions and all the knowledge / wisdom you share. I took delivery of my new X5d last week, and made use of much sage advice gleaned from this forum. Cheers!

Now, my previous ride was an '06 E90, and it's been a hoot to play with the new Nav system. It's amazing how much better it is - in every way imaginable. The best is that there are now so many options for listening to your digital music.... but none seems "ideal". So, I wanted to poll the community and also get your feedback on how you all are doing it.

Here are the options that I see (I think this is all of them )

- Download music to the car's HD
- Pros:
- It's always accessible
- No external cables / devices to deal with (except on load)
- Search works well
- Cons:
- 12gb isn't always enough (my library is 80gb+)
- No album art cover
- It's a bit of a hassle to load music
- risk of your music going 'stale'
- yet another digital library to manage

- Connect your device via USB
- Pros:
- simple
- devices charges
- one library to manage
- music is fresher
- album cover art
- Cons:
- a bit of a hassle (not much though)
- In my case (iPhone) connecting the device via USB makes the system forget that it was also paired via Bluetooth and 'forgets' it (only the audio portion) and this is a hassle

- Connect via Bluetooth audio
- Pros:
- When it works, it's like magic
- Once paired - fantastically simple and efficient
- Cons:
- Bluetooth is finnicky
- No song info at all
- Let alone album art

- Connect via Smartphone integration
[Will have to update post when I buy a cradle]
- What are your thoughts? Any value at all to this mechanism?


So, all in all, it seems that we are more than covered, but there is no ideal solution. In my ideal world, Bluetooth would transfer song info and art cover and allow for more controls from the iDrive - and I'd be set. Everything else is 'extra'.

Would love your thoughts, tips and opinions!

Cheers!