Question about steering wheel mounted audio controls - B8 cars

B8 S4
#1

I have B8 A4 Avant as well as my Rs4. One thing on my Rs4 steering wheel that I love is the little dials that control the radio volume/channel or songs on media card etc. I would switch to the euro RS4 wheel, but can’t imagine giving up those controls.

On the A4 it also has these features on the steering wheel, but one thing bugs me. The roller switch on the left is used, say you’re on the radio, to change channel. While on my Rs4 a quick turn down jumps to the next station, on the B8, all it does is pop up the radio station list in the DIS (the little screen between tach and speedo) and now you’re scrolling through the stations there. To change to one of those, you need to highlight it, and then CLICK on the one you want.

If you’re listening to a song on a media card or iPod via AMI, you have the same issue…scrolling the left wheel puts you into DIS and a list of songs and then you need to scroll to and click the next one.

RS4

  1. scroll little wheel…done.

B8

  1. scroll little wheel
  2. scroll again in list to next song/station while looking at the tiny DIS to ensure you’re on the right one
  3. click on next song station, which happens provided you have not rear-ended the car in front of you or run over some school children whlie you were staring at DIS

Am I doing it wrong? Is there a way to adjust the functionality so it’s useful? I never use that scroll wheel in the B8. I just click on the arrow button on the radio controls instead. The steering wheel scroller is basically dead to me.

I do like how pushing the volume wheel in till it clicks mutes the radio. That’s brilliant. Wish my B7 had that.

#2

I never got into the habit of using the steering scroll wheel for changing stations/tracks…I use the MMI or volume knob skip function.

#3

Dead to me as well for that very reason: it’s not safe. And I’m not aware of any change that would allow you select a different radio station/song without the CLICK. Poor design.

#4

Ive asked before on different forums if there was a way to change the scroll wheel to change the channels upon up and down like the rs4. My brother had an rs4 and his changed the channels like yours. I would think it would be a setting in the mmi that did this, but could never find an answer to that. My q7 with mmi2g like the rs4 makes you press the scroll button in also.

#5

I love that scroll feature on my B7 for both volume and station.

#6

+1. So intuitive.

What happens with a b8 wheel in a b7? Behaves like b7 or b8?

#7

b7