I had been thinking how to get mp3's playing in the car, looking at the gear that's available. Then realized 'no purchase necessary'. I have Toshiba PDA running Windows pocket PC 2002, which includes windows media player. The unit also has a headphone socket. Download "or sync" the mp3 selction to the PDA and play the PDA into the car sytem through one of those cassette adaptors. Might not be as neat as an in-dash mp3 player, but it works and didn't cost!

Paul

Now all you need is a PDA-holder and GPS running as well, and you're sorted

I just burn them as audio onto CD - some fantastic software out there such as MP3toCD Converter,

which does pretty much as it says on the tin...

Of course this limits you to 74 minutes, but that's still quite a lot!

Rob.

74mins, pah!

You want one of these

160hours with the 10GB drive, or more with a bigger drive.

plug>

*However*...for 200 quid, I can get 1000 blank CDs (assuming 20p a disc - at that

sort of volume a further discount might be applicable!).

Which by my reckoning is just over 246 hours... :p

Rob.

Ian, you mean Kenwood's recently announced Music Keg?

That thing is making me thirsty

Rob, and then add the time you'll be busy burning them...

I'm with Rob on this one, I'm afraid! As much fun as having an MP3 jukebox in the car would be, I just can't justify it when I can get 100 CDRs for

Rob, if you are carrying 1000 cd's then you've kinda missed the point of MP3's, having them all in one place without thinking about "which cd's to take".

Dutch, nah, my Mstation that I'm selling, I have a V2 so selling my V1 - totally biased but liked it enough to move up to the V2.

I think the music keg takes "kenwood's own memory" which loses the ability to use virtually any (ever cheaper) IDE drive.

[lazy b*gger mode]

And don't forget the hassle that involves changing a CD every 74 minutes

[/lazy b*gger mode]

Well if in car cd's ever move up to DVD- and mp3 then

4.8Gb per disc, so a 6 dvd/cd changer would be sweet then.

But I'm hardly ever in the car long enough to listen to all my music...so cd's are okay at the moment, besides having all your music removes the joy of stopping at motorway services for that classic gold collection cd they have on offer

ps, like the PDA approach. Ill have to dig out my tape convertor and find a good home for my mini note book, not quite a pda size (A5) but not a PDA

Several points/questions:

1. What's the quality like? Presumably the more compression you use, the poorer the quality

2. Surely the time spent burning CD's is mirrored by a similar time downloading or otherwise generating the MP3 files and then downloading them to the portable device.

2(a). If you're like me and your music was acquired legally on CDs - how long does it take to convert them to MP3 for use in the car? Can you do this at faster than playback speed?

3. How do you ever find anything on the player while you're on the move, or do you just listen to your 160 hours worth of tracks in strict rotation - like a CD changer?

Well, I take the time to normalise the MP3s before I burn them onto CD, so I can

produce a CD from MP3s in about half an hour. It would be quicker without

normalising, but I think it's worth the extra wait! Also that's on a really

slow computer (K6-500 or something similarly cheap and slow), which is the

bottleneck as it converts the MP3s into audio in real time.

Whether I actually have enough material I'd want to listen to fill 1000 CDs is

another matter!

Rob.

1. Quality is CD quality if you use decent software and a decent bitrate, used the "home" part with my hifi and never fail to be impressed with the quality.

2. Buy a CD, copy it to MP3, job done - to have that CD always available in the car or at home (without actually "changing disks") is worth that.

2a. Well, mine is 98% my cd collection, only things I've downloaded are where I have given up trying to get hold of something obscure. Takes a while to do the first copy to mp3, but there after any new cd's are done quickly. I think typical recording time is around 4x, so a quarter of the "playing time"

3. Both the unit and the control for the dashboard have displays where you can use the normal "shuffle etc" commands plus in and out of your collection file structure. IE: "Rock > Metallica > Black > Enter Sandman, or you can use random at any level - ie random within genre, or random within artist etc, handy if you are just "in a certain mood".

Apart from the buttons on the unit \ control, you have an IR remote also.

Originally posted by robmawer in this post

Well, I take the time to normalise the MP3s before I burn them onto CD, so I can

produce a CD from MP3s in about half an hour. It would be quicker without

normalising, but I think it's worth the extra wait! Also that's on a really

slow computer (K6-500 or something similarly cheap and slow), which is the

bottleneck as it converts the MP3s into audio in real time.

Rob.

1. Normalise?

2. "500MHz!!! You were lucky .... " (my fastest box - the one with the CD burner on - is a 350).

Originally posted by ncarring in this post

Several points/questions:

1. What's the quality like? Presumably the more compression you use, the poorer the quality Yes there is a trade but with standard equipment in the car I can't tell the difference

2. Surely the time spent burning CD's is mirrored by a similar time downloading or otherwise generating the MP3 files and then downloading them to the portable device. downloading mp3's is pretty quick, not very scientific I know but it's limit is USB connection speed. The CD issue is not a comparison I can make because I don't have a CD in my car!

2(a). If you're like me and your music was acquired legally on CDs - how long does it take to convert them to MP3 for use in the car? Can you do this at faster than playback speed? All my music is legal, yes my mp3 conversion runs about 8-10X real time

3. How do you ever find anything on the player while you're on the move, or do you just listen to your 160 hours worth of tracks in strict rotation - like a CD changer?Media player lets you create your own playlists from the data recorded, but making changes to the playlist on the move might not be such a good idea.

Only reason I posted was because I know there are a number of gadget owning types in our midst, wanted to see if anyone else had tried it. Like I say I don't have CD in my car and I don't have any means of making tapes from my CD's.

Tavia: Have looked at the latest Apple i-pod (now windows enabled) they have to be the ultimate in portable mp3 now at 30 GB and so small (of course i'm biased)

:Cheers:

Paul

Yeah, and the Creative Labs DAP \ Nomad is also a nice "personal" player - recently bought one (cheers manny!! ) for my Mum, she loves it, tho not as "car \ home" designed, more "in pocket \ cassette adaptor" aimed.

When I'm "on foot" I am devoid of music - about the one thing my phone *can't* do is play MP3's! (tho I can browse the web, email, play games, take photo's, take video clips, oh, and make a call from time to time Who says us car nuts are gadget obsessed??)

Have a Blaupunkt Los Angeles MP72 headunit and am using a 128Mbyte MMC (multi-media card).

MMC has directory structure so I just use the jog switch to change between directories and tracks.

Looking at the 1Gbyte micro drive for this.

Quality of playback is ok for a vehicular environment; plan to download the dbPower equaliser to play around with the settings. Also the U has an equaliser which cna be optimised for the car; just have to pull the HU out and attach the mircophone.

Cheers.

Adrian.

Originally posted by spc in this post

Only reason I posted was because I know there are a number of gadget owning types in our midst, wanted to see if anyone else had tried it. Like I say I don't have CD in my car and I don't have any means of making tapes from my CD's.

Paul, any info is good info. I really _am_ interested. If I didn't think it would take me the next 2 years non-stop I'd buy Ian's (or a similar) player and start converting my CD collection. However it's a lot of hassle compared with carrying the CD magazine into the house every week or two and putting some new CDs into it, plus more wiring, holes and thievable gadgetry in the car.

Nick,

Here are my views:

1. There's probably some difference, but I can't hear it. Play my mp3s at home too, with the PC linked to my amp. With 128k compression or above, only true audio buffs will distinguish between CD and mp3. They don't call it "CD quality" for nothing. And then, in-car, with all the driving noises, why even bother with perfect crisp sound?

However, I can hear the difference between an old-fashioned analogue record and a remastered CD, both played through the same amp and speakers. But that's another story.

2. Downloading mp3s is a matter of searching and selecting them (on Kazaa), go to sleep and find them all there in the morning... You can't leave when burning CDs - too many things can, and will, go wrong.

2a. Ripping a full-length legal CD takes me about 3 to 4 minutes. But then I have a fast PC and CD player...

3. You can burn your directory structure onto the CD. The head unit will allow you to skip through the folders and the songs like it was a CD changer. It will also show the tags saved with the file.

Nick,

the Blaupunkt micro drive fits into the palm of your hand. You just unplug from HU and plug into PC to download MP3s.

Wiring is very simple; basically you can fit it into the glovebox or the cubby beneath the steering wheel.

Only downside it the cost; standard it's

I recently brought a cheapo smartmedia-based player (

Originally posted by Dutch4x4 in this post

Nick,

Here are my views:

1. There's probably some difference, but I can't hear it. Play my mp3s at home too, with the PC linked to my amp. With 128k compression or above, only true audio buffs will distinguish between CD and mp3. They don't call it "CD quality" for nothing. And then, in-car, with all the driving noises, why even bother with perfect crisp sound?

But surely if you use the highest (CD) quality the files are almost as big as the original uncompressed audio?

However, I can hear the difference between an old-fashioned analogue record and a remastered CD, both played through the same amp and speakers. But that's another story.

2. Downloading mp3s is a matter of searching and selecting them (on Kazaa), go to sleep and find them all there in the morning... You can't leave when burning CDs - too many things can, and will, go wrong.

Kazaa eh? Must look at this some year ... .:p

2a. Ripping a full-length legal CD takes me about 3 to 4 minutes. But then I have a fast PC and CD player...

"Ripping" being the conversion process?

3. You can burn your directory structure onto the CD. The head unit will allow you to skip through the folders and the songs like it was a CD changer. It will also show the tags saved with the file.

Sounds cool

Originally posted by ncarring in this post

However it's a lot of hassle compared with carrying the CD magazine into the house every week or two and putting some new CDs into it, plus more wiring, holes and thievable gadgetry in the car.

[lazy b*gger mode again]

I found changing the magazine every week becoming a hassle... Now I just have one CD and a few more in the glove compartment that will take me through an entire month. And then when the CDs were in the car, we didn't have them at home, and vice versa. That's another hassle that's gone now.

[/lbm]

With regards to the wiring - an MP3 head unit will take away the need for a CD changer. Or you replace the current changer with an MP3-capable changer, which will give you 100 "CDs" in one go. Or replace it with a harddisk-type thing which will use the CD changer input/output wiring. No additional holes and wiring required. I mentioned the Music Keg as it works that way, and having a Kenwood HU, I don't need to replace that one too.

So where do you plug in the iPod? Do you need any particular HU for that? And [unenlightened me] what's an Mstation, Ian?

Originally posted by ncarring in this post

But surely if you use the highest (CD) quality the files are almost as big as the original uncompressed audio?

Have you ever wondered why mp3 is so popular?

It's compression and quality.

And yes, "ripping" is the process of converting an Audio CD into separate mp3s. Same goes for DVDs into avi etc.

Originally posted by Dutch4x4 in this post

Have you ever wondered why mp3 is so popular?

It's compression and quality.

Well I thought there must be some reason. What kind of compression do you get, then?

And yes, "ripping" is the process of converting an Audio CD into separate mp3s. Same goes for DVDs into avi etc.

Thought as much but never knew for sure. If you ask, you look stupid, but if you don't, you just go on wondering ...