MP3s

My 05 will not play mp3's.

 

no, unfortunately. probably because sony would have fits and their president has lunch with the guy from toyota or something...

 

While we are at it: does anyone knows ANY car factory stereo that plays MP3 or WMA disks? I am not aware of any

 

Ford factory units play MP3s. Not sure about WMA files. Which means the Escape Hybrid will be able to play them. Some of the top-end GM radios play MP3s and have XM radio capability. It's just a wonder that Japanese radios don't have the MP3 option. They have everything else! Drive fun, drive clean, drive Prius!

 

Toyota's on Scion line stereo plays MP3 CD's. As high tech as the Prius is, they should have included this to the Prius, it's a natural fit. (At very least a aux in jack built in would have been nice.)

Other options one can do is get a direct connect aux input adapter. (They sound better then the FM transmitter route.) Also if you have an iPod or plan to get an iPod there are adaptors for that that specifically connect to the iPod and allow some of the functions to be operated from the steering wheel.

 

Why endorse an such an outdated technology? CD have a very low-capacity and a low-resistance to scratches.

DVD is dramatically better. And with the blanks only 40 cents now and burners starting at $79, why bother with CD?

After all, the competition is hard-drive based players. And since most people have at least enough songs to fill at least one DVD, it makes a whole lot of sense having that as the minimum instead of CD.

 

By the way, I have an iRiver. It actually surpasses iPod on a few features.

With the growing number of hard-drive MP3 choices, CD is quickly losing appeal.

So... is that what will (eventually) end up built into to new Prius... or we new owners get a Bluetooth option?

 

ok.. well.. what i'm curious of, since we are on the subject of mp3, is which method plays the best, and how much would an entire "solution" cost. I would much rather have mp3s. But Ipods cost a lot. And What i'm going for is hopefully something that will work with stearing controls. If not.. then an easy way to just skip song. If i'm driving, i don't want to play with a menu. Sound quality is important to. if it sounds like crap.. i might as well burn really low bitrate onto a cd. Plus.. with a storage device such as an mp3 player.. how many songs can i put on.. how can i keep it charged.. do i have to take it in and plug it in every day? or is there an available car charger?

so write your own review of your best mp3 solution and the cost of the system ( transmitter/cable and mp3 storage device ) .... i think that's it.. any reviews?

One last thing.. please try not to rant on like i do and write a nice simple review of good and bads.. it will help keep people interested

 

Once Coastal Dave finish ups his AUX-IN kit I'm going to install a EMPEG (RioCar) unit in the cubby below the radio. The EMPEG (no longer in production, but up for sale from time to time on Ebay) is a hard drive Linux based MP3 player. It's a single DIN pull-out unit. It can handle up to 180 GB of music. Music is transfered to the player either by USB 1.0 or ethernet. For more info see:

http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modlo...and+the+company

and a EMPEG bbs at: http://www.empegbbs.com

What do you think? The price can vary from $350 and up depending on the size of the HD installed and what is included besides the player itself. You will at the very least need the sled to mount to the car into which the EMPEG slides into. Too much to go into here, but all the info can be found at the FAQ above.

 

If you are OK with MP3, there is wide choice of players including one with very large disks. However, main disadvantage of MP3 is that there is no lossless MP3 compression. If you want high quality music then you have to use either WAV (too large), AAC lossless (iPod) or WMA lossless. The latter is supported only by Portable Media Center which is so far limited to 40GB and too large since it also supports video. You may say that in the car MP3 is fine, but then one have to maintain two versions of media library: one compressed and one not. I typically rip into lossless except very few lower quality CDs simply because I want my music to alway be available in its original form even if format changes. Conversion between lossy compressions such as MP3, AAC or WMA quickly deteriorates sound quality.

I looked at PMC, but most of them are 20GB while my music collection exceeds 60GB. iRiver has PMC-140 which is 40GB. I don't care about video, but PMC has nice 3.5" screen. So far new 60GB iPod Photo seems to be a better deal.

Remember also that iPod requires only a single cable since power, line out and controls are all on the same connector. With other players you may have to run at least separate power and signal cables possible connected at very odd places.

 

Please provide detail. For example...

The now-popular Li-Polymer batteries in MP3 players offer the ability of 12-16 hours of cordless power typically. So no need to routinely plug-in.

The 60GB iPod (Photo) retails for $599, well out of the price range of the current MP3 discussion. The 20GB iPod (Text) is more realistic, at $299 retail. The 20GB iRiver (Photo) is $329 retail.

128 kbps is roughly CD quality. So my current collection at 160 kbps sounds pleasing. That only takes 6.5 GB to hold 1,350 songs.

 

I haven't seen any price range set I actually meant 60GB iPod made sense to *me*.

Quality is very subjective matter and heavily depends on the music you are listening as well as how well you remember how it is supposed to sound So it's up to thread creator to decide.

As for my experience, I once had my music in compressed 160K WMA since lossless compression was not available. Then I got 20GB iPod since it simply was the best player. WMA units were large and ugly. Oops, iPod didn't play WMA. I attempted to convert to AAC but result was simply horrible. I had to re-rip all my collection in AAC lossless since it guaranteed that I would be able to convert to any future format without loss of quality. If WMA devices become better, I will be able to convert AAC to WMA (I am not brand loyal) without loss of quality. My desktop is connected to my high end audio system so I don't want any compression.

Now my music collection (~80 GB lossless) does not fit on any available device. I still own 20GB iPod so I can only take subset of my music with me. I am OK with having compressed music in the car so I am considering creating a second music library with compressed files. It is going to be a hassle since I'll have to manually switch iTunes between libraries and rip every CD twice.

Ideal player is probably a laptop with large disk (possibly external USB), PCMCIA high end sound card or external USB audio unit mounted in the trunk In fact, you can add Web server software and control player via Pocket PC, Palm or Smart Phone with Web browsing capabilities.

Windows CE 4.x unit such as FutureCom 985 Web Pad is even better since it starts and hibernates instantly. Maybe I'll build custom music player for my car as my next computer project

 

Ok.. i have an easier solution... any way to plus the audio from my laptop in to the car? I normaly use it for mp3's anyways

 

Get this unit

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Tran...sit-main-1.html

Mount it concealed (it powers from USB port of your laptop) and connect line out to Aux input that you can add using

http://www.logjamelectronics.com/pacauxbox.html