what does one usually go for and what comes with them, can they play the radio and CDs too?
also where is everyone getting their music off the net?
thanks
biker

 

What are you looking to spend? If that's really not an issue, you could get a deck to play MP3's for about $200-400. Pioneer makes a great deck that has a radio tuner, and a CD player that can play CD-R's and CD-R/W's with MP3's put on them. As for getting music off the net, I get my stuff from Kazaa ( http://www.kazaa.com ) Here's a link to what I'm looking to get for my IROC soon: Pioneer DEH-P7400MP

 

I have a Kenwood MP3 deck that I just love(KDC-MP8017). I picked it up for $250 off ebay brand new, but it runs $350 in stores....good deal for giving up the warranty(unauthorized seller would do that). It's a normal deck with the added feature of being able to read MP3 files. So it has all the rest of the goodies too.

There are a couple more places to get MP3s too:
http://www.imesh.com
http://www.filetopia.com

that's all I can think of now.

The difference between burning an MP3 CD and a WAV CD on a home computer is the file type. You can play any CDR or CDRW on any player if the files are burned in WAV files because that is what the record companies burn their music in. When you burn an MP3 CD, it is kind of like burning a power point program onto a CDR. You need a special program to read the power point program. In this case, you need a special deck with special programing to be able to read the MP3s on the CD.

Later,
Jesse

PS- I drove from New Mexico to Los Angeles without changing the CD I guess you could compare it to XM radio....ok, that was a stretch.

PPS - I have 154 songs on one CD, so if you want to fill up an entire CD, then you are gonna wanna have a lot of songs. otherwise you may as well just burn in WAV and put 20 on a CD...it's up to you.

 

Biker-

If your a music fanatic, MP3's are for you.
MP3's are compressed audio files. In fact, it's compressed to 1/11th the size of a raw audio file, like .WAV. Normally when you compress data, quality is lost- but the algorithm MP3 compression uses keeps this quality loss to almost nothing.
Since a MP3 music track is 1/11th the size of a normal music track, you'll be able to burn 11 times the amount of music onto a CD. Since MP3's are compressed, they need their specific codec to be de-compressed...that's why you need a MP3 enabled head unit to play MP3 tracks. Regular head units cannot read compressed audio.
Kaaza is a good place to get .MP3's from. On average each song (MP3) will be about 5MB in size. So, if your on a good 56k connection it'll take you around 30 min or so to download each song.

 

not really, a "Audiofille", but I have been going crazy since I got a cable modem last week, about 400 songs in 5 days. I have a base $150 head unit in the car and (unmolested) stock speakers.
never been into the total $2000 system.
funny thing my roommate has also downloaded a ton of music, and he burned a CD that worked in his truck, with a stock CD player in it, also in his POS CD player at home. What gives????
I have yet tryed to burn one myself, I am hoping that it would work. Btw, his CD only had the standard 18 songs on it, not something like 150......

is there a program that can change the MP3s to WAVs?
I don't think he did it on purpose, he's not a PC guy, barely knows how to surf the web.
later
biker

 

I'm a PCphreak...literally on overclockers.com forums.
Anyhow....I'm not a car audio freak either, but I found some really good stuff at ikesound.com:
Infinity Kappa 4x6's, Infinity Kappa 6x9's, Clarion Pro 735MP head unit (MP3), Profile (60wattx4) amp...all for $502 free shipping. Crutchfield's pricing would have been almost twice ikesound.com!

You can still burn music CD's to play on your current deck. Providing your current deck will recognize a CD-R. They won't be in .MP3 format, so you'll only be able to put roughly 80 min on a 700MB CD-R.
Anyhow, what you'll need to do it convert your .MP3's to .WAV....
Once you have the .WAV files, you'll take these (up to 80 min worth) and burn them onto a CD.
If you have Windows XP, then it came with this version of Windows Media Player to make it simple for you.

1. Open Windows Media Player (WMP)
2. Open your folder with you .MP3's
3. On WMP, and on the left hand side click "Copy to CD or Device"
4. Click onto your folder with your .MP3's
5. Click the .MP3's you want, and drag them over to the playlist I pointed out.
6. After filling your playlist, make sure each song has a green check beside it, like I circled in red.
7. Make sure a CD-R is in your burner, and click "copy music" in the upper right hand corner on WMP, in which I've circled in red.
8. Thats it! After the CD is finished burning, put it in your car deck & see if it is able to read a CD-R. Older decks had problems reading a CD-R.

 

good stuff, thanks
I really don't need a CD with 150 songs.
not in the car for that long, so I don't really need the MP3 player.
yea I have Win XP... so it be good.
I checked my music folder. 2.5G of nothing but music.......and thats only in 5 days. with the creative labs 5.1 sound card and the cambridge sound works speakers the PC is now the primary music center for the house (and partys). no more fliping CDs at home.
thanks for the help
biker

 

I use Music Match Jukebox, do a search for their website. You can download the basic version free. The upgrade is what will let you convert mp3 to wav files cost about $30, unless you are in tight with some hacker types like I am

I have also use Nero. There are other progams out there, just ask around

 

Last year I had what is called a Genica Roopaq, which is a hard drive based MP3 player. It came with a 20GB HD. Tell you what, I had about 1500 songs on it and only used up about 3 to 3.5 GB of space. Too bad I accidentally fried the screen and had to return it. They didnt have any more in stock or I would most definitely have gotten another. I prefer the HD based MP3 Players, not CD's. This came with a remote and everything. Pretty nice unit, and compact. It would fit almost anywhere you wanted to mount it. Had a nice LCD screen displaying song, time, etc. You could browse through directories of songs, had random, repeat, all the goodies. Got it for about $275 if I remember correctly. Good thing is, it's always updatable with a new HD too (not like your gonna fill up 20GB anyways).

 

thats alot of space.....

 

I'm building an in-car PC for mp3 (and other) purposes.

KaZaA for music downloads, definitely.

Also, ROC-Z mentioned a 1/11th ratio... this can vary... it depends on who used what program at what bitrate to compress it. I never download anything less than 128 bitrate songs, I rip at 192. 128 is generally considered to be pretty much CD-quality.

 

i have the pioneer 7400 and i like it alot. the only thing about the mp3 portion is that it may take a minute or to to read the cd but then its all go from there.

 

I have the pioneer 740, its the premier model of the 7400, i got it for $200. As stated it takes a little tiem to switch between MP3's but on regular cd's there is no wait time.

 

General

MP3Folder

Type: File Folder

Location: E:\


Size: 17.6GB (18,932,138,107 bytes),19,006,586,880 bytes

Contains: 4,611 Files, 332 Folders





I'll be there soon enough... :lala:

 

Ha! You too eh!? That's cool!....hey- just a heads up, CompUSA has 14" LCDs on sale till later this week for only $149!! I'm considering one myself. Mounting space is a concern though...but DVD playback would be gnarly- of this I am sure

<>edit<>
I have seen some pics of a touchscreen LCD, in place of the headunit. He designed his own skin for WinAMP...pretty wild looking. I'll try to dig up the pics...
Using a PC for audio/video entertainment, is pretty much limitless over even the most fanciest head unit recievers!
<>/edit<>

Abso'stinkin'lutely. 1/11th is a good average I like to use. 1/10th just doesn't sound "official" enough.
Any bitrate above 192kbps has less of a benefit with"quality vs. file size".
'Quality vs. File size' is what compression is all about anyways. Like you, I feel 192kpbs is a better compromise than 128kbps. But, there's people still stuck in the stone ages with dial-up
I love having a cable ISP, but I sure hate the $50/mo!

 

dang spike, i thought I was a music dl junkie

Along the line of the in-car PC...
I wanted to do that a while ago...the only downfall is the boot-up time of the computer, but it would be pretty sweet, and nice for long trips. Especially with a LCD screen to accompany it.

 

i had built a pc-based car mpe a few years ago (hence the Mp3 in my name ). it was a DOS based player, no monitor, 30 sec boot time, custom controller, 10gig hard drive or CDRom. check out www.mp3car.com for ideas on what others have done. you could even build a power supply for it pretty easily, seeing computers run off 12v. the hardest part would be to drop the voltage down for the 3.3 and 5v, but its not to difficult to do that. i actually just ordered a JVC sh909 today. crutchfield has em on sale for $240 (was $350-400). this thing is a spectacular deck and the mp3 playback is not limited (can play VBR and up to 320kbs). plus as an sq deck, its near impossible to beat at this price.

 

Hey guys... just wanted to add a couple things:

If you want to burn regular audio CDs from mp3s, Nero does this automatically for you; there's no need to convert to wav. Simply drag mp3s or wavs to the Audio CD layout and it will burn them all as raw wav, playable on any CD deck.

Also, if you really want to hear the difference between 128 and 192kbps, listen to them each in really crappy headphones. The 192kbps is far superior in quality, especially if you have a system in your car with accurate tweeters.

I don't recommend Kazaa, if only for the fact that it contains spyware. I rip all of my mp3s, and realistically that's the only legal way to do it, as long as you own the CDs at home.

Bragging rights: 2200 mp3s, all ripped by me @ 192kbps 44.1khz. That's 14GB of hard drive space.

 

if you must use a kazaa, use Kazaa Lite. it is adware/spyware/etc free. just look it up on google. better version of the program. and for ripping, i now use EAC and Lame. best ripping and encoding programs and they are free. i only use variable bit rate now and these programs make near perfect mp3s. cant tell the difference. cant wait to try em out on my new jvc sh909 (sitting on the bed behind me)

 

I have over 28 Gig (that I know of) in Mp3's (Most Ripped By Me)

I own over 400 CD's
and About 1600 Record Albums (Vinal)

What can I say, I'm a music Freak......


WinMx is a pretty good Program to get Mp3's

 

i'm preferring VBR mp3's. as close to cd as you can get, and no wasted space. use EAC and Lame, and all will be revealed . and working for a radio station = free cds. its nice to have the new stuff 2-3 weeks before everyone else.

 

I have the JVC MP3 deck and I love it (except for the silver face, black isn't available in the US).







Also, *** is getting strict about massive downloading. I've been downloading about 2gigs or so per day since we got cable a year or so ago and we recently have been getting letters and mail about the excessive use. Downloads are limited to 30gigs/month, with up to 2gigs/day.