Long Trips and CD's

Ask Truckster, he's right into that stuff.

Personally I have a MP3 player in the 4WD and it is good(hard to make the disc skip). 150 to 170 songs per disc meaning a long time between cd changes.MP3 basically takes out the information that we don't need and only takes up space on the disc.Like I said ask Truckster he will be able to fill you in.The hardest part is finding enough songs you like to fill the disc.

Sparkie(IE not Y) ;-)

To answer your question....

MP3 is a file format for computer files. It is to music file what .doc is for word processing files.

A computer file might be called music.mp3 and a computer with the appropriate software can open the file and play it as music.

An mp3 player is just a specialised computer with some memory to store the files and some hard coded built in software to open the files and play the music.

The memory in these players comes in two main types - memory chips which are solid state (so have no moving parts) and mini hard disc drives.

The chip type ones can be a bit limited in memory space. Typically they are in 128Mb or 256Mb sizes which I think hold about 4 to 8 hours of high quality music files (the lower the sound quality the more music you can fit in it).

The Disc type ones have MUCH higher capacity, usually measured in Gigabytes and can literally hold thousands of songs in a package no bigger than a pack of smokes. The have moving parts in the hard drive (same as in your PC but smaller) but are much less prone to skip than a CD player.

The small solid state players tend to be really tiny and robust and are good for joggers and sportspeople. The slightly larger hard drive models are great for in car use or air travel. I have heard of DJ's at nightclubs turning up with an entire nights music program ready to go on the player. Just hook in to the house speakers and away you go!

They are a great storage solution for entire music collections and great for long trips. Is best if you have a car audio system that has a jack to accept external input. You can also store data files on some of them so they would make an ideal backup for important files from your laptop stored in the vehicle if it got stolen or damaged.

Hope this helps ya!

Muddy

Mp3 basically goes through and removes every second frequency to cut down size, and manipulates the other frequencies to try and cover this clipping. Frequencies outside of general hearing range are also dropped, leaving a slightly worse sounding recording than you started with, but it bugger all disk space.

When you add the ambient noise of a car and the cabin acoustics its hard to tell a good mp3 song from its high quality CD equivalent. Most MP3 encoders (program for getting CD tracks to an mp3 format) have a selectable bitrate (quality of recording) if you drop this quality too low it sounds shocking- almost like listening to tunes underwater.

Theres plenty of mp3 players out now, and you can get FM transmitters that will let you tune your stereo into them without having to buy a new head unit.

Mate,

I purchase one for my lux and it works a treat. Doesn't take a memory stick, too many $ for the convenience at the moment; however, I know that the FM transmitter for an IPOD or similar works great. Drove from Sydney to Caboolture and didn't have to change the CD. Not bad, hit the random button and off you go. I have converted almost all my CDs to MP3 and it only takes up 7 discs so far. The casette and CD player are going the way of the 8 track. MP3 will probably have a limited lifespan as well; however, my MPS player, Pioneer, was only $165 through ebay so a great buy and a great improvement over the standard tojo stereo.

Cheers

Hi Wayne, why don't you go one better. I have an MP3 player that incorporates a computer hard drive which can be of any size. Mine is at present 20 gig which I plug into my existing CD stacker input on my car stero (Clarion) and I can have as many songs as I like. No skip,don't have to worry about dust being fully sealed. Runs off a WinAmp programme. I just convert my music cd's to mp3 format on my computer & download to the harddrive.(USB 2.0 connection). If you shop around you can pick them up on eBay for under $200 depending what size hard drive. Cheers

My Car Radio only has a CD slot, but it works for me. In fact I don't use the radio much any more becuase my favorite station has just gone 24hr Sports. Well bugger them. I only want to listen to good music and being a baby boomer, that means 50,s, 60's, 70's and thats about it.

I Just record a CD, or selected songs, onto a blank CD and use that.

The audio quality is good enough for my hearing and if I stuff up a tape then I just recreate it. Couldn't think of anything worse than searching through hundreds of tracks for that one Eagles recording.

Gday Wayne,

I've got a Pioneer Radio/CD that plays MP3s. I've tried to make it skip on some of the worst corrugations this country has to offer, but it won't skip!!

I burn a CD with about 8-10 albums and have about 8 of these in a sunvisor storage thing.

Just press a button to flick between albums or flick between tracks.

Cheers
Phil

If you have a look on eBay under "In Dash DVD" you will find DVD players which include AM/FM and all CD formats including MP3.

If you look carefully thru the specs, you can find DVD/CD MP3 campatible units that will allow you to put all your CD's onto one DVD which will give about 80 - 90 hours of music. Press the random play button and this will be the only disk you will need.

One trick I did is to put all your favorite tracks into one folder on your hard drive and then sort by track number before burning them to disk. This will completely shuffle the play list as all the track 1's followed by all track 2's etc resulting in a good mixed recording.

Bob

Most CD players, im my experience, jump a bit when on rough roads - sometimes even the blackstuff in my GU's player.

who cares, God invented iPod & iTrip to get over this.

Down load any music from your own CD's or the net, sotre in the iTunes library on your 'puter, and upload them into the iPod. Make your own albums/labels/categories/files etc etc.

Then use the iTrip to send to your FM radio.

portable, too, so I haven't upgraded the standard Nissan unit but got much more flexibility by using this fantastica gadget, the iPod.

MP3s or WMA are the go..
WMA is smaller in file size than MP3. What they are are explained above..

You really only need a couple of CD's to last you, as you can fit as said depending on file size up to 200 songs per CD..

I only have 3200 MP3's at home now :( :D :P