Speaking of head units

[C_Note]

Are there any decks that will read mp3's from a DVD+/-R? I know they've read CD-R's for several years, and I know there are in dash DVD players, but I want one that will read audio formats from a DVD.

[xjoewhitex]

But why would you Put audio on a DVD-R?? :?

[ramrod]

same reason youd want to put mp3's on a cd. You can cram a sh*t load on there. 4.6 gig worth lol

[daveb91]

That would be alot of road trippin music. The best thing I bought this year was my Mp3 head unit makes driving alot more enjoyable then hunting for crappy stations.

[C_Note]

But why would you Put audio on a DVD-R?? :?

What Ramrod said. A standard CD-R is 700MB, which generally holds 16'ish mp3's, depending on song length. A DVD +/- R would idealistacly hold 105-110 songs. Would definitely make road trips more relaxing.

What I'll probably end up doing, though, is installing a computer into my interior (when I decide on a car that I'll keep for several years). By installing a small LCD screen in my dash, a touchpad from a laptop and a scroll wheel from a mouse into the front of of my arm rest, and then hide an extendable keyboard somewhere (inside the arm rest? glovebox?), I'd have access to just about everything. A wireless connection would put any map at my fingertips, along with a GPS application; thousands of mp3's, broken down into play lists, a good connection would give me VOIP and wireless telephany for on-road calls or emergency service; if I need to stop at a rest area, then I can check my email and choose a movie out of storage to listen to as I take a nap... etc

[daveb91]

I have over 140 songs on a disk.

[xjoewhitex]

my friend has a mp3/cd player in his car.. he burns cd's in the mp3 format and they have like 50+ songs on each cd.. he doesn't use DVD-R :?
So what is this?

A standard CD-R is 700MB, which generally holds 16'ish mp3's

[daveb91]

That not compressing. It cant be in Mp3 format.

[xjoewhitex]

oh.. thats all i would ever want.... Put like 5-6 different cd's on one cd that would be perfect.. 8)

[RobbieNelson]

That not compressing. It cant be in Mp3 format.

uhhh.... compression is the whole point of MP3s? Am I missing something?

[C_Note]

well, I guess the old head units that read CD-Rs read in what, .wav format? That's probably what I'm thinking of. The new ones will read mp3s in data format? I guess that's not too bad, but would still be cool to be about to multiply that by 6-7 and carry your whole collection around in one wallet.

[daveb91]

That not compressing. It cant be in Mp3 format.

uhhh.... compression is the whole point of MP3s? Am I missing something?

yes Robbie you miss alot sometimes you dont read and make quick comments and its tiring. :roll: I said thats not compressing= 16 songs on a cd that cant be in mp3 format does that make sense? When you download songs off most sites its in MP3 format and when you rip it onto cd unless you tell it too it usually puts it into a decompressed or regular cd format its just faster to download in mp3 format which I am sure you knew but made the comment anyways.

[daveb91]

Sorry Cnote the thread has been officialy Hijacked.

[xjoewhitex]

but it has become Very educational... 8)

[Feedman]

standard .mp3 @ 128 sampling for mp3 format = 3-5mb per song

or .wav file format @ 44.xx sampling for cd format = 30-50 mb per song


So do the math standard 700mb cd

or 4.7gb on a dvd


I haven't done it, but I beleive in a car dvd system, you could put mp3's on a dvd and they would read just fine. Wouldn't be 5.1 or anything b/c you wouldn't have the proper decoder. 8)

[superchargedgsr]

well i have both the clarion 935dvd and the kenwood 715dvd, both indash screens

the clarion will not, or i have not gotten it to read mp3's from a dvd disc, dvd-r

but the kenwood will read from them just fine, i have like 4GB of songs on one cd, pretty nice

but the kenwood is over 1000 bucks....depends on if its worth it to you or not

[C_Note]

Well, in a standard audio format, it's not the size of the file that fills up disc space. You're not filling out 700mb, you're filling out 80 minutes, or so. If it's in data form, though, then it would apply to the 700MB.

[superchargedgsr]

i was talking about a 4.7GB dvd disc, not a cd-r

[Feedman]

Well, in a standard audio format, it's not the size of the file that fills up disc space. You're not filling out 700mb, you're filling out 80 minutes, or so. If it's in data form, though, then it would apply to the 700MB.

Actually you may see it as minutes. They advertise them in minutes, but the comptuer sees it as data....1's and 0's.....so its still 700mb to the computer and that is what counts. B/c the software then converts them from .mp3's to .wav's and they are enlarged, the computer calculates the "time left" to make it easier on the end-user. 8)

[C_Note]

Ah, I was thinking of the minutes when someone said that a typical mp3 was 3-5MB, but I forgot about decompression and conversion. You're right.

[C_Note]

That Kenwood is a nice looking piece of equipment, but for $1100, I could grab an ITX form and a couple 250G hard drives, and still have access to services other than music/movies. Only thing I'd have to figure out, is how to communicate the output from the sound card to the head unit (unless these newer head units have auxilliary inputs already implemented).

[Feedman]

That Kenwood is a nice looking piece of equipment, but for $1100, I could grab an ITX form and a couple 250G hard drives, and still have access to services other than music/movies. Only thing I'd have to figure out, is how to communicate the output from the sound card to the head unit (unless these newer head units have auxilliary inputs already implemented).

Way to go....more versatile to say the least.... 8)

[xjoewhitex]

That would be very sweet i have never seen that done.... Would it work? :?

[narfdanarf]

Yeah my pioneer has aux inputs. I met a guy from another forum who bought a touch screen tv, molded it into his dash, hooked up a nice computer to it, and ran the audio through his headunit. Was pretty nice. It was basically the way I was going with my car before I blew it up. Now I am pretty discouraged so I sold my screen for about $55. :roll:

[superchargedgsr]

seems like alot of work, was pretty easy to just buy the kenwood, install it and load a cd....but whatever works for you....and it is fully touchscreen and all that good stuff...

adam...you think when i get my pile of junk back, you would be able to come up or I could come over to you place and help me install and configure that vafc..since you have done it already....

[Feedman]

seems like alot of work, was pretty easy to just buy the kenwood, install it and load a cd....but whatever works for you....and it is fully touchscreen and all that good stuff...

adam...you think when i get my pile of junk back, you would be able to come up or I could come over to you place and help me install and configure that vafc..since you have done it already....

Sure thing buddy....just holla @ me.... 8)

[C_Note]

The work is half the fun. Plus, I'm the type of guy that looks at an $1100 head unit and says, "Whew! That's a lot of money", whereas I can spend that much on a computer and not think twice about it.

Plus, I have a few computers here (4 PCs and a laptop), and since I've moved last month, I haven't bothered with hooking up the other 3 (2 are good, I use them for work/gaming, 1 is decent, I use it as a Linux box, and the last is fair, I used it as a hardware firewall that fed into my NAT router). I could take the second gaming rig apart (after spending 2 months modifying the case...) and use it, once I replace the Buick. So I wouldn't even really be out of anything, other than time constructing an enclosure to protect and cool everything (probably lexan).

[C_Note]

Well, I did a little more digging around, and found this:

http://www.etronics.com/product.asp?ica ... svbname=16 (http://www.etronics.com/product.asp?icatid=392&stk_code=pylplpk5tvd&svbname=16)

It's double-din, but affordable. Almost too affordable, have any of you heard anything about it?

[xjoewhitex]

looks like i found my new cd player... 8) , I heard some people saying pyle was a good brand to go with and thats a very good price...

[narfdanarf]

From my personal experience Pyle is exactly what it sounds like. Such shoddy workmanship goes into every Pyle product it amazes me. What do I know about car audio though :roll: I'm sure there is someone on here who will argue and say they had it and it did them fine blah blah blah.

[xjoewhitex]

Are they that bad?? :?

[Feedman]

From my personal experience Pyle is exactly what it sounds like. Such shoddy workmanship goes into every Pyle product it amazes me. What do I know about car audio though :roll: I'm sure there is someone on here who will argue and say they had it and it did them fine blah blah blah.

Thats the funniest thing I have heard all day. Whats wrong with you guys, don't you see the irony of the brand name Pyle=Pile.

I feel that even if it was a good brand I don't think I would own it..for exapmple Gm Products.... 8)

[narfdanarf]

uh yeah, most of the Pyle screens I've seen that are motorized aren't fully motorized. IE...they are motorized out and you manually flip them up. Anyways, we were installing one in the shop and it rolls out and we go to lift up on this pyle and the hinge thing breaks off. We had to end up paying for it of course, and now we try not to install them, and if we do we will ass rape you for the labor.

[xjoewhitex]

never mind on that idea.. Looks good tho :wink:

[superchargedgsr]

pyle lol....why do you think a in dash screen is only like 200 bucks...because its junk....most decent just plain motorized are around 700 I think...more "piles" i have seen you have to pull them out of your dash and it holds its self up by clips that connect the back of the monitor to the head unit...nice setup

[C_Note]

That's why I thought I'd ask. Case closed.

Thanks, fellas

[daveb91]

Pyle is Pile of sh!t enough said.

[kiddefcon]

Yes Pyle is junk. If you want over 100 Songs on a cd, Burn the cd as "data cd" instead of "audio cd" I have 3 or 4 cd's with 200+ songs on them. Or just get an Ipod and get an Itrip, which plays thru radio frequencies (90.1FM) i do believe. Therefor you could have every song on your comp on your Ipod, and be able to listen to them in the car.

[Uber_DSM]

I did the iPod and iTrip, it works out really nice...its like having 3000+ songs in your car. Beats having to search through cds trying to find a good one

[kmfdmk]

seems like alot of work, was pretty easy to just buy the kenwood, install it and load a cd....but whatever works for you....and it is fully touchscreen and all that good stuff..

Sure it's a lot of work, however (not sure your kenwood has 5.1 surround) a fairly awesome Car-PC can be built for that 1100 dollars. Even taking into account dropping 400 dollars on a decent SVGA LCD. For that same 1100 dollars you can get a PC with 5.1 surround sound, WiFi compatability, GPS, XM Radio, DVD Video playback, DVD audio playback, ALL the mp3s you could ever want, music videos, driving mapping directions, games and just about anything else you want, you could even hook it up the AEM Fuel Management/Mapping controller if you had really expensive tastes.

Personally I'll take the car PC over the Kenwood any day. Plus you get geek points for the entire setup. If you wanted to get really extreme you can get a PCI solenoid controller card, and control any number of electric devices from the PC.

Now onto MP3's..
128kbps mp3s are inferior to true cd-quality audio. Normal CD audio in uncompressed format is on average around 10MB/minute. 192kbps mp3s, which are generally accepted as CD quality audio, tend to be around the 1MB/minute size (slightly more). The average song being around 4 minutes long, means that you could fit around 150 -> 175 cd quality songs on a single CD-R, that also means you can fit more than 1100 songs on a DVD-R (assuming a useable size of around 4.6GB). This doesn't take into account overburning your media.

For most listening 192kbps will suffice, however there are certain recordings that you'll notice (on quailty equipment) an audible difference between 192kbps mp3s and 256kbps ones.

There is also the whole other aspect of Variable Bit-Rate mp3s (VBR). These are mp3s audio files that are encoded using an algorithm that compensates the compression accordingly to the complexity and richness of the current position in the audio file. With VBR you can realize more efficient file sizes, however I don't use VBR much.

160kbps can suffice if you're not extremely worried about sound quality. However if you have even the most remote cares about how your music don't even think about touching ANYTHING less than 160kbps.

The difference between the more compressed 128kbps files have less mid-range tone and clarity, and the highs are considerably lessened in a 128kbps mp3 as compared to a 192kbps mp3.

I have a Jensen MP3-3115 (not sure the model number) head unit. 45Wx4 with Line In, RCA out, AM, 3 band FM, CD audio, data MP3 CD-R, data MP3-CD-RW, mixed mode CD-R (mp3 + data), as well as VBR mp3 compatability. I swear the only thing it doesn't do is wipe my butt (aside from play DVD's, and receive XM radio. I love it, I couldn't ask for a better CD player.

Since it's got both CD-audio and mp3 cd compatability, it works out to 2 minutes Skip protection for CD-audio, and like 5 minutes or something of MP3 playback skip protection. If it skips, it's because the underside of the CD looks like someone took 80 grit sandpaper to it. Seriously this thing will play CD's my computer won't read (Lite-On LD-851S DVD+/-R/RW+CD-R/W, and a Lite-On 48-24-48 CD-RW).

I honestly don't think I'll ever get another head unit, unless it's to get one that supports OGG Vorbis, plays DVD's, and has video out (and built in XM compatability) oh yeah maybe a built in HDD (Hard Drive).

Ok I'm done :D