Opinions of MP3 players?

[:Jear:]

Gday everyone, long time viewer, first time poster...
anyway, Im going to be upgrading the stereo in my BG astina. Im thinking of spending around $400-500 on the HU, and am thinking of going for an mp3 player. What do you guys reckon? any brands/models preferred?

and another thing, how do you get the rear speaker out of the back pods, do I really have to take off the big plastic panels?

[bRaDiNhO]

In regards to taking out rear speakers.... piece of cake. The speaker covers are just clipped in. Give them a firm pull to unveil the speaker!

Can't help with MP3 decks.
~Brad~

[Dogo]

are u coming to the melbounrne cruise coming up ?

I can show u my mp3 setup there if u want.
I have a removeable 40gig mp3 hard drive with a control unit in the front. u can use whatever size hard drive u want , i believe.

[JynX]

These days you dont need to go the HU/HD setup. All the new HU are supporting MP3 off the disk. 700 odd MB to a cd thats alot of songs.

[Dogo]

depends on the quality i spose. im encoding my mp3s at abt 140mb per cd. tried it lower and it sounded ****e. but maybe i can just tell the difference.

and i spose it depends on the quality of ur stereo components too.

but I have 40gig and didnt pay much more than a mp3 HU. so i figure why carry around a pile of cds ?! and have to search to find what i want to listen to.

and 3000+ songs on random is kinda fun :lol:

[:Jear:]

Dogo, yea i am most probably coming on the melb cruise, im going to be in g'long the night before so mike said i should meet up with him and a few of the other guys earlier.

[Dogo]

cool!

i might just add that my mp3 HD is above the price range u gave above tho...

i didnt notice that b4.

[Critter]

Well personally I am not a fan of MP3 "quality", bit of a contradiction in terms.

Having said that JVC makes one under $400 that is apparently quite good by all accounts, as MP3 players go.

[CareBear]

My brother got a combined DVD/(S)VCD/MP3 player for his car (he lent a screen a while, but none at the moment) which works pretty decently. It's a cheap buy with ok quality. If you'd like I can find some details about it!

Personally, I'm going for a Microsoft Xbox setup!

Xbox: $179.99
Chip: $38 (so you can run XBMP and bigger HDD)
120GB HDD: $200
Xbox High Definition AV Pack: $19.99
Wi-Fi router: around $100 maybe?
some type of monitor: $400 maybe?
Dolby Digital car-stereo setup: anyone have ideas or suggestions?

The whole point with this setup is the in-car Wi-Fi router, which should enable you to auto-syncronize all your media files from your computer as you drive into your driveway @ home (I'm working on the software). And you can play multiplayer games against others sitting in their own car, hehe :) I'm also considering a regular computer setup, where I have different options available and it can run 12V. The next time I drive past someone's open Wi-Fi Zone, I will get my latest e-mails, hehe!

Why Xbox?
Because it can play virtually any types of media, and it's CHEAP!
You can either choose to run Linux on it, which have different dashboard options available making navigation and stuff easy.

Or use the Xbox Media Player like I'm gonna do:
http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/

Screenshot:
http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/sourceforge/xbplayer/XBMP24_screenshot02.jpg

/Sondre

[MrShadow]

MP3 "quality", bit of a contradiction in terms

What, like Army Intelligence? :wink: :lol:

[pr1mo]

Dogo, yea i am most probably coming on the melb cruise, im going to be in g'long the night before so mike said i should meet up with him and a few of the other guys earlier.

yeah jarad, check the latest postings on the melb cruise section Re: meething up with the ballarat boys earlier :P

cheers mike

[Dogo]

just to argue against 'mp3 prejudice' :?

i think u'll find that if u keep the compression down so that the files have a better resolution, theres pretty much no difference.

Downloaded 5mb songs, yeh they sound like crap.

But I've run my mp3s against the original cd version through sound wave analysers ( out of curiosity ), and there was 0.0002% Average Difference per Second of Audio between the two versions.

The quality of your encoder makes a huuge difference too ! :D

[Pernod]

the quality difference is neglible for most forms of music (like it should be impossible to tell the diff with ears) for anything encoded at over 128 (i normally use 192 though) :-)

Its just that it is coded differently - hence smaller. In laymans terms, normal CDA has the music stored as a series of synchronised music files which are played overtop and under each other etc.
MP3 simply breaks a song into a finate number of freq ranges, and records a volume for each freq at any given point in time. So long as these ranges are small enough (ie anything coded at 128+) it is physically impossible for the ear to tell the difference between the two forms.

The real issue with MP3 quality is the care taken to encode it - if it is not encoded right it will sound like crap as there will be extra frequencies being played, or gaps in frequencies. CDA normally doesn't have this as each file is kept seperate, and hence can be more accurate.

:-)

[Pernod]

oh, i forgot to post the other BIG difference between the two.

If you hit a string, it vibrates for a while. It the same way, when there is a large sound, the fibres in the ear continue to vibrate.

Normally (with CDA) the brain automatically filters any low level niose straight after a loud noise (to counteract the ongoing vibrations). These smaller vibrations are still present though.

By encoding MP3 by frequency blocks, it is possible to identify the 'extra' vibrations that the brain will block, and simply not include these in the song (as we wouldn't technically hear them anyway).
This means less data = smaller files.

The higher the bit rate that MP3's are recorded at, the more of the extra vibrations they contain. For most types of music, 128 is enough to accuratley replicate what the braing hears.

This also explains the small difference in the wave forms that you saw...

Hope this was of interest?

[Dogo]

good description :D

You're definitely right about the encoders. The decoder quality too is important. There are specialist programs that are available which are considered the best available in mp3 encoding/decoding. unfortunately, these arn't consumer friendly and generally arnt known about except for professionals in the field. And they take a hell of a lot longer than the consumer level encoders !

I usually use a customized version of Real Jukebox. The customization being a 3rd-party enhanced mp3 encoder. Works for me.

I figure with all the other car noises etc, its hardly worth carting around a pile of cds just to avoid a very minor quality loss from mp3 files.

[Pernod]

I totally agree. In actual fact, with the amount of extrenal noise in a car, it would be nearly impossible to pick up any difference at all in the two tracks. Basically, the 'reverb' sounds that are removed would be most likley drowned out by the extra nioses around the car anyway.

I actually run a 8 disc changer in day to day stuff, and either a removable MP3 player or the work laptop :-) when driving for longer times.

[:Jear:]

Just got my new MP3 player today, a JVC KD-s895 and a new set of pioneer speakers (not really mind blowing but then again I wasnt hoping to win any sound offs in the near future anyway) but have to wait untill next week for JB-HiFi to install em :evil:

[Sandyman]

Installing can be a bitch. I had to butcher the speaker bracket to fit the speakers in.

Hey dave, would you mind telling me how your HD is set up and connected with the HU and all?

[Dogo]

sure thing!

I have a tray in both the car and the computer. Both with the relevent circuit board in them The HD itself is a normal PC 40gig HD inside a portable ventilated case with controls and a lcd screen on the front. This also contains the common circuit board/chips for both state.

When in the computer, it hooks up to the IDE Bus and runs as a normal HD. At normal HD speeds. I encode my cds straight to it. Abt 5 min per CD is guess.

When in the car I can control it from the controls on the front of the HD or there is a hand controller unit up the front. ( the tray is in the boot ). That controller is linked by a data cable running through the car. The whole thing is single-din size so I could've put it up the front but didnt want to. The sound comes from a single pair of RCAs which go into one of the the line-ins on my stereo's DSP unit. ( under the boot floor )

Oh, and its powered from the 12v Accessories wire. From the cig lighter at the moment but I'm going to change that soon, and run a line to a relay which will power it from the fuseblock/distributer in the boot. Im getting a slight line noise coming through which I hope this will get rid of.

It plays MP3 , MP2 ( which i just recently got working. This is DVD quality audio ), and can handle playlists such as those from WinAmp

I'll whack up some photos when i put up my readers ride properly.