I'm taking delivery of a new car next week and it's got a CD + MP3 player. Could someone spare the time to explain how one loads MP3 files into the car player. Thanks
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MP3 car players come in three or four types. Dont know what type yours is, probably 1
1/ Plays MP3s you have burned to CD, play like a regular CD. You can burn lots and lots of MP3s to a single CD
2/ HAs a USB socket. Plays MP3s from a USB memory stick you have pre loaded on it from your PC
3/ Has an inbuilt hard drive, usually the hard drive slide out and you load it up via your PC
4/ Just has a socket you plug your regular IPOD type thing in,
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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You need a PC and software to "rip" your existing CD's to MP3 format.
A good free ripper can be had from: www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml
Once you have "ripped" the discs then you will need to use a CD writer such as "Nero" to burn the MP3 files onto a blank disk. You can expect to get about 11 to 12 hours of music onto one MP3 disc and if your car player supports WMA files about double that.
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Thanks for your time. I'm not sure which type it might be, the car is a FIAT Grande Punto 1.9 Multijet Sporting. I have the necessary software to compile MP3 CDs. (DBpower AMP Music Converter & Record Now). I'm not too fussed about being able to copy from commercial CD's, most of my music collection is on vinyl.
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The beauty being that you can rip your vinyl accross to to MP3 format. Piece of cake.
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There is an alternative.....
www.roadkillontheweb.com/images/s_magad.jpg
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There is an alternative..... www.roadkillontheweb.com/images/s_magad.jpg
Back in 1964 I had something similar in an Austin A90. It didn't do the vinyl much good.
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Will I live long enough to rip all my 1950s/60s 45s? Will the player read CD-RW discs, my old car's multichanger would only read CD-R discs.
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I say it was a POC with the full irony intoned originally by the RAF in WW2. Loads of wiring, preamps, some dodgy software but I got there in the end !
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>>You need a PC and software to "rip" your existing CD's to MP3 format.
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Windows Media Player does it, you dont need to buy software or even download freeware.
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>>Windows Media Player does it, you dont need to buy software or even download freeware
True, but I don't think WMP10 supports ripping to MP3 by default, only WMA, which my in car MP3 player can't handle. Guess who forgot and had to batch convert 600 WMAs to MP3 yesterday :-(
Having said that there do appear to be plug-ins for WMP10 that allow MP3 ripping :-
www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/plug...e
Presumably then one needs to go into tools > options > copy music > copy settings in WMP10 to change the default to MP3.
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You can expect to get about 11 to 12 hours of music onto one MP3 disc and if your car player supports WMA files about double that.
If one compiles a CD of MP3 files, with tracks grouped into folders, will the car player recognise the folder/file structure?
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If you use the 'make MP3 CD' option in a programme like Nero, you simply add the required ripped MP3 files to the compilation and the programme does the rest to produce the correct format. The resulting CD works fine in an CD/MP3 player. I have made several discs without problems for my Pioneer CD/MP3/WMA unit.
I've tended to rip the files at 192kbits/sec, rather than the minimum 128kbits/sec, as this should improve the quality. You can still get about 8 CDs as MP3s on one CD. That said I'm not convinced it makes much difference in the noisy environment of a car.
JS
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I have loads of CD-Rs that I've made for my old car's multichanger. Using DBpower AMP I can convert those to MP3, and record them to another CD-R (or RW if the player will read them). What I'd like to know is, if I name the folders in which I store the MP3 files (e.g. Kinks Selection) will a car MP3 player enable me to choose a set of tracks by the name I have given the folder on the CD? I don't tend to listen to commercial CDs, since I prefer to make my own selections from my vinyl collection.
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In my wife's yaris the CD / MP3 / WMA player displays the name of the folder (this name is either from the original CD, or given by you) and yes you can choose the folder by name.
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When copying the MP3s to disc make sure you give the tracks in each folder ( assuming you use a seperate folder for each album) file names starting with 01, 02 for tracks 1 and 2 etc. as most car MP3 players don't recognise the track number from the ID3 tag , and will default to playing the tracks in alphabetical order.
Hope that makes a vague amount of sense.
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Hope that makes a vague amount of sense.
Makes complete sense..... thanks. That's the kind of info I need. I did my IT "apprenticeship" on Acorn Archimedes machines, and I struggle with these Windows applications that want to do everything for you, including lots of stuff you don't want them to do.
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Spamcan
I've not copied 'home compilations' to MP3, but when compiling an MP3 CD of comercial albums I've found Nero insists on ordering the album folders in alphabetical order on the disc. Never bothered to try to change that, as it's not a big problem. However, the player plays the album tracks in the correct order, so it looks like Nero identifies them correctly to achieve that. Would this not be the case with a home compilation? WMP9 seems to be defaulted to MP3 128kbits/sec for ripping, so that's presumably been changed for v10. With 'normal' CDs the 'find album information' function is useful as it identifies the album and names the tracks for display on the player. I've found this can suffer from spelling errors and sometimes the order of the tracks is wrong, which needs some editing!
JS
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>>Nero identifies them correctly to achieve that. Would this not be the case with a home compilation?
The problem is that although just about an PC based software player can read the ID3 tag info in an MP3 file and hence decide what order to play the tracks in, my in car MP3 player can't do that. It is 'smart' enough to read the ID3 tag and display the artist / album /track title info. but isn't smart enough to change the order of playback files based on the information in the ID3 tag. Hence I 'spoon feed' it by making the file names an alphabetical match for the track numbering.
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Ah, so it's a function (if that's the right word) of your player. Did a check on mine today (Pioneer) while I was out. Nero has allocated a folder for each CD, ordering them in alphabetical order of title. Each track has a sequential number within the folder and the player plays them in that order. Titles, album title etc can be called up on the display but it's the folder and track number that define the play order, not the title. So, I guess a 'home produced' CD compilation would be treated in the same way.
JS
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