car mp3 players (hard disk variety)

[jackuzi]

I am interested in setting one of these up in my new car. There's a 20Gb one available for £299 that you can use in the house as well (seperate docking bays).

Anyone have any experience with these units?

Any advice appreciated.

Uzi

[dh140770]

http://empeg.comms.net

I've got a 10gb mStation. A discontinued product from Traxdata.

Its Ok, not staggering but sufficient to compete with card noise and traffic noise.

When stationary you can here the difference from CD.

I recorded at 128k and have 2,500 tracks on it. You should achieve 5000 at that quality.

However, my head unit already has a cd autochanger (in the boot) and a satnav plugged into it and there were no phono connecters to plug the unit into the back of he head unit.

I ended up using the (supplied) RF unit. you tune a FM station into it rahter than direct connectiojn. this is why i used 128k - not much use using higher on FM.

some tracks sound excellent some absoultly unlistenable. I suspect its a combination of the encoding of the MP3 file - although it sounds fine thru my sound card) and an inferior mp3 decoder in the unit.

I suspect a direct connection and higher recording quality would yiled much better results.

Having winged I'm still happy with it.

[backtothefuture]

IMHO if you connect the car mp3 player using proper leads (instead of RF tuning it) and burn all your mp3s (from original cds) using at least 128kb/s bitstream , you shouldn't be able to tell the difference from CD. ... go to 192kb/s and you got CD quality!

I got a Phillips MP3-CD walkman , and the mp3s play as good as a normal CD would sound...

for my next car stereo , I'd definately be inclined towards a MP3 player... though thinking about that, it may be worth getting a CD player/changer that reads/plays mp3 off a CD; that way you got versatility

[TooManyHobbies]

The quality of MP3's is ok on standard speakers but if you use them with amps and HQ speaker the difference is much more noticeable.

Mark

[minimad]

I've been doing a lot of playing with ripping my CDs to mp3 recently. and discovered that I can hear lots of "noise" with a 128k mp3 on the PC. went up to 160 and it was better, but I now only rip my mp3s at 192k.

I would expect that 192 on the HD machine with the decent amps and speakers and you would not hear a difference.

Does the 10 gig from traxdata skip at all?

I've get an occasional skip - or at least what I think is one. It goes through phases - every track will skip every 10 or 20 seconds and then nothing. this may be FM interference rahter than skipping tho.

I would agree about direct plug rahter than FM, but I'm hoping to get rid of the car before its first MOT due in Nov so don't want go to the additional expense of replacing the head unit thats compatible with the kit I heave for less than 12 months.

If I dont replace the car (i.e. the wife STILL says no) then I will replace the head unit and get something with phonos on it.