MP3 player for your truck?

[Eagle]

Being that I am a techno weenie I love to listen to music on my computer. The latest craze in the music world is MP3. It actually isn’t that new but that’s another story. My question is... Does anyone know of a manufacturer that makes a head unit that will read and play MP3 files? I have searched high and low and found nothing. Wouldn’t it be great to have one CD in your truck that holds 150 of your favorite songs. That’s about 10 hours of listening pleasure.

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98 Sport 4.0L SOHC auto
Drilled Airbox
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

 

[MikeX]

im almost positive that you can play a regular old cd that you burned mp3's onto after downloading them. i dont think that you need a specific mp3 player. When you download a song from the internet and burn it to a cd it will work in a regular player.

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94 explorer 4x4 (pre-runner)v-6

 

[felsmann]

Mike, that would be nice, but no. To play the songs on regular CDs (on car or home stereo)they need to be converted rom .mp3 to .wav and then burned into a CD. .wav files take tons more space than MP3's, hen 10 hr of listening.

Eagle, I heard somewhere that noone is making one yet, but that there may be something coming out with a CD Player, and a flash card player.

Hope this helps!

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Juan Felsmann
'97 Sport 4WD 5spd
Warrior Twist
www.explorer4x4.com/thaven_juan.jpg

 

[RPheezy]

Hey Folks, it's only a matter of time before companies come out with mp3 players for cars. Many companies already make walkman style mp3 players like the rio, sony music stick, etc. Pretty soon, there will be devices that you can download music on from you computer and plug it in to your car stereo, your home stereo, anywhere. Also, look out for head units with internet access and gps. palm pilots already have internet access and it's only a matter of time until they will be in vehicles. Can it be that it was all so simple?

Raphael

 

[mattadams]

I'll add my little tidbits. You can burn MP3's to CD using Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.0. HOWEVER, they take up the same amount of time on the CD as a WAV file, so its not like you get 100 MP3's to a CD, you only get as many as would regularly squeeze on to a CD. As for making a car MP3 player, not many companies are burning the midnight oil to create one, seeing as how MP3's are illegal to possess them for more then 3 days (I think thats the rule, I'm probably gonna get yelled at though). But I know they are not legal to possess unless you own the CD as well. I don't believe there are any MP3 players available except for the walkman type, and even those have a big warning label on them that say that MP3's are illegal to own unless you want it just to listen to so you can decide whether to buy the CD or not, or if you own the CD as well.

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Matt Adams
94 Explorer 4-door nick-named "Tippy"
http://bart.is-s.com/~explorers/explorer/explorer.html

 

[Eagle]

O.K. Here is another thought. Has anyone heard about any portable CD players that will play MP3’s.

MATTADAMS: You are partially right about fitting the music on CD’s. What I think you mean is that you can fit as much music on a CD depending on the type of format you are using. If you are using an audio format (In this case a standard CD or *.WAV formats)you are restricted to 75 minutes. If you start to use a compression utility you are restricted to a data limit of 650 megs. There are pros and cons of both but if you use a data format you can stick hundreds of songs on one CD. (depending largely on the average length of the song of course.) As for the legality. YES if you are pirating songs they are illegal. Then aging any song that is pirated in any format tape, video, DAT, CD are illegal. But I have never seen an MP3 stop working after three days. At least not from the sight I belong to. What I do know is that the music industry needed another format instead of MP3 to safeguard pirating of their music. The MP3 format is a non secured format meaning it was not developed with security settings in mind. Nor is it going to was the last thing I heard. Instead the music industry is trying VERY hard (and losing) to adapt a few new formats. The primary one is *.WMF (Windows Media Format) This has security built into it that can have time stamps embedded into the file. So after 3 days the file is useless. But not to worry there are cracking programs out for this Dead Link Removed Well I hope this helps. Just a little F.Y.I.


[This message has been edited by Eagle (edited 03-10-2000).]

 

[The Godfather]

I just read in car and driver that GM is making an MP3 player for cars. I forgot when they said it was coming out.

I think the time you can have an MP3 is 1 day before the guys in the black van show up and drag you away. I still haven't heard of someone being arrested for MP3 possesion. What I like doing is downloading the whole album and if I like it, I buy it.

I've been thinking about this for awhile now, it would be possible to take an old computer, toss a bigger HD in it and hook it up to a car amplifier. It's kinda confusing if you aren't a techy so I would go into details, but it can be done with some work. With the amount of room in an Explorer it would be perfect to put it in.

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93 XLT 4 door
Big, green, and slow

 

[rgomez]

I have just bought the Rio MP3 player 500
($265). It sounds great and it´s easy to use.

You can download any song you want for free and you can play it in your explorer using a cd cassette adapter instead of your headphones.

It´s very small and only use one AA battery enough to play 12 hours of continue music.

I highly recommend it.

Hope this help

Robert

 

[Len]

There is a portable CD player that will play MP3s right from a cd. It's called Mambo X.

Website is www.mambox.com

 

[rock883]

I saw that mambox mp3 cd player at direct411.com or maybe its 411direct.com and on the product wieght it said it was 5.5 punds! Imagine that. Sure that would be very great for portability. on the mamborx website they also siaid they did have a car mp3 player in the making, so you might want to check that out.

 

[Maniak]

Matt,
.mp3 files cannot be burned directly onto a CD (as audio). They can be burned as data and when done this way take up around 1/10th the amount of space a .wav file will. This is why the record lables are so upset about people putting .mp3 files for download. An .mp3 file can be CD quality but take up 1/10th the size of the original wav file. This means people can download cd quality files from the internet and instead of getting 10 meg files they are only downloading 1 meg files. If you burn data onto a cd (like an .mp3 files) but burn it as an audio cd it will take up the normal ammount of space but it won't be audio.. (other than static).. To burn an Audio cd the .mp3 file need to be converted to a .wav file first which can be done by using winamp and setting the output from the sound board to the hard drive. When it writes to the hard drive the file it writes will be .wav. At this point you can burn it using the Adaptec EZ-Cd creator (I use it at home and at work).

http://www.mp3.com has quite a bit of information about this..




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Mark
mark@legendz.com
http://www.legendz.com/~mark
Off-Road and Motorcycle Information, Pictures and Movies
Click Dead Link Removed to see our Explorer Specs

[This message has been edited by Maniak (edited 03-14-2000).]

 

[mrjones98e]

you have to get a converter type thing , or download it off the internet, just so you can get the cd's burned.

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Ryan Jones
98 eddie baurer 4x4
2 inch lift
32x11.50 buckshots
manik brush gaurd and go rhino tail light gaurds
hella black majik driving light
Surco 45x60 safari rack
jbl door speakers and kicker fifteen

92 explorer with two inches of lift
30x9.50 mud kings

mrjones98e@hotmail.com

 

[Kris Guilbeaux]

About that APex DVD player Eagle was talking about. It is said to be one of the best players on the market to date. The company I work for bought a bunch of these DVD players to sell in our stores. I got to take one home to compare to my pioneer and have to say the features on the player is nice. plus it is region free(ie plays dvd's from any country)... But as of now our company is sold every player and have none in stock. If you find one and plan on buying a player buy this player... Trust me....


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Kris Guilbeaux
1992 Navajo Lx 5-speed
attempting 4x4 convertion
--
http://www.tisd.net/~guilbeau/explorer.html

 

[Eagle]

Well after doing some more research I have come up with one unit that is like a modified RIO. Check it out: http://www.mp3kit.com

Also for your home you can now play DVD’s, CD’s and MP# all from one unit. You get all this for the low price of 180 green backs. Yes. Folks you heard me right. A DVD player that also plays MP3 in your house for only 180. See for your self the Apex 600a. (as seen on ZDNet) http://www.ugeek.com/features/apex/dvdapex600a.htm


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98 Sport 4.0L SOHC auto
Drilled Airbox
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

 

[rjkunkle]

Aiwa is going to release an in-dash unit that can read *.mp3 files as well as the usual *.cda udio files of regular cd's. It was in one of the last 2 popular science magazines. It will retail for $350. Expected release is june 2000.

 

[Tony91Sport]

MY cd burner takes about 1 hr 15 minutes to make a 70 min cd, but it does all the converting for me, all i do is pick the file, and it records it into audio format. My girlfriend has a diff. cd burner and hers takes about 40 min to burn a cd, and she has to change the files first.

Tony 91 Sport