[wahoo99]

I know this is the wrong forum but do you all think we could download 250 cd's onto a 80gig drive? I've talked the wife into a phatbox so long as we (she...... :evil_laugh: ) can have the majority of her 80s CDs on the phatbox. Pls. comment as I'd love to get this installed prior to football season...tons of music to listen on the road between now and end of November!!! Go Gators!!!

 

[mac]

In theory, no. A CD will hold 700MB of data (depending on your CD - may be less) so an 80GB hard drive will hold about 115 CD's (still enough for the 80 you are talking about). In practice, it will depend on how much of the CD an album takes up so you should be able to get more, but it would be unlikely to get 250

 

[wahoo99]

Thanks. So it sounds like I will be in the market for 3-4 40gig cards. In turn, I can't believe we'd really care about Great White etc... please, no mocking...hehehehhehehe

 

[collideous]

Thanks. So it sounds like I will be in the market for 3-4 40gig cards. In turn, I can't believe we'd really care about Great White etc... please, no mocking...hehehehhehehe

Don't waste your money on a bunch of 40gig cartridges. Buy a Dension DMP3 and pop in a 160GB drive. Or why not 300GB? It's a whole heck of a lot cheaper, and you won't be exchanging cartridges to switch music.

 

[spockcat]

Thanks. So it sounds like I will be in the market for 3-4 40gig cards. In turn, I can't believe we'd really care about Great White etc... please, no mocking...hehehehhehehe

Don't waste your money on a bunch of 40gig cartridges. Buy a Dension DMP3 and pop in a 160GB drive. Or why not 300GB? It's a whole heck of a lot cheaper, and you won't be exchanging cartridges to switch music.

Then rip the music at a very low bitrate and with 300 gb you can carry all of the music that has ever been recorded right in your car. /WINK/

(got to speak to Mike about these lousy emoticons)

 

[wahoo99]

Too many choices. Lets consider the Phatbox first. Wife does not want any extra gizmos in the cabin.

What are the cons to the Phatbox other than price? We aren't the techno saavy..ie, I don't believe that we'll plug it into anything other than the treg.
I hate and let me underscore hate Itunes. Ugh. Do you have to use Itunes for Ipod? I need to do some more reading on the options.

What I don't want to do is to spend 90% of my time creating directories etc and making this complicated.

 

[collideous]

I hate and let me underscore hate Itunes.

There's an alternative -> http://www.ephpod.com/

Funny you hate iTunes. I hate MusicMatch and RealPlayer. Both of which will never find a place on any of the computers I own.

 

[Tahoe]

Sorry. But I have got to say that ITunes is by far the best music library organizer and player I have ever used. The search features, music store, and organizational capabilities are incredible. The ability to make quick updates to an IPod is outstanding. Give it another try and you might be surprised.


Be careful when you convert your entire music library at a low bit (128 kbps) rate as was stated above. This could cause your music to sound very flat and boring. The nature of mp3 conversion is to crop low and high notes from the song and to offer a more flat range of notes. By converting your CD quality music (Aiff format) to a lower sample rate will only make it sound worse. Stick with a bit rate of 192 Kbps and above for mp3 conversion. Better yet, use 320 Kbps and you will be much happier with the sound quality.

 

[AZBob]

Be careful when you convert your entire music library at a low bit (128 kbps) rate as was stated above. This could cause your music to sound very flat and boring. The nature of mp3 conversion is to crop low and high notes from the song and to offer a more flat range of notes. By converting your CD quality music (Aiff format) to a lower sample rate will only make it sound worse. Stick with a bit rate of 192 Kbps and above for mp3 conversion. Better yet, use 320 Kbps and you will be much happier with the sound quality.

Yeah right. The only people who can tell the difference between a 96kbps MP3 and a 192kbps MP3 are musicians and audiophiles. 128kbps is considered "CD quality" for MP3's. Save your space and and stick with 128kbps for CD-quality, or 96kbps for near-CD quality. I'm sure the stock speakers in the car aren't good enough to notice a difference.

 

[wahoo99]

How user friendly are these outher units/platforms? I like the idea of voice command as I don't have to take my eyes off the road. If Ipod makes the most sense then I'll have to do more research.

 

[collideous]

I have two players.

Nomad Jukebox (upgraded to 30GB): portable but big, does not fit well anywhere in the Treg, even at 30GB way too small for my music library

Dension DMP3: fits nicely into the CD changer compartment, accepts standard IDE hard-drives up to 300GB, display totally customizable, directory browser

 

[wahoo99]

thanks for the input. I saw your install in your gallery. Did you recess the head unit part? I wish someone in the atlanta area had these devices so i could see it demonstrated.

 

[collideous]

thanks for the input. I saw your install in your gallery. Did you recess the head unit part? I wish someone in the atlanta area had these devices so i could see it demonstrated.

This? http://forums.clubtouareg.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=226

 

[audiluv]

I was an early adopter of the Phatbox and have had one for more than four years now. Generally speaking it is great. Interfacing with the factory head unit is great and sound quality is good.

The downside is there is not great Macintosh support. There some shareware/freeware tools out there for the Mac but if you want to update the OS then you need a PC.

Not sure what else I would use that would work as well.