mp3 in the car

tigerwex

i have an car stereo in the car that is also an mp3 player can any1 tell me if i need to get special discs for this or what

Hal1

Ok, I think you you mean to say is that your car stero is mp3 compatible (not an mp3 player). What it means is that you can burn a copy of all your mp3's onto a cd and your car stero will be able to playback the cd.

Snaga

I assume its a cd/mp3 head unit?

If so it will take a normal cd-r or cd/rw with mp3 files burned onto it. When the cd is placed in the drive you can browse the cd and play whichever mp3's you want.

tigerwex

how many mp3s can u fit on one disc is it just like normal music cds

po0k

You essentially want to burn a data disc of files.

Use your burning app of choice, select an ISO compilation, pop the tunes you want into the compilation, burn it Disc-At-Once(DAO) mode, and select "Finalise Disc/session".

You can use ordinary CDRs.
Or CDRWs if your head-unit supports it.

sceptre

tigerwex wrote:

how many mp3s can u fit on one disc is it just like normal music cds

Oh no, it's quite a bit more than that. How much depends on the bitrate you've used. If you're using run-of-the-mill-sounds-barely-acceptable 128kps files it's about a meg a minute. 700 megs will give you 700 minutes per disc then. For more acceptable bitrates (say 192 or standard VBR) it's about three quarters of that.

unknownguest

128kbps is MORE than acceptable for car audio.

Most ears can't tell the difference. And unless your speakers are worth a few hundred dollars alone, then you're not going to be able to tell the difference anyway (basing this on majority of human ears)

So unless your in a quite setting with the only audible sound to be whats pertruding from your expensive speakers, you wont notice a difference, and with the sound of the engine and traffic and basic noise, you will be just as satisfied with 128kbps.

you will be able to fit, on average 12 albums per CD. That's average, could be more could be less.

John R

unknownguest wrote:

128kbps is MORE than acceptable for car audio.

Most ears can't tell the difference. And unless your speakers are worth a few hundred dollars alone, then you're not going to be able to tell the difference anyway (basing this on majority of human ears)

So unless your in a quite setting with the only audible sound to be whats pertruding from your expensive speakers, you wont notice a difference, and with the sound of the engine and traffic and basic noise, you will be just as satisfied with 128kbps.

Your cloth-ears may not be able to tell the difference mate but as long as I can actually hear the music the lack of high-frequency defenition is very noticeable. In fact with the more intrusive background noise present in cars I find it even more distracting to have poor quality audio. and I have a 150 euro head unit connected to the original speakers

If you find 128kbps mp3s to be perfect then fine but I would say most people are easily able to tell the difference.

unknownguest

John R wrote:

If you find 128kbps mp3s to be perfect then fine but I would say most people are easily able to tell the difference.

I thought it was well known that 128 is near cd quality and majority of humans can't notice any difference.

Just what i read in numerous places. 192 is obviously better yes. All depends on the individual.

Then there is Variable Bit Rate, best option, uses necessary bitrate for each second of the track so your getting best sound and save a lil bit of space on the parts that only need 96kbps encoding etc.

2 Espressi

128 is fine for headphones/Laptop speakers, which is why it was adopted by a lot of rippers as the default. 192, or VBR trades some compactness for much better quality.

dcGT

John R wrote:

Your cloth-ears may not be able to tell the difference mate but as long as I can actually hear the music the lack of high-frequency defenition is very noticeable. In fact with the more intrusive background noise present in cars I find it even more distracting to have poor quality audio. and I have a 150 euro head unit connected to the original speakers

If you find 128kbps mp3s to be perfect then fine but I would say most people are easily able to tell the difference.

I agree. There's a severe lack of quality in the mid/high frequencies (symbols/some vocals etc.) Sometimes, it doesn't take a high quality or expensive setup to notice this - but it emphasises the point. I encode everything at 192 kb/s. Having said that, there are some tracks I've heard encoded at 128 kb/s, and they are quite good quality, but usually these tracks lack a lot of the mid/higher frequencies where I think the lack of quality is most noticable, particularly in a system with a very high frequency-to-noise ratio.
This discussion always creates a divide between the for and against MP3 people :rolleyes:

Any tigerwex, basically, if you're fussy about music/sound quality and clarity and you think you can hear the difference between 128 and 192 - then encode @ 192kb/s. If you just want to play the songs at reasonable quality and fit as many tracks on the disc as possible, then encode @ 128kb/s

DC.

viking

1 cd held up to 11 albums for me @ 192k bitrate.

dcGT

viking wrote:

1 cd held up to 11 albums for me @ 192k bitrate.

Personally, I prefer not to measure in 'albums' as it's too vague and the size of an album can vary too much. The best way to measure is in 'minutes of music' I suppose (as sceptre said above)

DC.

Canis Lupus

128 is fine for most ppl unless yur an audio nut then 192 is the next best.

Problem there is recording in 192 means u won't be able to fit as many songs on yur cd cos it will mean the song sizes are bigger.

Roughly speaking though most songs translate to between 3 to 5 mb (obviously it varies given the size of the song).

Therefore take an average cd size of 650mb and do yur maths (we'll take the 5mb here) gives an average disk the storage capacity of 130 songs. But obviously u will get more on if u have a 700mb cd and as well if yur songs comprise of mostly smaller than 5mb.

(thats for all the non techies, sorry if I sound patronising to the tech heads)