Is it just me or are car stereos dropping the CD?

[JPB]

How long to DAB MP3 being the norm though?

Quite some time with a bit of luck as domestic DAB (II, that works) has yet to be rolled out in the UK and much of Europe, though cars are one of the few environments where DAB II, once it comes along in the next decade or so, will be of real use since you'd be pushed to notice the loss in a moving car, no matter how smooth and quiet.

[hobby]

do they pick up radio 4 longwave?

Looking at the ebay listing it says AM/FM, however on the Dignity website it says just FM... As I don't use the old MW or LW stations much (if at all) and I like to use an SD card for record storage/playing I've ordered one. I'll let you know what it says when it comes...

[rich.]

i would be dificult to cope without radio 4...

[Maaarrghk]

Sorry to hi-jack your thread Mitsuru, but I do wonder if these new-fangled gadgets you mention play flac files.

I discovered these in abundance while stealing music that was the sole property of Mr Mozart from the recently closed BTjunkie torrent site. C'mon then Wolfie, sue me! Or at least start another thread about it.

Turns out that flac files are about 50% bigger than mp3 files, but are lossless. So you get full CD quality. Some mp3's are so bad that even I can spot the loss of quality.

There is a free software download called Foobar2000 that will allow you to transfer your flac files to either mp3 or wav (CD) format whilst keeping the flac version on file. That way you get full CD quality in your car without the need for CD's.

[mr rusty]

I detest this sort of 'progress' with a vengeance!!!! Horrible sterile compressed mp3 sound with half the frequencies missing...quantity over quality for the cloth eared generation....grrrrrrrrrr. MP3's are ghastly, but there's a whole generation now who know no better. I doubt flac or it's apple cousin, alec or whatever it was called, will ever catch on now because people like my children expect to be able to carry thousands of tracks around with them all the time.

[mach1rob]

I do like the look of that! I notice that with new stereos they all have the channel memory stored so that if you wire them up the "old" way where when you turn off the ignition they get no power they lose all the presets... Does anyone know of a simple to follow wiring diagram which explains how to wire up a new stereo in an old car which prevents me losing the presets?!

BTW M, what price do they tend to go for?

They need a constant 12v feed to keep the memory. There should be a red and yellow wire coming from the back of the set, red one is switched so it turns on and off with the ignition, the yellow having constant 12v. The easiest way is a wire direct from the battery (fit an inline fuse) or the fusebox if there isn't one behind the dash close by.

[Landy Mann]

I detest this sort of 'progress' with a vengeance!!!!

I'm not sure if this afternoon counts as progress or not, I plugged the cassette recorder on the Hifi into my computer and recorded a new mix tape from a grooveshark playlist. I'm don't know if thats modern or old sckool///

[hobby]

Mach1rob, thanks, that's brilliant!

MrRusty, everyone to their own, I'll freely admit to being pretty well tone deaf, so the quality doesn't particularly worry me, I even listen to R2 and Smooth!

[Maaarrghk]

That's the beauty of flac Mr Rusty - your kids can still carry around thaaarrghsands of tracks and can listen to them at full CD quality where ever the equipment exists.

You keep the "master" flac file on your computer, bust it down to mp3 for your mp3 player/mobile phone/crab apple etc, burn a wav version onto a CD for playing on a home stereo and copy flacs onto a usb stick for the car. That's assuming any of the players Mitsuru describes will run flacs, otherwise you are stuck wth low quality mp3's.

I guess the Asian market is the place to look. Two years ago I bought a stereo in the Philippines for playing my mp3's that I had burnt onto DVDs. The player bit of it was the size of a normal DVD player and played a whole list of formats, many of which I had never heard of - what's a MR OKO file? Dunno, but it played them as well, and all for 20 quid. The amplfier bit cost about 50 quid and is 250W per channel - and that's RMS, not "peak" power or "music" power that is often quoted to make us think we are buying something 3 or 4 times as powerful as it really is.

Just don't get me started on Steve Jobbies and his attempt to take over the world from his grave........

[Mitsuru]

Just don't get me started on Steve Jobbies and his attempt to take over the world from his grave........

Well lets getting him spinning in his grave!
What speed would you like? 33, 45 or 78 rpm