Head Units and External Hard Drives

[Fast1one 10+ year member]

Your best bet will usually be an Ipod believe it or not...Im buying one. Its just very convenient and a ton of head units already support the interface. Plus you can take it with you and use it anywhere if you so please. If your simply looking for more space, then an external media player is your best bet.

Media gate has been the best one I have found http://www.airlinktek.com/english/prod_mg25.htm it has its own interface and a remote. Supports various formats including HDTV and 5.1 audio if your into those kind of things. They Usually run about 80 bucks. Add a 7 inch screen and a 120gig hard drive which usually runs at about 100 dollars and your looking at about 300 For the whole setup

you can buy an Ipod for that price and its a lot less work....Plus if I buy it at costco I can take it back whenever the hell I want //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[Tommy Ceez 10+ year member]

Are you able to use .M3U playlists?

Have not tried yet....but I will report back my findings

 

[Tommy Ceez 10+ year member]

Ok peeps. For get the hold HU thing. Do what I did 10 months ago.....and buy a 7" or bigger touch screen and a mini computer with a big @ss hard drive. Go and read this.http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin. You can do it all from gps,xm,mp3 and dvd.

FoR rEaLz???!!???!!

BTW, a carputer might be nice in a fantasy land, but in NYC, Im not installing ANYTHING like that in a car.

 

[brad1011a 10+ year member]

FoR rEaLz???!!???!!
BTW, a carputer might be nice in a fantasy land, but in NYC, Im not installing ANYTHING like that in a car.

Tell me about it. I live in Long Beach, CA and I'll never forget when I had to run up to my apartment for a few minutes once, and left the HU in the car (it was a totally removable one - my car was in the apartment building's locked garage), and when I got back to the car the driver door window was smashed and the HU was gone.

A car-puter would be gone even faster, even if I could figure out a detachable screen..

 

[scootinZ 10+ year member]

When I found out that my Blaupunkt doesn't really support playlists I tried 'favorites' folders, but after selecting different content on the same drive it doesn't remember what you were last listening to if you go back to the fav. folder.
Fortunately the Blaupunkt has an SD card slot (2GB max.) that I use for playlists with the hard drive holding the main library. That way when switching back and forth it remembers where you were.

As far as I know Kenwood handles playlists better than the rest. The latest version of their software can assemble 'auto-playlists' based on tempo and volume (besides the manually created playlists).

http://www.kenwoodusa.com/Dealers/Us1/flyers/Kenwood_Car_Excelon_2007.pdf

Pioneer advertises Windows playlist support, but after my experience with the Blaupunkt I would verify that they resume properly after turning the car off/on.

Clarion makes some USB units (one with time alignment), but I don't know much else about them.

Can someone tell me what time alignment is? Learning as I go....

thanks...

 

[brad1011a 10+ year member]

Can someone tell me what time alignment is? Learning as I go....thanks...

Time alignment brings speakers 'in phase' with each other. Since rear speakers and subwoofers are farther away than the fronts, time alignment can delay the sound a tiny bit from the fronts so that the sound from all the speakers arrives at your ears at the same time.

From what I understand it can have a dramatic effect.

 

[scootinZ 10+ year member]

Time alignment brings speakers 'in phase' with each other. Since rear speakers and subwoofers are farther away than the fronts, time alignment can delay the sound a tiny bit from the fronts so that the sound from all the speakers arrives at your ears at the same time.
From what I understand it can have a dramatic effect.

Thanks Brad.

Just learning all the bells ans whistles as I shop for a HU.

Don't think TA will matter much to me then. This is for a 69 Vette. The rears and fronts are pretty **** close. Plus this set up is not to win any competitions. I just want to hear the thing with the top down!

 

[Keymaster]

I have been troubleshooting this issue with the Pioneer 6900 for a couple of weeks now. It apparently is not compatible with the Creative Zen M 30Gig player that I have, which really upset me. So then I tried to hook my external 120 Gig USB hard drive using a power inverter and it wouldn't read any audio from that either. So I did some research and the Pioneer manual says it is compatible with FAT8, FAT16 and FAT32 and will support up to 250Gig. Well, my hard drive was set up as NTFS so I transfered all of my data to my computer's hard drive and converted it to FAT32. I put about 15 CD's on it and hooked it up to my Pioneer and it worked! The problem is, during my research, a website stated that you could only have a maximum partition size of 32Gig on a Fat32 system. I could create several partitions, of course, but the Pioneer manual says it cannot read a drive that is partitioned.

My biggest question is, is there a way to partition my entire 120Gigs to FAT32? Another website I went to said that FAT32 supported up to 2 Teryabytes. I'd hate to waste 90 Gigs of hard drive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

PS: In just the few minutes I got to play with it this morning, navigation was great on the headunit. It looks as though I'll be able to set up my music by category, then by artist, then by album. You can use the remote to navigate through all of your music even while a song is playing.

 

[brad1011a 10+ year member]

I have been troubleshooting this issue with the Pioneer 6900 for a couple of weeks now. It apparently is not compatible with the Creative Zen M 30Gig player that I have, which really upset me. So then I tried to hook my external 120 Gig USB hard drive using a power inverter and it wouldn't read any audio from that either. So I did some research and the Pioneer manual says it is compatible with FAT8, FAT16 and FAT32 and will support up to 250Gig. Well, my hard drive was set up as NTFS so I transfered all of my data to my computer's hard drive and converted it to FAT32. I put about 15 CD's on it and hooked it up to my Pioneer and it worked! The problem is, during my research, a website stated that you could only have a maximum partition size of 32Gig on a Fat32 system. I could create several partitions, of course, but the Pioneer manual says it cannot read a drive that is partitioned.
My biggest question is, is there a way to partition my entire 120Gigs to FAT32? Another website I went to said that FAT32 supported up to 2 Teryabytes. I'd hate to waste 90 Gigs of hard drive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

PS: In just the few minutes I got to play with it this morning, navigation was great on the headunit. It looks as though I'll be able to set up my music by category, then by artist, then by album. You can use the remote to navigate through all of your music even while a song is playing.

Yes there are plenty of utilities out there that can do that - just 'Google' it.

I'd still like to know if these new Pioneers can handle playlists.

 

[Keymaster]

Yes there are plenty of utilities out there that can do that - just 'Google' it.
I'd still like to know if these new Pioneers can handle playlists.

Not to sound funny, but what do you mean by "playlists"? From the looks of it, it appears that I can create a folder for each genre of music, then under each genre add the artist, then under the artist add each album. Is that what you mean by "playlists". I haven't actually done that yet. All I did was add 15 folders (albums) from different artists. I am gonna set up genres and so forth once I can partition the whole drive in FAT32.

PS: I think I figured out how to partion the entire 120GB in FAT32. I have a computer at work with Windows ME still on it. According to my research XP and 2000 can't format FAT32 any larger than 32GB, but it can read as high as 2 terabytes. So I can use the Windows ME computer at work to format the entire hard drive (which will be easy since it's USB), and then take it home and fill it up. Let's hope it works. I'll try to keep everyone updated.

 

[headless 10+ year member]

Thanks for the input.
I'd love to have the ability to throw a 500G or something and then I could have access to all my flacs too. 120 would work though, if the extra 40G meant having to seek an extra power source, I'd even be willing to step down to an 80G. What are the known 80G models that work?

Good luck on getting a HU to do this. I recommend a Riocar empeg. You won't hit 500gb, but you can put 2 120gb's in it for a total of 240gb. it'll play flac and it is a badass unit that docks into your vehicle and you generally run through aux-in on your deck (though it's got standard preouts). Can just yank the whole unit from the docking sled and plug it into ethernet in your house to sync music. The unit has a pair of rca preouts and the harness/sled you dock with has 2 pair of them, so when you undock you don't unplug all the wiring, you just yank the ****er. You can then use it with the AC adapter to output through the pair of rca's on the unit itself if you want to use it as an in-house mp3 player (remote is the bomb diggity.)

Only downside is they've been discontinued for 6 or 8 years. They were way too expensive when they got introduced so company went under quickly. What used to cost 1000+$ you can now find with 40gb drives installed for under 400. I got mine with a 20gb for 350.

it runs a linux kernel with built-in web server so you can use it as a streaming mp3 server on your lan (to multiple people at once //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif). Even has a radio tuner kit you can build for it if you want it to replace your deck entirely. You can set up searchable lists based on ANY id3 tags (search by...whatever the **** you want) and use this feature to quickly build ad-hoc playlists in the car while listening to music. It's got about 40 visualization programs if you like the bling look, and they sell lenses of about 24 diff colors for it.

It's got 20 band PEQ (10 per side) with fully adjustable Q and you can adjust the frequencies in 1hz increments, along with adjustable time alignment in 0.1ms increments for each channel... LOL...Only down side is that it's not got subwoofer outputs and has no crossovers of it's own. Playlists can be built and managed on the fly via the remote, and you can search super-fast and append/enqueue lists or single tracks to build your own playlists easily. There is nothing out there that even comes close. The omnifi is a total joke in comparison - mine broke, and the ****er didn't even come with fast forward/rewind abilities), had shitty software and sound quality was lacking... and the music keg is a totally different beast, nowhere near as flexible.

Since the ENTIRE unit removes, no fear of thieves taking it. It's as flexible as a carPC in many ways. A CarPC installed for 3400$ would be a shitty tradeoff compared to this installed by yourself (no harder than a standard deck) for only 3-400. Then again, a CarPC can play divx, etc. too. But can't be removed, so gets stolen.

 

[darren700 10+ year member]

im tempted to get the 6900 however i wonder if it would be fast enough, as my collection of music is 180gb and i want to load the whole library to a hd. i wonder if the library would be slow and unresponsive with that much music...

 

[Eugenics 5,000+ posts]

omni fi is still the king IMO

 

[darren700 10+ year member]

omni fi is still the king IMO

huh? explain please

 

[headless 10+ year member]

Omni Fi was a horrible attempt at making an in-car mp3 deck. It had a shitty ass hideaway box for the (single) harddrive and a long ass cable run to a flimsy faceplate on the dash. It's software was horrible, screen res was very low, it had no ****ing remote(!!!) and no ability to modify playlists in the car at all. Most of the buttons on the faceplate were totally completely and utterly useless. No tweakable EQ or time alignment settings. No RCA outputs. No ability to play flac or ogg. Cheap plastic construction that fails easily. On top of it all, you could either use the 'shipped' software and have NO ability to fast forward/rewind in a track which is totally ****ed when half of your concerts are 2 hour long files....OR you could get a shitty excuse for ff/rw but could no longer even navigate your songs to switch to another track without the unit STOPPING PLAYING...

In short, the Omnifi was a good idea implemented in a horrifically shitty manner.

 

[Keymaster]

im tempted to get the 6900 however i wonder if it would be fast enough, as my collection of music is 180gb and i want to load the whole library to a hd. i wonder if the library would be slow and unresponsive with that much music...

I'll let you know soon....with 20 albums (folders) it took about 15 seconds to start playing. Once playing, though, changing songs is instant, actually faster than changing tracks on a CD. I just formatted an 80 gig drive I had sitting around and I'm gonna start filling it up this weekend. Then I'll see if the lag start time increases or stays the same. Honestly, the start time is not an issue as long as it's tollerable, just as long as changing tracks is quick. I have way more than 80 gigs of music in my collection, but I'm good with just 80 quality gigs of music.

I also set my 20 folders up yesterday by genre, then by artist, then by album and it worked flawlessly. It's nice because over to the right of the display on the HU it tells you how many tracks are in the folder that you are highlighting. I'm really stoked about getting this working, especially since my Creative Zen isn't compatible with the HU. I'll keep ya'll updated.

 

[scootinZ 10+ year member]

Just installed the 690 myself.(same deck but the Premier) I love the navigation and the remote!

After reading the above from Keymaster, I'm even more stoked to mess with it. Since this is just a muscle car, I don't plan on putting a ext. hard drive in the car. I just liked the Ipod and/or thumb drive capability for the occasional cruise night or Sunday drive. But I may buy another one for my outdated Premier Pioneer in the Tahoe.

It's a sweet looking unit as well. It's in a 69 Vette so I did not want anything silver and with a shitload of buttons. Sweet deal on line NEW for $180.00

Keep us posted Keymaster!

 

[darren700 10+ year member]

sweet i hope that it is fast with alot of files, i have a 160gb external hd that i want to use...

i have a question about this deck, when listening to a song can you have it display all three lines of info? ie. artist, album, track, all at the same time? thanks

 

[Keymaster]

sweet i hope that it is fast with alot of files, i have a 160gb external hd that i want to use...
i have a question about this deck, when listening to a song can you have it display all three lines of info? ie. artist, album, track, all at the same time? thanks

When I tested the hard drive out the other day, it displayed just 2 lines of "music" information. With the display button on the remote, though, you could cycle through what you wanted to see on those two lines, such as artist, album and title. So that was pretty cool. I uploaded about 10-12 gigs onto my 80 gig drive last night but I didn't have a chance to hook it up in the truck to see if the preliminary start up was longer or remained at it's 10-15 second boot-up.

I'm glad to be of some help, with this Pioneer deck, at least. I was so frustrated when my Zen didn't work, I was determined to find a way to get mass storage to work. I'm gonna try to test my HD out when I get home this afternoon (I drive a company vehicle) and see how it does.

 

[darren700 10+ year member]

ok, sounds good, just be sure to post your results..