Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the a-whole-bunch-of-neat-toys dept.
Taz writes "The NAiAM CD-MP seems to be vaporware, but
MP3.COM has just posted an article listing a whole slew of new MP3 players for the car and home, some of them are even shipping right now. "
35 comments
Kick ass
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I hope to get one for my car real soon. i thought about making one...but it seems to be to much of a hassle:P Natas www.mp3.com/pedophagia
Car MP3 player build
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Nah, building an MP3 deck for your car's audio system is as easy as buying a 3rd hand laptop (hell, go for an old Compaq luggable) and some really long cabling, and do a little voltage rectifying magic. Take that laptop, load 9x and winamp on it, cut yourself a mini-DIN 5 extender, hook one of those extreneous numeric keypads up to it as the primary KB input, re-label the keys according to WinAmp's man(ual). Config 9x for whatever protocol you're going to need for data xfer for uploading/file management, and hook the outputs up to your car (call the manufacturer of the radio you just took out, they'll know). With a little crative panel replacement, a few wires stapled to the floor and a hole thru the armrest in the back seat to connect to the laptop. Most cars these days have hot wires next to the trunk hinges. 12 volts DC, work the schematic yourself (you _still_ have your Radio Schmuck premium soldering iron, don't you?). Not only that, but you now have as many CD players as you can mount with shockproofing, and with one of those goofy radio cards and a little futzing with hotkeys, you get your radio back, too.
mp3s - i like em..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I bought a minidisc player for $99 at Costco's, a cheap Sharp version with a 4 hour rechargeable battery. The quality is really good, I record (I had to buy a $200 recorder) music from my MP3 collection in realtime (something you can't do with most MP3 encoders). I'm pretty happy with minidisc so far and don't see a need to move to MP3.
Capacity is the point
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
The Rio takes 30 mins of 128kbit audio. The Nomad will have 60 mins. Neither are any good for a 4 hour car journey, unless you have a very small record collection.
Also, if you think MP3s sound bad, you've not (a) tried any higher bitrates and (b) have never heard them through quality DACs;)
Hugo www.empeg.com
Car
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
OK... apparently you haven't ever seen a car before... Things like car stereos and mobile phones do NOT increase the accident rate... People increase the accident rate. Individuals are smart. People as a whole are stupid. As for mp3 players... if you (you being anyone) get into an accident because you were listening to an mp3 on your stereo, you probably deserve it. I am sure that puts you in the category with people who cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead, what we need is a REAL driver's exam which actually examine's the skills of the driver. Back on subject, I would most definitely buy a mp3 player for my car. Buying CDs is insane. The artist gets so little of that money... from now on, I'm going to get everything on mp3... if I like an artist, I'll send a check straight to them... or I'll go see them in concert and show my support... the money-mongers in the record business need a good dose of reality...
I'm staying off of the road.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Hey, that's it! We'll pass a law making imbecility a crime! Hmm...I wonder who we can throw in jail first?
Sounds good to me! I'd even vote for licensing the right to have children...
These would be great for a Beowulf cluster!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Yeah!
It's time we bombed them swine back into the stone age!
higher bitrates
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
To me, 128kbps MP3s sound like, quite frankly, shit. However, I am currently listening through headphones to The Smashing Pumpkins "The Aeroplane Flies High" set that I encoded at 160kpbs from the original CDs. To tell the truth, I couldn't tell you if it was the CD or an MP3.
160kbps provides OUTSTANDING quality, and the filesizes aren't really that inflated over 128kbps. I think people just settled on 128 because they were a tidy file size and "good enough" music quality. For REAL CD-quality files, go with 160 and you'll never go back to that horrendous 128 bitrate.
I've seen a couple of projects for entire MBs on PCMCIA card-sized wafers. AMD makes some wicked single-chip solutions, and I know you can get some dinky boards out of old Acer systems (this is if you can pry all that plastic away from it), smaller than your average thinkpad MB, and a lot more industry standard (don't know if you know that laptop MBs aren't electronically compatible with your existing desktop hardware)... At any rate, a laptop MB would be electronically a better idea if you want your NVRAM to retain, so I bite my tongue (keyboard?) With a laptop, perhaps Panasonic's hardside series that from what I've seen (at ADP), the CF25 can handle the jostling involved with being mounted in 2,000 pounds of sheetmetal going 75 MPH. The power would be easier to work, I believe some laptops take 12vDC anyway, and the Li-Ion could save you a lot of problems with keeping the power input steady. But, really, I have to make this one point : laptop sound sucks.
TicketBastard not much better than labels
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Don't forget that MS co-founder-from-hell Paul Allen's most evil creation TicketMaster controls most concert venues and really piles on the surcharges to the price of a concert ticket.
I think that Housten Tech makes a motherboard you might want to look at. Their cheapest board is an LX model, and includes video, audio, serial, paralell, USB, infared, etc. Cheap, too. Robotnik has them for $80 Canadian.
Try Advantech, I bought a board from them, width of a 5.25 drive bay, Pentium, 2 SIMM slots, 1 IDE HD controller, video, audio, network...
audiorequest "no digital output"?
by
dmd
·
· Score: 1
I'm confused. On the audiorequest page it states that it cannot be used for illegal duplication, because it has no digital output. BUT, it also says that it works by encoding to a CD-R. What, is the CD-R locked in the case?
Yeah, minidiscs are a fairly nice improvement over CDs, since they add recordability and are smaller, but they still have the problem of being only 74 minutes per disc. Of course, current mp3 players are no better, but if an mp3 player with a capacity of at least 300 MB were to come out, that would allow me to carry around 5 hours of music in one piece, while a minidisc player would force me to carry 4 minidiscs with me in order to have 5 hours of music to listen to.
Anyone know where I can find any more information about the quality of mp3s at various bitrates? Everybody claims that 128kbps is "CD quality," even though it's not really. What improvement in sound quality would 160kbps mp3s have over 128kbps? What about 196kbps or 256kbps? What's a good rate to use if you had, say, a 6.4 gig capacity? Is the difference between 196kbps and 256kbps enough to make it worth using 256kbps, or would that be overkill?
An answer to any/all of these questions, or a link to a nice overview of bitrate/quality issues would be nice =)
I'm staying off of the road.
by
Eccles
·
· Score: 1
How in the Sam Hill would this increase the accident rate? Plug in your CD-R of favorites, and you won't be fiddling with it for 10 hours. Safer than a radio, where you're changing stations to avoid commercials, or a CD or tape player, where you're changing tapes, having to rewind, or trying to skip songs. Safer than having tapes and CDs scattered about, one of which might slide under your feet, or might fly and hit someone in an accident.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I would love a portable mp3 player.. something to jog with.. and no skipping.. I think a car mp3 player would be awesome too.. but.. i have a feeling they are gonna go the way of the eight track.. or maybe like minidisc.. be a fad.. fade out.. then come back with a vengence
-- Victoria Palmer - I brake for unix.boys, Windows just breaks. - http://www.escape.com/~juliet
audiorequest "no digital output"?
by
HardCase
·
· Score: 1
That's not what it says on the page. It says that additional copies cannot be made from that device because it has no digital outputs.
Use that noggin! How could any digital recording device work if you couldn't record on it?
I'm staying off of the road.
by
HardCase
·
· Score: 1
Uh...yeah, OK. By god, the whole industry went to hell after Henry Ford stopped making the Model T.
Sheesh. Get a grip. Maybe we ought to lower the speed limit to 20.
The devices aren't dangerous, it's the imbeciles who use them that are dangerous. Hey, that's it! We'll pass a law making imbecility a crime! Hmm...I wonder who we can throw in jail first?
Every one of these new car devices increases the accident rate. I think that they should either invent some sort of "safety belt" to reduce automobile fatalities, or ban all car-audio devices.
http://www.versalogic.com/Ds/vsbc6.htm Even better than the product I posted yesterday. It's ~$180 compaired to $850+
-- I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
DIY - Hardware question....
by
Ellis-D
·
· Score: 1
I noticed amd's stuff.. it's just hard to find that sort of stuff... I think I would have to do some major searching and have to make it myself.. (ick)..
-- I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
DIY - Hardware question....
by
Ellis-D
·
· Score: 1
Nope.. I don't want a standard pc motherboard.. I'm looking for notebook style mb..
-- I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
DIY - Hardware question....
by
Ellis-D
·
· Score: 1
Anyone know where to get a small mother board, the equivlent to a notebook mother board, where everything is build on, nic, ports, sound, video, ect?
Read more carefully - it can read CD-R's with encoded mp3s on it - it cannot write CD-Rs.
IOW - it can encode songs off a CD toits build in HD, It can download mp3 files from your computer via parallel port, and it can read mp3 files off of a CD-R. But it cannot output any of the mp3 files except through the speakers.
-- -Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
The terms to look for are "Single Board Computer" (SBC), "biscuit" or "PC/104" for most small computers. These are intended to be small industrial computers.
Also don't forget the wearable technology. The MIT Wearables and Yahoo:Wearables pages are good starting points. (I don't know where wearables.ml.org went to when DNS failed...)
The Wearable technology often uses PCMCIA-sized motherboards. Those pages have links to most of those boards. VGA/LCD, IDE, and the usual other interfaces are all on that one tiny card. Haven't seen sound on one yet.
Umm... And you think a good way to pay the artist is to buy a concert ticket? You obviously aren't familiar with Ticketmaster's over-priced tickets. Pearl Jam had a huge dispute with Ticketmaster over the prices and does not sell tickets through them anymore (and thus misses playing many huge venues).
I guess if we make sure we don't go to concerts sponsored by Ticketmaster, then we'll at least be making a step in the right direction.
I am building a home MP3 player and I am using the LINUX kernel as the OS. I already have it finished. It allows you to rip CD's, play CD's, play MP3's on CD's, Use playlists, Encode CDDA files and raw PCM,WAV into MP3 format with enocding bitrates from 64 to 256. Also you can plug your RIO into it and either upload or download MP3's. There is a network card that allows you to connect to another machine to download MP3 files. I am using a 20x4 LCD display to run the whole thing. It will plug into any home stereo unit.
I have some other plans for this machine as well. Anyone interested in having one let me know.
I plan on mass producing these very soon!
tmendoza_1998@yahoo.com
-- -- uh...
mp3 for cars/home makes no sense.
by
cilynx
·
· Score: 1
I agree with your comment on the rio being easier to deal with than home/car componant systems. I just bought a top line car sterio w/ a tape deck so that I could use new portables as well as my CD player.
However, I believe that MP3s sound fine. I've never tried headphones, but I have my computer wired to my sterio and, as long as the sound card's mixer is set up right, they sound as good as CD's
Slashdot Mirror
I hope to get one for my car real soon. i thought about making one...but it seems to be to much of a hassle :P
Natas
www.mp3.com/pedophagia
Nah, building an MP3 deck for your car's audio system is as easy as buying a 3rd hand laptop (hell, go for an old Compaq luggable) and some really long cabling, and do a little voltage rectifying magic. Take that laptop, load 9x and winamp on it, cut yourself a mini-DIN 5 extender, hook one of those extreneous numeric keypads up to it as the primary KB input, re-label the keys according to WinAmp's man(ual). Config 9x for whatever protocol you're going to need for data xfer for uploading/file management, and hook the outputs up to your car (call the manufacturer of the radio you just took out, they'll know). With a little crative panel replacement, a few wires stapled to the floor and a hole thru the armrest in the back seat to connect to the laptop. Most cars these days have hot wires next to the trunk hinges. 12 volts DC, work the schematic yourself (you _still_ have your Radio Schmuck premium soldering iron, don't you?). Not only that, but you now have as many CD players as you can mount with shockproofing, and with one of those goofy radio cards and a little futzing with hotkeys, you get your radio back, too.
I bought a minidisc player for $99 at
Costco's, a cheap Sharp version with a
4 hour rechargeable battery. The quality
is really good, I record (I had to buy a
$200 recorder) music from my MP3 collection
in realtime (something you can't do with
most MP3 encoders). I'm pretty happy with
minidisc so far and don't see a need to
move to MP3.
The Rio takes 30 mins of 128kbit audio. The Nomad will have 60 mins. Neither are any good for a 4 hour car journey, unless you have a very small record collection.
;)
Also, if you think MP3s sound bad, you've not (a) tried any higher bitrates and (b) have never heard them through quality DACs
Hugo
www.empeg.com
OK... apparently you haven't ever seen a car before... Things like car stereos and mobile phones do NOT increase the accident rate... People increase the accident rate. Individuals are smart. People as a whole are stupid. As for mp3 players... if you (you being anyone) get into an accident because you were listening to an mp3 on your stereo, you probably deserve it. I am sure that puts you in the category with people who cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead, what we need is a REAL driver's exam which actually examine's the skills of the driver. Back on subject, I would most definitely buy a mp3 player for my car. Buying CDs is insane. The artist gets so little of that money... from now on, I'm going to get everything on mp3... if I like an artist, I'll send a check straight to them... or I'll go see them in concert and show my support... the money-mongers in the record business need a good dose of reality...
Hey, that's it! We'll pass a law
making imbecility a crime! Hmm...I wonder who we can throw in jail first?
Sounds good to me! I'd even vote for licensing the right to have children...
Yeah!
It's time we bombed them swine back into the stone age!
To me, 128kbps MP3s sound like, quite frankly, shit. However, I am currently listening through headphones to The Smashing Pumpkins "The Aeroplane Flies High" set that I encoded at 160kpbs from the original CDs. To tell the truth, I couldn't tell you if it was the CD or an MP3.
160kbps provides OUTSTANDING quality, and the filesizes aren't really that inflated over 128kbps. I think people just settled on 128 because they were a tidy file size and "good enough" music quality. For REAL CD-quality files, go with 160 and you'll never go back to that horrendous 128 bitrate.
I've seen a couple of projects for entire MBs on PCMCIA card-sized wafers. AMD makes some wicked single-chip solutions, and I know you can get some dinky boards out of old Acer systems (this is if you can pry all that plastic away from it), smaller than your average thinkpad MB, and a lot more industry standard (don't know if you know that laptop MBs aren't electronically compatible with your existing desktop hardware)... At any rate, a laptop MB would be electronically a better idea if you want your NVRAM to retain, so I bite my tongue (keyboard?) With a laptop, perhaps Panasonic's hardside series that from what I've seen (at ADP), the CF25 can handle the jostling involved with being mounted in 2,000 pounds of sheetmetal going 75 MPH. The power would be easier to work, I believe some laptops take 12vDC anyway, and the Li-Ion could save you a lot of problems with keeping the power input steady. But, really, I have to make this one point : laptop sound sucks.
Don't forget that MS co-founder-from-hell Paul Allen's most evil creation TicketMaster controls most concert venues and really piles on the surcharges to the price of a concert ticket.
I think that Housten Tech makes a motherboard you might want to look at. Their cheapest board is an LX model, and includes video, audio, serial, paralell, USB, infared, etc. Cheap, too. Robotnik has them for $80 Canadian.
m puter/component_info/m715.html?L+scstore+y jws3688+921718011
http://www.robotnik.com/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/co
Try Advantech, I bought a board from them,
width of a 5.25 drive bay, Pentium, 2 SIMM
slots, 1 IDE HD controller, video, audio,
network...
I'm confused. On the audiorequest page it states that it cannot be used for illegal duplication, because it has no digital output. BUT, it also says that it works by encoding to a CD-R. What, is the CD-R locked in the case?
--
Yeah, minidiscs are a fairly nice improvement over CDs, since they add recordability and are smaller, but they still have the problem of being only 74 minutes per disc. Of course, current mp3 players are no better, but if an mp3 player with a capacity of at least 300 MB were to come out, that would allow me to carry around 5 hours of music in one piece, while a minidisc player would force me to carry 4 minidiscs with me in order to have 5 hours of music to listen to.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Anyone know where I can find any more information about the quality of mp3s at various bitrates? Everybody claims that 128kbps is "CD quality," even though it's not really. What improvement in sound quality would 160kbps mp3s have over 128kbps? What about 196kbps or 256kbps? What's a good rate to use if you had, say, a 6.4 gig capacity? Is the difference between 196kbps and 256kbps enough to make it worth using 256kbps, or would that be overkill?
An answer to any/all of these questions, or a link to a nice overview of bitrate/quality issues would be nice =)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How in the Sam Hill would this increase the accident rate? Plug in your CD-R of favorites, and you won't be fiddling with it for 10 hours. Safer than a radio, where you're changing stations to avoid commercials, or a CD or tape player, where you're changing tapes, having to rewind, or trying to skip songs. Safer than having tapes and CDs scattered about, one of which might slide under your feet, or might fly and hit someone in an accident.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I would love a portable mp3 player.. something to jog with.. and no skipping.. I think a car mp3 player would be awesome too.. but.. i have a feeling they are gonna go the way of the eight track.. or maybe like minidisc.. be a fad.. fade out.. then come back with a vengence
Victoria Palmer - I brake for unix.boys, Windows just breaks. - http://www.escape.com/~juliet
That's not what it says on the page. It says that additional copies cannot be made from that device because it has no digital outputs.
Use that noggin! How could any digital recording device work if you couldn't record on it?
Uh...yeah, OK. By god, the whole industry went to hell after Henry Ford stopped making the Model T.
Sheesh. Get a grip. Maybe we ought to lower the speed limit to 20.
The devices aren't dangerous, it's the imbeciles who use them that are dangerous. Hey, that's it! We'll pass a law making imbecility a crime! Hmm...I wonder who we can throw in jail first?
=d=
Every one of these new car devices increases the accident rate. I think that they should either invent some sort of "safety belt" to reduce automobile fatalities, or ban all car-audio devices.
--
Beef
"Raging Moderate" of the
http://www.algonet.se/~cyrano/elmp/
If anyone would like info on a DIY Mp3 player for your home.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
http://www.versalogic.com/Ds/vsbc6.htm
Even better than the product I posted yesterday.
It's ~$180 compaired to $850+
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I noticed amd's stuff.. it's just hard to find that sort of stuff... I think I would have to do some major searching and have to make it myself.. (ick)..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Nope.. I don't want a standard pc motherboard.. I'm looking for notebook style mb..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Anyone know where to get a small mother board, the equivlent to a notebook mother board, where everything is build on, nic, ports, sound, video, ect?
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
They currently run all the clubs in dallas now.. $15 minumal to see underground bands that play small outfits and stuff.. It's a crock..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
You and your clusters.. Not like you need that much power for playing mp3's... It's like buying a cray for a simple calculator..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
http://www.cellcomputing.com/third/prodmindex.html
The size of a hard drive w/ everything built on!!!!!!
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
No offense, but car and home mp3 players.
Why not just buy that rio thing and use a tape adapter? Your not going to loose much and saves the hastle of moving the mp3s around.
As for home use, MP3s just don't sound that good.
Listening with headphones or through a good stereo reveals the truth..
Maybe mp4 will change that....
/A
Read more carefully - it can read CD-R's with encoded mp3s on it - it cannot write CD-Rs.
IOW - it can encode songs off a CD toits build in HD, It can download mp3 files from your computer via parallel port, and it can read mp3 files off of a CD-R. But it cannot output any of the mp3 files except through the speakers.
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
Also don't forget the wearable technology. The MIT Wearables and Yahoo:Wearables pages are good starting points. (I don't know where wearables.ml.org went to when DNS failed...)
The Wearable technology often uses PCMCIA-sized motherboards. Those pages have links to most of those boards. VGA/LCD, IDE, and the usual other interfaces are all on that one tiny card. Haven't seen sound on one yet.
I found where Wearables Central went to. See their long list of hardware there. [ The green decorations are navigation buttons without a clue ]
Umm... And you think a good way to pay the artist is to buy a concert ticket? You obviously aren't familiar with Ticketmaster's over-priced tickets. Pearl Jam had a huge dispute with Ticketmaster over the prices and does not sell tickets through them anymore (and thus misses playing many huge venues).
I guess if we make sure we don't go to concerts sponsored by Ticketmaster, then we'll at least be making a step in the right direction.
I am building a home MP3 player and I am using the LINUX kernel as the OS. I already have it finished. It allows you to rip CD's, play CD's, play MP3's on CD's, Use playlists, Encode CDDA files and raw PCM,WAV into MP3 format with enocding bitrates from 64 to 256. Also you can plug your RIO into it and either upload or download MP3's. There is a network card that allows you to connect to another machine to download MP3 files. I am using a 20x4 LCD display to run the whole thing. It will plug into any home stereo unit.
I have some other plans for this machine as well.
Anyone interested in having one let me know.
I plan on mass producing these very soon!
tmendoza_1998@yahoo.com
-- uh...
I agree with your comment on the rio being easier to deal with than home/car componant systems. I just bought a top line car sterio w/ a tape deck so that I could use new portables as well as my CD player.
However, I believe that MP3s sound fine. I've never tried headphones, but I have my computer wired to my sterio and, as long as the sound card's mixer is set up right, they sound as good as CD's