suckmysav wrote:

I ended up getting a Clarion DXZ735MP head. After spending a couple of
hours doing the installion, it is all in and working a treat although it
makes my Subaru factory speakers sound a bit dodgy I must say.

Trap for new players: When replacing a stacker unit, make sure you eject
the CD caddy BEFORE you pull everything out of the dashboard in a fit of
"I have a new toy" excitement, lest you end up with a stacker full of
CDs and no way of getting them out. DOH!

I'm still experimenting with CD creation. The book says that it supports
M3U playlists too but I have yet to make that work.

Minor Gripe#1 Like every other head I've ever owned, this one won't
remember its "random play" status between trips.

suckmysav wrote:


Being an up-until-recently satisfied owner of an aged Kenwood head +
stacker combo I have of late taken to cursing the Gods of Music along
with Those Who Hath Inflicted Commercial Radio Upon The Innocent
People Of The World. This has occured as a result of the untimely
demise of the aforementioned CD stacker. Verily, come last weekend I
have decided to trot on down to the local car audio store on a mission
to obtain for myself a brand new CD/MP3 head unit. For testing
purposes I carefully made up a test CD-RW that contained some folders
that in turn contained MP3 files, all cleverly arranged with things
like playlists & "hidden" folders specially designed so that I may see
how the track navigation user interface has been implemented on the
various players that I was perusing in anticipation of parting ways
with several hundred dollars. I had decided that an MP3 Player with a
craptastic user interface would be an MP3 player that one would be
best advised to avoid if at all possible, especially when parting
company with large amounts of money for the privilige of doing so was
concerned.

So, I arrived at the store, CD gripped firmly in my trembling hand and
made my way eagerly past the in-store displays which consisted
primarily of mountains of cardboard boxes with various product samples
perched atop them, to the rear of the store where I could see the
several large and inimidating wall displays, all brazenly festooned
with a vast array of dancing and pulsating LED displays, and they were
all waiting for a taste of the sweet delectable fare that was my MP3
Test Disc.

Before long I had attracted the attention of one of the nearby store
persons whose vast knowledge of all things car-audio I had hoped to
profit from in my quest to select my own small piece of car audio
nirvana. Alas, it was not to be. My suspicions were first brought into
sharp focus in this regard when he began pointing at various models
and reading the names of the manufacturers to me. "This one here's a .
. . Sony, and here we have a . . . Kenwood and this is a, err, Pioneer
and it is clearly the best because it is on special and has free
installation.". It was at that point that he had apparently reached
the nadir of his sales technique and I half expected to hear him
pleadingly ask me Homer Simpson style "can I have some money now?".
But no, before he could do so I interrupted him to ask whether I could
try out my CD on the Pioneer unit that is clearly the best because it
is on special and has free installation.

The disc was duly inserted into the unit on the display wall. This
activity was in turn followed by some protracted seek noises which
then culminated in a cryptic error message that had my heart aflutter
as I recalled those dim and ill-remembered days when I was unfortunate
enough to have been tasked with the mission of providing tech support
to the easily befuddled owners of apple macintosh computers.

Error 11.

True, the old MacOS error 11 would also be accompanied by a comforting
cartoon image of an old fashioned ball-bomb replete with lit fuse but
I don't think that the LED display on the Pioneer was capable of such
advanced error reporting techniques. I'm sure the good folk at Pioneer
are working diligently to rectify that ommission as we speak though,
but I digress.

While the sales person stabbed buttons frantically on the offending
Pioneer head, I took the liberty of perusing the units fine multi-
language manual. This produced no clarification as to the nature of
the "error 11", but it hardly takes a brain the size of a planet to
figure out that it doesn't like something about the format/layout of
my lovingly crafted disc. The store assistant clearly was not in
possession of a brain of even the size of a walnut however and this
was not clear to him at all. He insisted it was simply a failure on
his part to push the correct sequence of buttons. Clearly, another
sales person would be called for here.

Accordingly, Sales Droid Mark II was tagged in to take over but
unfortunately Droid II's technical knowledge surpassed his
predecessors only in as much as he managed to helpfully point out that
they also have a Sansui model that plays MP3s. Droid II scampered off
at the first opportunity to present itself, never to be seen again.

I asked whether I could try my disc in any one of the many other
non-pioneer head units that had been liberally installed on to the
multiple display walls but alas, it was not possible to do so.
Apparently, none of the other display walls are connected up at this
moment, it has something to do with them being 2003 models and it
currently being the year 2004, at least where I live. Perhaps the flow
of DC current has been reversed due to a last minute rewrite of the
law of physics by God Almighty or something but unfortunatly the
testing of other non-Pioneer brands was deemed to be impossible due to
the date.

I consulted some more manuals for various brands which were of varying
degrees of usefulness. Most of them say they can take CDs burnt to the
usual ISO standards, 8 levels of nested "folders" (blast ye microsoft,
they are "directories" not "folders" but that is the subject of
another diatribe I'm afraid) and these "folders" can hold 255 files
and file names can contain alpha-numeric characters. Spaces are not
explicitly verboten but I suspect they are, all pretty normal stuff.
My main discovery of note is that M3U playlists are often NOT
supported. The Pioneer that is clearly the best because it is on
special and has free installation, for instance, falls into the "does
not support playlists" catagory.

Which brings me to the nub of this long-winded, rather pointless article.

The true "Guru" was called for. A man who is so fluent in the ways of
car audio AND computers that it was promised that he would have the
answers to all the questions of which I seek. Trembling in
anticipation and biting down hard on a ridiculous urge to ask him "Are
you really the head of Kwik-E-Mart? Really?? YOU???" I awaited the
arrival of The Great Guru, albeit somewhat confusedly as it became
increasingly apparent that there was in fact no red-carpet being
rolled out upon the shop floor in anticipation of his arrival. I
wondered why I was not taken instead to his place of meditation, from
where I, a mere lowly mortal might gaze up into his all knowing, dead
eyes in mute wonder. Perhaps they realised that it might be a touch
too awe inspiring and that it would be better for all concerned if he
just came to me.

While I was lost in such lofty thoughts, a fat bald guy loitered over
and asked if he could help me. No, I informed him, I am just waiting
for The Guru to appear with The One True Answer. "Yeah, that'd be me
mate" he replied. As I regained my composure after being momentarily
afflicted by a sudden and severe coughing fit, he went on to inform me
that "most of the problems people have are to do with folders. If you
just put all your songs in the root directory then you won't have
problems." End of lesson. No flowing robes, no lotus position, no
mildly nauseating incence pots, nothing like that at all. Not even a
damned sitar! Just "put all your songs in the old root folder and
smile smile smile"

Now, it must be said that I'm sure The Guru was correct in what he
says here. I'm sure if you just named every one of your songs in the
form 001.MP3 thru 255.MP3 and then dumped them all in the root of your
CD you would in fact have a CD that works flawlessly. Too bad if you
want to sort them into groups of songs though. Groups that are
sometimes referred to by the great unwashed masses as "albums" for
instance. Nay, verily, begone such foul and evil thoughts! The root is
the lord, and the lord is root! From that path ye shall not stray!

My voice wavering almost imperceptably at the mere thought of even
implying anything contrary to the Words Of The Guru, I neverless
managed to point out that this may in fact work perfectly, technically
speaking wise, but it would in turn be such a heinous and cumbersome
way of listening to music that it would make returning to the cold
embrace of the nattering imbeciles on commercial FM radio appear a
positively uplifting and mind-expanding experience by contrast. I
followed up this observation with an invitation to The Guru to expand
upon his lesson, and provide me with the names of any brands that
might work better with these troublesome folders than others to which
he pondered thoughtfully for what was surely several microseconds only
to reply with "Oh, their manuals all SAY they work with folders and
stuff, but none of them really do. You are better off putting all your
songs in the root folder like I said.". With that he returned to the
installation bay out the back of the store to be seen no more.

At this point I had began to tire of my two children running between
myself and the mobile phone display at the other end of the store in
order to regale me with loud and exuberant cries concerning which
phones cost "zero dollars and can I get one!? Can I? Can I?". "read
the fine print" I would reply. I don't think they ever did figure out
what that meant.

So, if any of the fine folk here have doggedly and against all better
judgement persisted through to the end of this utterly worthless, but
strangely cathartic, expose, what say you all regarding the user
interfaces of common "name brand" car audio MP3 players? Are some
better than others in the usability stakes or is (heaven forbid) the
guru correct in his view that we should just dump all our tracks into
the root and say Begone! to thoughts of attempting to sort them in any
logical fashion? I intend next week/end to visit some _other_ stores
but today I am bored, and felt like doing some writing.

And this is the result.

Have a nice day :-)
Hi,
In most cases speakers are weakest links for better quality sound.
Upgrade da speakers, add sub at least then you're done. Generally
there is difference in quality in sound and reliability. For just
ordinary, Pioneer always seems a good choice. never let me down.
Tony
Tony