"Robert Morein" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

"Robert Morein" wrote in message

I have a 1992 Subaru, which does not accommodate a standard depth
radio. I want to make the transition from tapes to something better.
It occurred to me that considering the relative mediocrity of the
speakers and amplification, and the great cost of replacing it all,
that mp3 and an FM modulator would be a good choice.

You vastly underestimate the sound quality possible in an automotive
environment, even with modest investments.

No, I don't.

Gee, let's be really mature here. I say "Yes you do", and you say "No I
don't" and this goes on for about 26 cycles posts and we look like Singh,
Weil and Middius. Welcome to RAO!

The car is handicapped by a radio depth of 3",

These are the days of amazing things done with microelectronics.

and by ambient noise that is higher than a typical home listening
environment.

That depends on the car, but again there are some trade-offs. The *room* is
small, well-padded and you have to sit *really* close to most of the
speakers. Good car audio buys some dynamic range by providing respectable
maximum levels, facilitated by the small room and close speaker placement.

Furthermore, the extreme vulnerability of the Subaru's
frameless windows to breakin makes me loath to put money into a car
to make it theft bait.

That would be a situation that is specific to your special case.

Therefore, the optimal solution is a one-piece
mp3 player/modulator that I can take with me. Too bad it doesn't
exist.

Well you could plug an off-the-shelf battery-powered modulator into a Nomad
Jukebox and have thousands of MP3 files and/or 100's of .wav files at your
disposal.

Nevertheless, the sound is acceptable to me.

Whatever that means.

CD changers
scratch CDs and probably provide no audible difference, except with
the finest car systems.

I copy my CDs and play the copies on the road.

I have two damn many thousands of CDs. I don't have space to store
duplicates.

I just keep them in the car and when they get too scratched, there's enough
trash cans in the world to hold them.

What bitrate is, to your ears, indistinguishable from CD, and how
many hours per gigabyte does one obtain?

I know of none.

I see I'm not aware of your position on the mp3 codec. I thought --
mistakenly -- that you felt there was some bitrate at which it becomes
transparent. How about the Minidisc codec?

Ditto. You know if you ever actually went to www.pcabx.com you'd know crap
like this. But far be if for you to lower yourself to educate yourself...

[snip] My desires outrun the current state of gadgets.

The Nomad (or iPod) with RF modulator would do the trick you seem to be
willing to subsist with...