Audio hard drive? / music storage

Maserati offers an audio system where instead of a CD changer, you put a CD into the dash unit and it saves it on a hard drive. CD quality, not an MP3 copy. Since I want to replace my head unit anyway, I'm wondering if there is something like this which would work for our cars. Even if the head unit can't record, I'd settle for a hard drive I could load up with 100 CDs at home and then plug into the frunk in place of the CD changer. Anyone know of something like this?

Most newer head units have either a USB port or a SD card slot or both. With a usb slot, use a thumb drive or an adapter that uses a SD card to USB Depending on how new it is you should be able to put in a 64Gig card or even a 128gig card. Much more capacity than those hard drive units that had generally 10 or maybe even a 20 gig drive Also a SD card/thumb drive is much more reliable than a hard drive that is mechanical and can skip, etc on a bumpy road as far as CD quality vs mp3, well opinions on that is like asking "How long is a piece of string? " CDs are analog and mp3 is digital. Besides you are talking about a car audio system, not a home theatre The sound of the flat 6 is music enough for many!

P.S. I can imagine that if there is something like this, it might use WAV format, which is apparently "lossless", unlike MP3. (Or maybe it just copies the CD the same was as if one copies it onto a computer hard drive?)

Having been a pro audio sound engineer, I challenge anyone to actually hear the difference from lossless copies to "lossy" mp3 if it was encoded properly, especially in a car the difference in quality is mostly perception rather than quality Ok, there probably is someone who can hear it, but for most of us, no way do you listen to Satellite radio or HD radio? they are both highly compressed digital formats

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Yes, flat 6 is first on my play list. But not always. I don't like the idea of storing music on a memory stick that sticks out, or something like an iPod that's I have to remember to bring with me and that connects with a wire. How does the SD card/thumb drive work? Does it diappear into the head unit like a CD, or like a memory card in a phone? And how much can one store? And yes, I'd still like to keep the full CD quality, no matter how small the difference might be. But I'm rather out of the loop on audio technology. I have no clue how to copy my CDs onto a SD card in a lossless form (if that's possible), nor what sort of head unit would play them. (I guess I'm exactly the kind of driver/car owner the Maserati system is aimed at.) Any suggestions would be welcome!

I have a 2002 with the original stereo - i bought the AUX cable and used the button combo to enable AUX mode. To me It sounds absolutely fantastic with the stock setup, and a million times better than the radio. Its great for when friends simply want to plug in their phone too. Tons of people have old non-wifi iPods kicking around that you can fit a ton of songs on now that everyone has upgraded to phones I'm thinking of picking one of those up filling it with music and just leaving it in the glove box for road trips.

Many/most headunits these days have USB - plug in a 64-gig thumb drive, and you have a buttload of songs at your disposal. If you decide to upgrade, make sure the head unit has a good file navigation interface - some of them are TERRIBLE, and once you are trying to work with thousands of files, can become worthless... As far as actually ripping the songs, you'd want a head unit that has some kind of internet access or some other method for upgrading the CDDB database used to identify the albums and track titles as you rip them. Otherwise, you'll wind up with more and more "Untitled" tracks on "Untitled" albums by "Unknown" artists... My 2011 Murano has this feature, too, so it's definitely not a high-end/high-dollar feature any more. When I had my Boxster, I piggybacked a JVC head unit with these features onto the stock MOST-bus stereo and ran the USB port to the center console. While I don't recommend the piggyback approach unless you have no other options, the long USB cord on the JVC provided a lot of flexibility with where to place the USB port...

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the point is that modern compression technology, although it may be a "lossy" process is in fact CD quality or better. You ain't gonna hear any difference sd cards generally plug into the head unit. Many USB ports are on a cable and live in the glove box (as long as you have a 02 or newer 996) If you want a Maserati stereo, but a Maserati not a Porsche.

Unless you make some serious upgrades to the rest of the components, whatever sampling rate the head unit uses by default is probably going to be more than good enough. Cue the audiophile rants!

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BTW, a WAV file can contain compressed (lossy) audio. In fact it can contain mp3 encoded audio WAV is a file format

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wow we actually agree on something

In that case, I change my vote just for the sake of consistency. RS10, in my 996 currently (like Nevek89) I use the AUX input on my stock radio. Instead of an old iPod or whatever, I have a 7" Dell Streak tablet that I use to play back music, mounted on a RAM mount. It's not perfect, but after throwing far too much money at my Boxster to try to move the audio quality from "good" to "amazing" and never getting there, I have learned my lesson. Plus, unless you get one of the Linux-powered head units, the tablet lets you do cool stuff that you just can't do with a stereo.

Just messin wit ya fast boy

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CDs are digital - 16 bit, 44.1kHz sample rate. The difference is that they're uncompressed.

I installed a unit that has blue tooth streaming from my phone. I honestly care more about the Hungarian Agricultural Preservation District Realignment debate than I do the audio quality of my music in a car with perhaps the worst acoustic environment ever designed, so maybe bluetooth won't work for the refined listening habits of those in this thread.

I upgraded mine to a Kenwood Exceleon double-din receiver with GPS. The GPS is made by Garmin. The USB port is on the back of the unit but has a small extension cable. I routed the USB cable into the small shelf below the unit and installed a 64GB USB stick. 64GB is enough for hundreds of albums compressed as 384Kbps MP3 files. At that bitrate MP3 is very close to the original. The media navigation for the Kenwood is reasonably good and the unit is a touch screen.

Lol, Rennlist strikes again. Coming from an ex-acoustical engineer, former IASCA competitor, audio installer, first you must determine two things only to justify how much "hi-fi" sound you need, otherwise you are just wasting dollars. 1. Your listening environment and acoustics. No sense in having the best recording or even equipment if you are going to be listening on a construction site(extreme example to get my point across). 2. How are the condition of your ears? When is the last time you got your ears tested from an Audiologist? When I was an acoustical engineer, it was mandatory I get tested once or twice a year. I see newbs all the time get $500 Grado headphones for example when their hearing is questionable at best. Studies have shown only babies and people living in the outback and other remote places still retain their 20-20k hearing. Most living in urban environments suffer hearing losses at various frequencies. I could go on and on but my advice to OP is that anything above 320kbps encoding will probably yield minimum to no additional advantage in the automotive environment of a Porsche and using most consumer brands. You will be better off concentrating in decent speakers with a great head unit that offers acoustic correction through equalizing, time correction, phase adjustments. My $.03

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I was having a brain fart and was refering to the optical read/write method. you are correct, they are digitally sampled, which inherently does lose information Alpine is spot on, most of us can't hear as well as we used to. My 15 years as a sound engineer for rock and roll bands has taken a toll on my hearing. Just ask my wife ....LOL I call it selective deafness at the end of the day, it's a car stereo......

If OP must have absolute best sound encoding and be able to store it on digital medium, FLAC is probably the best option out there and there are quite a few car stereos that can read this format. FLAC will consume quite a bit more space but then again digital storage has gotten relatively cheap these days. I recommend OP google FLAC if you wanna learn more about it.

As a semi-retired audio engineer, I will confirm that low quality 128k mp3's are nowhere near the sound quality of cd's, no matter the environment. Anyone can hear the difference. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise. That being said, it's also probably true that you're not going to notice that difference in a 911 environment through anything the factory put in there..

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Not much the factory put in there will remain. And although audio quality wasn't my first reason for wanting to replace the head unit (though now that I've heard it ... ), since I'm going to do it, I'd like to get the kind of sound system I want. Can I hear the difference between the best quality mp3 and FLAC or WAV or a CD? No idea. But even if I can't, I still want to know that I have lossless sound, at least relative to a CD. (And if it sill sounds like crap, I'll put in some Polk or JBL speakers as suggested in another thread.) To follow up on another post, yes, I had heard of FLAC. I just have no idea how to store FLAC or WAV files on something controllable with a head unit that is a semi-permanent attached to the car, not an iPod floating about in the glove box. (And that addresses another issue mentioned in some posts - I need a way to enter or download album and song names, even if it means taking the storage unit out and connecting it to my PC.) So as before, suggestions welcome!

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Hmm, well at least I understand the first of these 3 head unit features ... . Are they features that would be hard to find on the Pioneers and Kenwoods that are popular with our cars? (And equalizing? I can understand that if done professionally, to compensate for the characteristics of the listening environment, it can make a difference. But I assumed equalizers have become less common on car and home stereos for a reason ... . Is this something which average stereo installers are likely to get right?)

equalisers are very prevalent in car audio systems as well as home systems equalizer = tone controls. It is just a question of how many frequency bands it is divided into. and of course you can also have parametric eq as well. A parametric lets you adjust the parameters such as center frequency, slope of the adjustment as well as how wide the adjustment is If you can't hear the difference, it is a waste! it is then about a status symbol Many years ago I sold high end stereo systems and I would put the customer in the demo room and go through different speakers, starting with the low cost and getting gradually more expensive and told them to let me know when they cant hear the difference. Then i would start a few levels above the last ones and go down in quality. Usually then ended up a few levels lower then the original ones they stopped at It was funny, because most people could not hear the difference from moderate priced speakers and very expensive ones Sure there are other factors as well such as what they look like that played into the decision. Now back to car audio..... it is a horrible environment and generally a louder system will sound better to you. Louder sound is perceived as better quality as far as storing CDs and what encoding to use, there are lots of opinions and we all know what opinions are like (mine included) Yes FLAC is very high quality I still stand that mp3 at 384k is more that sufficient for a car audio system. You want to waste your money with some super duper supposed audiophile system that you can't hear the difference from a lower cost system, Its your money. I am sure you will find a car audio shop they will be happy to take lots of your money. BTW, I have a bridge for sale cheap!

Many new units support FLAC -> http://www.crutchfield.com/shopsearch/flac.html All you need to do is copy them to a USB drive to enjoy them in the car, and most of the modern systems will either have a USB port on the front or allow for USB extensions on the rear. You can install something like this in your cubby or armrest console: http://amzn.com/B00ORM1LD2 - some also have AUX input. That said, I have to agree with most of the previous comments - anything at 320kbps is going to be about as good as you can tell/get.

Aside from the snarkiness, realistically the ONLY time the 996 is even a remotely good place to listen to music is when you're parked with the engine off...it's not a Bentley or a Rolls with 500 pounds of AcoustiMat and 85 speakers. The speaker placement in the 996 isn't awesome, and it buzzes, squeaks, rattles, and, of course, has a flat six about 3 feet from the back of your seat. Even if you got a system that does really killer auto/active equalization, like some of the nicer home speakers do, the soundstage blows. Good luck with whatever you do. I put together and tore apart at least 5 different systems for my Boxster before I just accepted that it's a lousy place to listen to music or to try to have a conversation. When you're working with something that isn't a huge sedan with unlimited space to mount stuff and a whisper-quiet ride, it's may never sound amazing. Advice: Get a system that is just good enough, spend the rest of the money on a pair of Tubi Style mufflers, and go find yourself a tunnel. I'd listen to that sound all day...

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damn, I agree with ya again

Basically most people will equate FLAC to Wav files being the same sonically. The main differences are that FLAC takes up less space yet remains "lossless" and you can fit meta data info alongside the music info like artist, album, song, album cover art, etc Any high end car head unit will have these features. Don't like writing a book so here's the short version. Time correction corrects for the distance that each speaker is at relative to your ears so the sound arrives at the same time regardless of the physical distance. This is important especially in a home theater environment or a car environment where you are not sitting equal distant to each speaker. This will prevent phase anomalies and such. Some units come with phase adjustments for your rear or sub as they tend to be apart from the main speakers. Further allowing you to make sure the sound integrates with your main speakers in phase. If you've ever heard of Audyssey for home theater, the features I mentioned are the same for the car environment. Basically auto setup will get you 90% of the way there most of the time. All you do is place a microphone where your head would normally go and the unit will auto tune everything. Technical advances like this is partially what drove me out of acoustical engineering. It really is pretty cool when you think about it. I haven't kept up with car audio lately as technology has been stagnant on that front for awhile now but any of the high end units should have these features. I have an old Eclipse model that has all these including 5V preout and also a Parametric EQ with Q adjustments, and digital 3way crossovers as well. It just really depends on how finicky of an audiophile you are and if you have good enough ears and awareness to detect subtle nuances in sound. Some do and some don't...

I agree that the 996 cabin is a lousy environment for the reproduction of hifi music. But I disagree that the differences between a highly compressed sound (satellite or low res spotify) are not discernible from higher resolutions (try low res spotify vs. high res streaming of the same). I have the Pioneer DEH-80PRS, a single DIN unit with lousy display, cumbersome menus and difficult adjustments. However, it has auto EQ, 16 band parametric EQ (stereo, left, right or mono) and auto time alignment which does an excellent job in squeezing out the best sound out of your music and speakers. It provides a nice sound stage even in the 996 cab, has better sound than anything else in the same environment. Moreover, it has BT streaming for max res Spotify (320 Kbps), a microSD card slot up to (verified) 64 GB capacity (for FLAC, WAV)... and two USB ports.

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I agree. That's a nice unit too. I had the predecessor to it. In any small acoustical environment, digital sound processing is the key in achieving the best sound IMO. It doesn't matter if you have the best speakers or amps, those can't bend physics in terms of creating a wider and deeper soundstage with the space you have.

Hey, if you can tell the difference, spend the money. According to the Porsche brochure, the fact that my 996 has the optional Digital Sound Processing system makes me a "true audiophile" who can "tune the sound experience" to my taste, music, or even mood! So yeah, I'm kind of a big deal according to the catalog. But I also spent many hours in crappy venues playing loud music as a troubled youf. If you want to feel crappy about your age and hearing, check this out: http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/...-hearing-test/ At this point (44, high end hearing sucks, and I'm driving a 911), a stick and a washboard can pretty much reproduce everything I can hear anyway...

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That's a flawed test as it's not in a controlled anechoic environment using certified equipment. However it might give you a rough indication of where you stand in terms of your hearing.

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I top out at 14k and I am 57. Also way too many years doing sound, lights and video for big rock and roll concerts. Worst was Andy Gibb in the mid 70's 135 db @ 2k of 14 year old girls screaming OUCH!!!

Back when I minored in Audiology, studies at that time revealed most people out of their teen years only can hear up to 15k that lived in urban environments. Only the adult aborigines from the outback for example had retained enough of their hearing to hear up to 20k. I'm willing to bet 95% of the people on here can only hear up to 16k max. Also if you've attended loud concerts or even take public transportation everyday where you are subjected to train noises, construction, etc. then you have a high likely hood of also suffering some frequency losses on the 1-2k range as well. Also younger kids are probably worse now than they were before due to all the readily accessible headphones/mp3 players and such these days. I'm still waiting until they can grow cochlear implant hair cells back in the human ear successfully. That would be great, especially for the deaf or nearly deaf people but would ultimately benefit everyone. As for rock concerts, I believe it was The Who had the loudest concerts. The frontman has suffered ringing in his ears permanently due to those times.

The Who were in the Guinness Book for the loudest concert many years ago and the company I worked for was the sound company. IIRC, it was around 125 db and was in the 70s. And yes, Pete Townsend does have a hearing loss. Not surprising as he was 10 feet in front of a massive Marshal guitar stack We measured over 135 db often with Andy Gibb and it was the crowd screaming, not the PA. It was really odd when you saw almost the entire crew wearing hearing protectors and even the house engineer sometimes would wear them during the show And yes, frequency specific hearing loss is a reality. I have a loss in my left ear at 1.2 k of 2.5 db and the right ear 3 db. Back in the day, I could hear almost 20k

Crap. I want to return all my nice stereo gear. I'm 39 and top out at 16K. I think you just saved me lots of $$$$! (At least I can feel the bass still) I'm going to say that my crappy computer speakers and headphones can't reproduce above 16K... I'm sure I could hear it if they did! :-P

Can you tell the difference between a high quality and low quality file? Take the test... I got a 4/5. Country music was never my thing. http://test.tidalhifi.com/

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That's ok as I think a lot of us should be concentrating on other important factors like soundstage, separation, depth, other nuances only a proper speaker setup can contribute to. But once again I believe the added digital sound processing of recent years has come a long way and can also definitely help the sound in the environment you're forced to be in and also correct for any frequency deficiencies your ears might have. I remember back in the day everyone was striving for 20-20k and as flat of a response as they can get. Well people started finding out flat response doesn't always sound good, especially if their ears have deficiences.

Regrettably, the DSP unit that Porsche stuffed into the 996 doesn't fall into the realm of "has come a long way" - that thing's a turd. Listening to someone else's idea of what "Pop" or "Classic" should sound like in a 911 invariably pisses me off. Canned EQ settings in general just rub me the wrong way.

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This thread has become more and more interesting :-) I'm sure the massive Marshal guitar stack didn't help, but I thought it was standing around 10 feet in front of a massive explosive in Keith Moon's drums on the Smothers Brothers show that did for Pete Townsend's ears ... .

To answer your question, the last hard drive head unit that I'm aware of was the Pioneer AVIC series. I do believe they abandoned the hard drive unit several years ago. I had an AVIC Z3 in my Jaguar that would do exactly what you want and it was super cool. Best head unit I've ever owned. Best Nav I've ever owned too (besides Google Maps)! Good luck.

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So it seems I can get close enough to what I want with a good head unit attached to a USB drive (or two). Which raises the question: Kenwood vs Pioneer vs Sony vs Alpine vs ... ? I like the fact that Kenwood has Garmin navigation, though sounds like Pioneer's own brand navigation is pretty good too, and I seem to remember Sony has TomTom ... . Though checking user reviews of Pioneers, there were stories of them beeping when exceeding the speed limit, and being unable to navigate while the car is moving - I hope that can be solved! On the other hand, one retailer told me Pioneer is better with an Android phone (which I have) than Kenwood, and another told me it's better with Android than Sony. There's also the question which sounds best - if I'd hear the difference. I doubt amp power would be an issue for me - back when I was much younger and knew how many watts my car stereo had, I was able to listen to ear-splittingly loud music with less power than I think any of these have. There is perhaps a question how many channels I need. (I don't have Bose, so 4 is enough, no?) And finally, it's got to look right. I mean, the 996 is no Bentley, but cheap or poorly-matched materials or tacky on-screen graphics are out. Any suggestions/guidance would be greatly appreciated!!!

Update: Pioneer themselves told me their head units only offer full featured android interoperability ("app radio" or "mirror image") with a limited number of phones, and mine is not among them. What I can do is use the head unit for bluetooth audio when calling and use the head unit's touch screen when dialing. And it seems the Sony units don't do FLAC. Though they do WAV. Not sure one is better than the other, but before choosing Sony, I'd want to be sure that WAV isn't worse ... . Anyway, to simpify my last question about which brand - well, with so many people with great audio expertise contributing to this thread, I'd be very interested in any impressions or guidance in choosing between Pioneer, Kenwood, Alpine, Sony, and any other worthy competitors. Thanks!

Have you checked out the Parrot Asteroid series? 1 and 2 din options, and full Android compatibility.

Aesthetically, it would probably work well in our cars. But it doesn't seem to have a CD player :-(

Do you use CDs much anymore though? I don't even bother buying them anymore - all my music purchases are digital. Doesn't take much to make a CD digital either if you have a whole collection.

WAV is just a container, it's not a CODEC. You can make WAV files as high-quality as you like - from Wikipedia: "Though a WAV file can contain compressed audio, the most common WAV audio format is uncompressed audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format. LPCM is also the standard audio coding format for audio CDs, which store two-channel LPCM audio sampled 44,100 times per second with 16 bits per sample. Since LPCM is uncompressed and retains all of the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format with LPCM audio for maximum audio quality" Since your original use case was ripping CDs, and a WAV file, depending on the encoding, can match the fidelity of an audio CD, I don't think you should consider "only" supporting WAV as a flaw or limitation of the equipment.

As stated before, WAV can't hold any meta information like artist, title, song, album art, etc. So organizing and calling up any specific songs could be a nightmare, not to mention a storage hog. I would strongly suggest Flac over Wav to limit any real world usability issues. As for brands, I don't think you should concentrate on any specific brand as a lot of them have whored themselves out for max profits and increasing their bottom line. In another words, brands don't hold the same weight they once did awhile ago. I would concentrate on warranty, reputation, feature set, audio quality based on specs and reviews. Even after you get a suitable radio, you then are faced with having to rip and encode all those CD's. I still haven't ripped all mine yet due to lack of time. Thinking of hiring an illegal to do it for $5/hr. I've already tried to solicit some high school kids but they're all spoiled around where I live and command $20/hr premium. LOL

I still say you are making a bigger thing about uncompressed files that you need to. IT'S A CAR STEREO!!!!

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I concur. Now if I was in my acoustically tuned room with my external Burr Brown DAC's,Mcintosh Amps,Martin Logans, Krell CD transport... Or just some gen1/gen2 Genelecs...

For quite a few years I kept looking at head units with built-in storage. Kept wondering why everyone wasn't making head units with many GB of storage so I could have all my music right there on my head unit. I never pulled the trigger on one of these head units, and I'm glad I didn't. Seems to me the way the world is going at the moment is that your phone is the place where you store your music (with your phone getting it from your computer), and you stream it from there. I have an iPhone, which holds most of my music collection (I wish I had a phone with more storage). In my 996 I have a Kenwood head unit with Bluetooth audio streaming. In my bedroom I have a Bluetooth speaker. The dinosaur-age stereo in my living room has a Bluetooth connector running into the aux input. I have a receiver in my garage with a similar Bluetooth input. So, whether I'm in my car, bedroom, living room, or garage, I just play music from my phone via Bluetooth. If someone did a blind sound test in my living room, maybe I would be able to tell the difference between a CD and the streaming music. Maybe not. Well, I haven't actually played a CD in at least three years. In my car, there is no way I could tell the difference. Not sure what kind of phone the OP has, and this may not be at all what he wants. But, it works for me. Every time I get in the car, the Bluetooth connects automatically. Once I select the Bluetooth source, it is really easy to select a playlist, album, etc. from my phone. If I turn the car off (e.g., to go into a store or pump gas), when I turn the car back on the music picks up right where it left off. Digital music on my computer. Sync to my phone. If I have my phone with me, I have my music with me. No need to load music onto a drive just for my car. No moving CDs from room to room.

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Yep, that was my concern about WAV. I just learned there is something called broadcast wav (bwf) which includes metadata, but the Sony website doesn't list this as a supported format. Though perhaps anything that can play WAV can play bwf ... ?

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Which leaves me still wondering why Pioneer commands such a price premium ... . Anyone think Pioneer is worth it? And if so, why? Any particular specs to look for? (I would have thought that at this level, the specs would all be quite good, and any differences that matter wouldn't be captured by them.) If the sound difference is trivial, I'll probably choose based on interoperability with an Android phone and aesthetics. And don't suppose you know any realiable sources for online reviews? I googled Pioneer vs Kenwood a week or two ago, and I don't remember finding any interesting links. Thanks!

These banner ads are getting better - at the top of my screen appeared a banner leading to this: http://loudlink.eu/webshop/porsche-b...FUWWtAodTjMA0g It's a "CD Changer replacement [with] ... FLAC player in one" from Loudlink. So my best guess is this attaches to the OEM head unit, which is nice, from an aesthetic point of view. But does it improve the sound or the navigation? Probably not - though all is just a guess, as the website isn't very helpful ... . Anyone know anything about this? (And if it doesn't improve the sound - if it just sends a signal into the Porsche head unit - might there still be a way to improve the sound, e.g. if the Porsche head unit has a pre-amp out, the signal could be further routed to a new amp?)

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See my response in red

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Thanks for another helpful post! One follow up question : "5v pre-out" refers to the output to an external amp? (If so, it's probably not a key criteria for me. If I replace the head unit, I'd be inclined to hope the built in amp would be good enough for my purposes. (I don't have Bose, and while I might replace at least the door speakers, I'd be rather adverse to replacing any others.))

Also, would you expect Pioneer's "Premiere" line to include all the double DIN units (there are just 4, I think), all of which are quite expensive? Thanks!

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best amp ever made: Mac 2300 with the blue meters I have a pair of Electro-Voice SP13.5TRBXWK Rearaxial Softsperakers in my 996, the sound is unbelievable! and I have a bridge to sell that supports wav, FLAC, MP4, MP1-L1, MP2-L1 AAC, wavelets and analog. almost forgot, the CRM114 discriminator is armed

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Do you have at least the "hi-fi" option? If you do then the 5V can help if you choose to utilize it by providing a cleaner signal. I'll have to double check my connections since it's been a few years since I installed mine and can't recall 100% if I hooked into my 5v outputs. If you don't have this option, I strongly recommend you get an outboard amp anyways as it would be a shame of all this FLAC and WAV talk only to have you play music through the factory head unit's internal amp.

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I agree, very nice. LOL on the EV's...

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Well I've got option code 490 (something like Harmann analog sound packet), as well as 662 and 663 which have to do with PCM ...