PCM radio mp3 test

Well I put the PCM through a little mp3 test today. I created three mp3 CDs, actually two CDs and a DVD. The first CD had mp3 and aac files on it - guess what, only the mp3 files read, no real surprise, but I was glad to see it work. The sound on a Bose system was very good. The DVD test did not read - and was sucked into the system and then wouldn't eject. Seemed like a problem for a moment, then we removed and reinserted the car key and then the disk would eject. So it was a failure but at least the ejection problem was solved. The final CD had 112 songs on it - and they all were recognized with titles and played beautifully! That's a little over 8 hours of music and a sight better than loading six CD's in the front boot. So score one for PCM as just 3 CD's would yield 24 hours of music! Oh, I made the CD's with itunes on a Windows XP, and it burned the cd very fast, it probably took less than 5 minutes to burn, but I took the dog out and it was done when I got back. Not bad at all.

Great info. Were all the files in the top level directory, or did you have them in folders?

What was the storage size of the CD Media?

Ok, so CD's will work with Mp3 files and DVD's will not work with any kind of file on it. Now we just need to get our IPods working on it somehow. Thanks for the info! Russ

hsjb, I believe the storage size was 680 mb. amro, I just clicked Burn CD - with create mp3 audio CD in my Burn CD preferences - so I think all files are top level, but I can check it tomorrow. RussK, my pleasure, I just wish my car was coming as soon as yours!

K-Man Sculpture, My ship has not come in yet, but I will remain hopeful that it will be on schedule. The one good thing is that we all have plenty of company in this endeavor! Russ

Ok but now the operative question, what about either just Bose with no PCM or just the base CD player with no PCM, with either play MP3's on CD?

I almost wish I was buying the launch demo car - so I could get it sooner. Actually, I'm still not sure if they will sell those cars, anyone know? Mine is a Feb build, and I'll find out yet again tomorrow if it is still an open order or is finally on the way through the process. By the way RussK I have a 20D also, imagine that... I hope you are able to get a photo of the boat, that would be fun to see.

K-Man S, I'm pretty darn sure it has to be the PCM radio - with or without the Bose. I haven't tested the 6 CD changer but my bet is that it won't work with mp3 files nor will the regular stereo play mp3 files. I hope for everyone else without PCM that wants to do it I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

That is what my assumption is that PCM is needed to play MP3's but I don't know if the 2006 stereos have been tested yet to see.

Great test ! Thanks for the info. Did the track/artist info show up on the PCM screen ? Thanks. Tonse

tonser, yes it showed all 112 tracks with title then artist as the song was playing - I suppose the only problem is that I had to manually advance through the tracks. I'm not sure if the numeric keypad would let you go to a specific track or not. I'll have to try it again and play around with the controls more.

I wonder if it takes the 800 MB discs too! (Hint hint, wink wink)

Thanks for the test but what do you mean "manually advance through the tracks"? Ruby

I assume he means that you might have to hit fwd, fwd, fwd, etc. to go through the tracks. He was going to try using the numeric keypad to see if you can punch in the track number and have it go to it.

hsjb, That's what i assumed as well but I am hoping we're wrong!

Which version ID3 tag did you use? iTunes has sooo many different ID3 options, i can't find a version that'll work w/ my CD player. Also, MP3 cds made w/ iTunes are defo in top level directory, they're not even put in a folder, they're just written straight to the disc.

A good test would be to simply copy your favorite folders of music to a cd and burn it. That ability is built into XP. You don't have to have cd burning software for that.

Same for the Mac. You can simply drag files to a burn image and then burn it.

amro, the copy folders method doesn't read in the player. I'm not really sure why. hsjb, I went to Best Buy and they only have 700 mb CDR's, which I was surprised about as they had about a zillion of those. So I couldn't try a 800 mb version, but it should work. I believe the CD-R is the important designation rather than the number of files. Prosche_Fan, I'm not sure about the ID3 tag - under burning I clicked MP3 CD. And for importing I'm currently at MP3 encoder - high quality.

So I've had a chance to try it again, and have some good news to report. On a test disk with 112 tunes, 8.1 hours - no folders, I can just enter the number - any number through 112 - and the song starts. CD title, and song title appear in a box. You can also replay, fast forward, scan, or random select the tunes. On a new test disk with 112 tunes - arranged in 10 different folders (automatically by itunes, but based on grouping and original location on hard drive - and took 4 minutes to burn). The system would play each folder as if it were a album. You can go to a menu selection and choose the "album" you want to hear and it starts and can be randomized or used with any of the other CD commands. My salesman was amazed, as he had never seen the system do that.

You didn't per chance try your CDR in a 2006 model car (Cayman or otherwise) with either just the Bose or just the standard stereo did you? I'm doubting it will work, but never hurts to try...

K-Man Sculpture - you can find out what ID3 version you are using by right-clicking the song and clicking get info. One thing i would like to know is how u burned a MP3 disc using iTunes into folders? i have never managed to sort them into folders using iTunes, thx for the help

K-man S - The Boxster I wanted to give it a try in sold a couple of days ago - a pretty Midnight blue one. So no I didn't get a chance to try it in other than the demo Cayman. Porxche_Fan - right clicking the song is basically how I got it to start grouping. But I'm still not seeing a seeing anything in the program that says "ID3". A quick internet search returns the following: What is ID3 (v1)? The audio format MPEG layer I, layer II and layer III (MP3) has no native way of saving information about the contents, except for some simple yes/no parameters like "private", "copyrighted" and "original home" (meaning this is the original file and not a copy). A solution to this problem was introduced with the program "Studio3" by Eric Kemp alias NamkraD in 1996. By adding a small chunk of extra data in the end of the file one could get the MP3 file to carry information about the audio and not just the audio itself. The placement of the tag, as the data was called, was probably chosen as there were little chance that it should disturb decoders. In order to make it easy to detect a fixed size of 128 bytes was chosen. The tag has the following layout (as hinted by the scheme to the right): Song title 30 characters Artist 30 characters Album 30 characters Year 4 characters Comment 30 characters Genre 1 byte --------- Basically in itunes I selected a grouping for a few song as a test and gave it a disk number. The exact thing I did that made itunes put them in 10 folders remains a mystery to me, as I must of triggered it by the grouping experiment so I'll just have to try it again. Hard to believe I used to be a tech guy that wrote software for a living,,. so sorry I'm so imprecise, but I tend to try 5 things at a time then drill down to what works.

Lol, no worries K-man sculpture. It might be different for us because of the version of iTunes we are using. I am using iTunes 6 at the moment - which is the latest. If you right clicka song, u hav get info at the top of the list, if u clik it, u get the info about that song w/ lots of tabs at the top of the window. Select summary from the tabs at the top. There'll be a box for artwork, underneath that, there are two columns w/ properties. In the right hand column, the ID3 tag version is the third down for me. iTunes also lets you convert the ID3 tags to different versions which was why i was wondering if it makes a difference to the PCM. You can convert the ID3 tags by rightcliking n selecting 'Convert ID3 tags...' hope that makes sense n helps...

Porsche_Fan - thanks for the description of how to find what you were asking about. It turns out that I had looked at a aac file (what I had downloaded from apple) and it does not have a ID3 tag listed at all - that why I didn't even see it when I right clicked on a file. But then taking a harder look at my mp3 files - they do have the tag, and for me it is over several different versions. I have v2.3 mostly, but also v1.1, v1.2, and v2.2. They all seem to work, so I don't think it makes a difference.