(17-03-2012 12:30pm)Donny Dog Wrote:  

I need some help/advice, please!

I have been uploading CDs on to the hard drive. However, this takes about 50% of normal running time, and has failed on more than one occasion, such that to successfully download two one-hour CDs has taken over 90 minutes (with the car engine having to run all this time)! Am I doing something wrong? I get 'Gracenote' messages on some but not others - does that suggest there is a problem with the type/age/licence of the CDs (they are all properly purchased proprietary brands, not downloads).

Apart from playing the CDs directly without uploading, what is the best way to get this music into a format I can use in the car (MP3, USB, etc.), and, in laymans' terms, how do I do it? Thanks!

(17-03-2012 03:30pm)Straydox Wrote:  The in-car hard disk stores just 10 CDs at original quality - so called 'lossless'. There have been numerous threads about the amount of time it takes to rip the CD's onto the internal storage/Gracenote etc so best have a search.

MP3 Wikipedia page on MP3 is a compressed music file format (i.e. not lossless), with a trade off between sound quality and data file size (the higher the bit-rate the bigger the file is). Perceived sound quality is a personal thing - I can tell the difference between a 128 and a 192 k/bit music file but bit rates above that appear to be the same (to me).

So how do you turn CDs into MP3 files? If you have a Windows PC then the newer versions of Windows Media Player (right click the top of the player and select 'Show Menu Bar' and select Tools/Options and then you will see a RIP music tab with an adjustable slider to. set the bit rate. Yiu can configure it to automatically rip CDs and specify the file save location. It will access a web based library for track names etc. You then copy the resulting folders onto a USB stick and you are in business.

The RRE will also accept an Apple Ipod and their proprietary file format (iTunes will rip your CDs for you) - personally speaking I find the Apple device's indexing system really annoying so prefer MP3 on USB. Apple claim that their format is 'Lossless' to my ears it never sounds quite right - as I said above sound quality is a personal thing.

You can also rip DVDs into DIVx format using the DIVx tools and view those via USB too. Enjoy.

(24-03-2012 12:04pm)Donny Dog Wrote:  As an update, my wife downloaded a couple of CDs onto her computer. We then put the new 'cruzer blade' into the USB slot, and sat there wondering what to do next, only to realise that it had already done it by itself!! Within a minute, we were sitting in the car listening to the same music. Even compressed, or whatever the correct term is, the reproduction was awesome, and I certainly couldn't detect any loss compared with the CDs I'd loaded on to the hard drive. In fact, the sound was better, probably because my wife's Cds are a lot newer than mine.

Thanks for your advice, Straydox!