MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

I'm getting my new MP3 HU (Kenwood Z838W) this Christmas from SWMBO.

As this unit is for use in a 1998 Land Rover Discovery TDi (not the quietest
of machines), what bit rate would you guys use to compress the files?

I normally use 192Kbps for use in my MP3 player I use on my bike, but I hear
many people using 256 in cars.

Also - not having used an in-car MP3 player before, how can I store the
files? Will it only read from the root of the CD, or can I put my albums in
named folders on the CD?

Opinions please. ;-)

H.

MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

"H" wrote in message
...
I'm getting my new MP3 HU (Kenwood Z838W) this Christmas from SWMBO.

As this unit is for use in a 1998 Land Rover Discovery TDi (not the
quietest
of machines), what bit rate would you guys use to compress the files?

I normally use 192Kbps for use in my MP3 player I use on my bike, but I
hear
many people using 256 in cars.

I tend to only use mp3s with a rate of 128 or higher, I can't hear anything
wrong with 192. I don't really notice any difference between these and
higher rates, but with a high quality loud system you might. As it is I only
have a HU and speakers so I doubt I'll get better audio at higher rates than
I use already. Also depends on what rates the player will support. Plus I
prefer to use no more than 192 so I can squeeze a lot of tracks onto a
single disc as I use the HU as a substitute for a cd changer (can't see the
point in fitting a 10 CD changer when I can get 10 CDs worth of mp3s on the
HU).

Also - not having used an in-car MP3 player before, how can I store the
files? Will it only read from the root of the CD, or can I put my albums
in
named folders on the CD?

Depends on the player. With my Pioneer DEH-P3500MP you can use folders so
long as you don't go more than 7 folders deep (root plus 7 levels for a
total of 8 levels), however the manual suggests using no more than 2 folder
levels under the root due to delays in parsing the folder tree. You'll also
need to be careful of how you write the files, eg. packet writing to CD-RW
is normally not supported. Also look into tagging for names - not sure if
any car players support ID3 v2 tags, I know mine doesn't, so I always write
my mp3s with both v1 and v2 tags (as I also use the same files on my PC and
with other devices).

Check with the Kenwood site to see if there's a manual you can download to
check how to create your CDs if you can't wait till your player arrives.

Dan

MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

H wrote:
I'm getting my new MP3 HU (Kenwood Z838W) this Christmas from SWMBO.

As this unit is for use in a 1998 Land Rover Discovery TDi (not the
quietest of machines), what bit rate would you guys use to compress
the files?

I normally use 192Kbps for use in my MP3 player I use on my bike, but
I hear many people using 256 in cars.

Well encoded 192Kbps files should be fine for everything but perhaps the
occasional freak tune that is consistently loud and has had a lot of
compression appied in the studio during production. I always encode at
192Kbps, as one of the players I use my mp3s in seems to be a little poor at
buffering VBR files. I have mp3s from other people's rips at higher bit
rates, ie 256, 320, but have not noticed a quality difference yet (I have
not *tried* to analyse the difference, it's just that no obvious difference
has been noticed); I do however, definitely notice when I can't fit as much
on a CDR because of them.

Also - not having used an in-car MP3 player before, how can I store
the files? Will it only read from the root of the CD, or can I put
my albums in named folders on the CD?

Different players will have different guidelines. If you intend to put a few
different albums on each CDR, it's probably best to put each album in it's
own folder directly below the root directory. It's also good practice to get
your encoder software to prefix each track's filename with the track number,
including any leading zeros, that should preserve the file ordering, as some
people have problems with different burners and players reordering all their
mp3s into alphabetical order. You could fiddle the same with the album's
folder name if you wanted each 'CD' to appear in a specific order when
burnt. If you just have a random collection of mp3s then you might as well
just stick them all in root, or one level below in separate genre folders.

MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

"H" wrote in message
...

I'm getting my new MP3 HU (Kenwood Z838W) this Christmas from SWMBO.

As this unit is for use in a 1998 Land Rover Discovery TDi (not the
quietest
of machines), what bit rate would you guys use to compress the files?

I normally use 192Kbps for use in my MP3 player I use on my bike, but I
hear
many people using 256 in cars.

Also - not having used an in-car MP3 player before, how can I store the
files? Will it only read from the root of the CD, or can I put my albums
in
named folders on the CD?

Opinions please. ;-)

H.


192kbps is fine for me!

MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

192Kbps, as one of the players I use my mp3s in seems to be a little poor
at
buffering VBR files.

What would be the advantage in using VBR?

Jim.

MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

Jim Murray wrote:
192Kbps, as one of the players I use my mp3s in seems to be a little
poor at buffering VBR files.

What would be the advantage in using VBR?

http://www.geocities.com/altbinaries...r-encoding.htm
http://www.nathansheldon.com/xp-80/what_is_VBR.html

S.

MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

"H" wrote in message
...
I normally use 192Kbps for use in my MP3 player I use on my bike, but I
hear
many people using 256 in cars.

stop crying and do what u want. i suppose u only want 2 know so u can show
off 2 ur friends. hahaha

landrover boi, bend over, i have a mp3 for ya hahahahah

MP3 bit rates for in-car
 

Interesting. Tried using VBR to encode with CDex. Even dropping the min.
bitrate down to 40K resulted in a file size only marginally smaller than my
usual 160K.

Haven't really assessed for quality yet but seems to sound similar. btw I
tried a slow, Ry Cooder track, pretty varied range.

Jim.

"Roberts" wrote in message
...
Jim Murray wrote:
192Kbps, as one of the players I use my mp3s in seems to be a little
poor at buffering VBR files.

What would be the advantage in using VBR?

http://www.geocities.com/altbinaries...r-encoding.htm
http://www.nathansheldon.com/xp-80/what_is_VBR.html

S.