Well I finally got rid of my POS 1989 Chevy Corsica and got a much better (11 years younger!) used one, a 2000 Saturn SL1. Unfortunately it only has an AM/FM radio at the moment.

What is everyone's suggestions for car audio players? I am on a budget (I suspect anything over $300 would be a dream and not possible). I want something that will be able to play CD's and MP3's on CD's (--alt-preset standard of course) reliabily. Also any slim chance of firmware upgrades to support new formats would be awsome too.

Right now I have a RioVolt SP-100 portable player. I could go the cheap route and just get an AM/FM cassette deck, but then I would have to hookup my portable player everytime I want to listen to something.

Chris; I can share a bit of my experiences with this. I bought the Alpine CDA-9807 for under $300. Its a great unit. There are others available for less from places like Crutchfield.

My job has me driving all over the country in a min-van, (always rented). We always try to get one with a cassette deck. We use a laptop into one of those Sony cassette adaptors that does an amazinly good job. In a car environment, it sounds good. Works equally good with my boy's Rio Volt.

Tried one of those FM transmitter style units . . . it sucked!

Hope that helps some, Dex

I was actually thinking about getting one of those FM transmitter devices, good thing you told me!

I much rather have a CD player that can play MP3's burned on CD's instead of going the cassette adapter route. Makes it a lot easier then carting around my portable player all the time and then trying to hook it up for every car trip. The catch is I need to find a CD player that will play --alt-preset standard MP3's without any compatibility problems.

I just checked out a few the other day. JVC and Sony. They both played the disc I threw at them. Disc is burned and encoded at --alt-preset standard. Both were well under $300.00. Could expand on something like these at a later time as well. They had various inputs.

You wouldn't happen to know what models do you?

I think it was this model jvc:

http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?modelId=MODL026998

I'll have to dig around for the sony.

My friend got some cheap $50 cassatte deck from Radio Shack that has line-in on it and it gets the job done for his mp3 player, he just need a double-headed 1/8 cord. Line-in is a lot better quality than tape-in.

Interesting, that makes sense and would allow me to "upgrade" when a new portable player comes out.

I wonder if the AM/FM radio in my car has a line-in...so many possibilities.

I've dealt with several of JVC's units, and personally owned the KD-SH99 (still have that, it rocks) and a KD-SH909 (a year newer but I didn't care for other features it had vs. the 99) and they have absolutely no problems with any MP3s. Sony hasn't had the best track record playing --aps MP3s among other problems, so it's probably best to avoid them, at least I would. I don't know much about the Alpines except that one of them has a very nice time correlation correction (or something like that name, heh) that allows you to correct for the car's speakers being different distances from you by adding delay to the speakers as you see fit to correct for that distance difference. Pretty nice feature, though I think that particular deck is on the expensive side. Even JVC's cheapest MP3 model, while scarce on features and rather bland looking, plays --aps just fine etc etc. I didn't care for Kenwood decks simply because their disc navigation was pretty horrible, couldn't even shuffle a whole disc IIRC unless you didn't use any subdirectories, as it could only shuffle one directory. The JVC units let you quickly navigate between 12 directories by using the 6 radio preset buttons. Name 12 directories in the root directory by prefixing them with two-digits 01-12 (i.e. 01Crystal Method, 07Various etc) and you can quickly skip to directory number 3 by pressing radio preset button #3, or to directory 10 by holding button #4 for a second (7-12 are accessed by holding 1-6 down for a second). You can also navigate directories below those ones, or those ones too for that matter, by hitting Mode and then track forward or back to skip one directory forward or back. I'm not sure about other brands, but I know at least the Aiwa decks did not do this...the JVC decks start up at the same position in the same MP3 the next time you come back to your vehicle rather than starting at the beginning of the disc again. The Aiwa decks started over either at the beginning of the song or maybe at the beginning of the whole disc, I forget which, but it would be annoying in either case for me. JVC also added MP3 disc capability to their 12 disc changers recently, so you could have 13 discs all full of MP3s, heh. I recall installing one of those Kenwood hard drive based juke box players in someone's boat last year, and I believe it handled --aps fine too if you were giving that unit any thought. It's got a 10gig laptop drive in a game console sized cartridge that plugs into a unit that looks similar to an amplifier, and connects to any Kenwood head unit and behaves like a CD changer. Options are getting better these days, but there's still a few things to avoid. My own personal choice would still be a JVC though.

Thanks for the review on JVC, I am going to check them out at my local BestBuy as well as check on Crutchfield.com. Sounds like exactly what I am looking for.

I've got a Kenwood KDC MP6090R in my car and it's played everything i've thrown at it. So my vote goes to Kenwood.

yes, but can you shuffle an entire disc that contains many subdirectories? Last I checked the Kenwoods couldn't do that, and would only shuffle one directory, not an entire disc. Quite possible they've changed that by now, but also possible that they haven't. That's a pretty big X against them in my book, so make sure the check that out before buying one.

I also have a Kenwood MP6090 and have been fairly happy with it. I think this unit is also known as the MP8017 in some countries. I have never had any mp3s not play correctly on it. Most of the ones I have tried have been --preset standard or --preset medium but there have also been others.

You are right _Shorty that it will only shuffle within a single folder. I have got round this by using the software MP3 ISO Builder to create my disks which can create an extra folder with all of the songs in using hard links, so not requiring any significant extra space. However, this solution is a bit longwinded and that software doesn't seem to be being developed any more so is not ideal. Also as you said, navigation between folders is a little counter-intuitive.

One other thing that I find annoying is that there are fairly large gaps (at least one second) between tracks. I tried removing all tags from the mp3s but this doesn't seem to help. Of course, this may be true of all car mp3 cd players. I have not tried any others. Also this is now a fairly old model, so I imagine the later Kenwoods may be better.

This model does pick up playing where it left off which for me is an essential feature.

I get a pause with the JVC too, and it wasn't any better with the one that was from the next model year either. It's only a second I believe, and I don't get annoyed by it, as I rarely listen to anything in sequence. I would imagine this probably isn't going to go away, as the players probably have a severe lack of cpu/memory for making it anywhere even near gapless. I assume they just play the current file until the end, and only at that point begin loading the next song into its buffer.

I owned kenwood 6024G and now i own jvc sh9101

Kenwood never "jumped" or skipped any track on road anomalies.... You have to throw it over a cliff to stop playing. Jvc is worse than kenwood in that section....

But in the other hand jvc is more beautifull, has more balanced sound and plays WMA

perhaps the following list of portables might help you a bit: Reinhard Hofmann : Portable Mp3 Players (engl.) | (ger.)
Furthermore i asked medion.com (who sell a mp3 car player for less than 100$ / euro in germany), kenwood and blaupunkt about mp3 (80kbps, 32khz, id3). They all answered that newer products can play such files...

I've a Kenwood MP3 car player and it's very good. Never skipped any audio-cd track on road anomalies and very fast mp3 decoder, so the pause between each track is very small also in live albums.
I've tried Pioneer players, very impressive look, but not so good in mp3 decoder.

There are severar cheap Kenwoor player you can choose.
(Kenwood was the first mp3 car player producer on the market )

I love this forum!! Even old bumpy roads are described as if they were exquise scientific test environments!

....

Here in Greece we only got bumpy-broken-with holes roads....... (except the national Greek roads)...

So if i get an 1999 model cd (only) player i'll never be able to here one minute of music.....

So i'll say that if you ever want to know about car cd/mp3 players ask me..... i live in the perfect TEST COUNTRY

Earlier this year a buddy of mine (long-haul trucker) replaced his in-dash unit with a Kenwood KDC-MPV7019 - CD/CDR/CDRW-mp3. I've been supplying him with mp3 programming - alt-preset standard - on generic media, and we've expereinced no problems with playback.

He espiecially likes the fact that we're averaging 7.5-hours of playback per disc.

A few months ago I purchased a Sony CD Walkman D-CJ01 portable - CD/CDR/CDRW-mp3 - for my Chevy S10 Blazer.

My in-dash AM/FM Cassette unit had died years ago (cassette player, radio portion still works), but I still had an external 20w amp that powered a set of rear speakers in the truck. This amp has line-level inputs which I feed from the headphone output of the Walkman (this allows the walkman to control volume level).

Admittedly this arrangement forces the use of battery power for the Walkman (2 AAs) which last about 4-hours. Again, I've had no problem playing alt-preset standard CDRs on this unit.

Later,
KenA

I am using a Pioneer "Supertuner" which is OK and plays the MP3's most of the time. But some CD's it cannot read and I am not sure what is the differentiation. All are LAME --alt-preset standard. Maybe it is the CD, but I do not think so. Could it be the software I burned with?

never had my JVC skip or anything remotely like that even once.

I believe those honours belong to Aiwa.

Also Kenwood plays WMA

How are the Alpines? They're known for making top drawer components.

Well I am looking at purchasing one of these babies... Pioneer manufactures them.

Heres the link: Pioneer DEH-P7450MP

Or this one...

Pioneer DEH-P8450MP

Both them are really good, the thing that strikes me the most is the OEL they both have... makes driving at night such a pleasure

It gonna be installed into my Honda Civic VTi 2001, which already has a great stereo system but it is a bit bland all black and no funky disco lights. So its just the deck for me and the MP3 compatibility.

Anyone has one of these head units? Whats the quality like?

Laters

AgentMil

I don't recall the model number, but I've only used one Alpine. I believe it was a fairly recent model, probably of this year's crop. It played the --aps stuff I threw at it just fine. It had a wicked time-correction feature for correcting for distance differences between you and the different speaker locations in the car, basically putting you equidistant between all of them. Now they just need to add EQ for each channel, hehe.

As I said in my second post, our CDA-9807 is a great unit. It seems to play anything I throw at it, including WMA's. One nice thing I discovered, and this may not be important to very many folks, it can play the little 3" cd's just fine. I discovered this by RTFM! I have quite a few of these disks, so that was a nice discovery.

On the down side, and perhaps all CD players do this: the CD's get real hot in normal use. So far this hasn't been a problem, but it does concern me. The unit even has a small fan mounted at the back. (I live in Florida.)

Dex

Edit: In my second post, I commented that the FM transmitter units "sucked". Thats not a very meaningful review, so let me expand that a bit.
The unit I bought was around $35, so not quite dirt cheap. You had to manually tune it to the frequency you wanted, then, every time you hit a mild bump, it would detune. Also, the noise level was horrible. If you tried to adjust the output much above the noise floor, you would overdrive the input signal. Overall, the unit was simply unusable.

If anyone wants to try one, I'll send you this one for free. It "sucks" that bad. B)

before I added another amp in my system I had been using the deck's built-in amp for the front speakers in my car. While I did that, my CDs came out very hot too. After noticing this, and being lucky to have a dash that was spacious enough to mount one, I mounted an 80mm case fan back in there just to move more air around the deck. They still came out warm, but nowhere near as hot as before, so it helps. After getting another amp, and turning off the deck's built-in amps (yeah, actually has a feature to turn them off completely, woot) I removed the fan from in the dash as it was no longer needed. CDs don't get hot like that anymore, so in my case (and probably most cases) it is simply due to the built-in amps getting hot during their operation. Yours has a small fan in it already, but if you have the room in your dash it probably wouldn't hurt to throw one in there blowing over the unit.

Hello all,

This is my first post here! Anyway looking to buy an mp3 cd player (less than 150 sterling). Been looking at:

Pioneer DEH-P3500MP
Kenwood KDC-M4524G
Sony CDX-MP40

Went to a few car shops in town today & nearly everyone I talked to said the Pioneer was the best (are they on some sort of commission?) followed by the Sony, then the Kenwood (very negative comments)

Actually brought in an mp3 cd and tried it out on a few models, the Pioneer was definitely quicker than the Sony & easier to use. Nobody had the Kenwood on display so I couldn't try it out. Most said Kenwood wasn't very good anyway. Its a shame cause I liked the look of it and its dot matrix display looked the part. I'm a bit sceptical of what the shops are saying so thought I'd see if anyone can put my right.

spuddy, well, if sony's fixed the vbr problem, great. I don't know if they have or not. As for kenwood, as I stated earlier in the thread, it has very poor disc navigation and playback features. Not sure about the Pioneer. Definitely ask to read the manual before you plunk down your cash. Make sure you can live with the disc navigation features, make sure it will actually play all mp3s (simply playing some --aps mp3s is usually a great test there) and make sure it will deal well with your current CDs or if you'll have to reburn them to either work properly or get the most out of the player. If you haven't already, read my long post on the first page of this thread.

thanks _Shorty
read your posts, will see if i can find the manuals online & see what they're like

Another question, what do you guess: How many percentage of (newer) car-MP3 player show folder/filename OR ID3 information in their display? (Can I be shure, more than 80%?)
edit: typing error

best off just looking at the manuals for the ones you're considering. My JVCs both read id3v1 tags. The KD-SH99 reads ISO 31 character filenames, and the KD-SH909 I believe could read Joliet filenames. Most of the ones I've seen lately read Joliet and id3v1 tags, but it's quick and easy to check the manual to make sure.

Very nice...ever since I got my my first Alpine head unit (cassette deck in '95), I've said you can't go wrong w/ Alpine. They're definitely in the upper price range but the workmanship shines through in their functionality and longevity: they end up paying for themselves over time.

I've got a different purpose: I offer a lot of mp3 for download, all information I need is given in the filename (up tp 100 character). So I want to be shure, that most 'customers' can see the file info of the filename...