What would be the easiest device (mini-PC, discontinued riocar, modded MP3 player, etc.) to play flac files through my car stereo? I'd rather not replace my existing head unit, but something with a hard drive that can hold and play my flac files with little-to-no modification of my existing car stereo.

Thanks,
Robert

I love my riocar unit. I don't remember if it plays FLACs or not (haven't updated the content in ages and only just recently started ripping to FLAC). One thing to note, however, is that it does not provide an internal power amp.

In addition, the computer interfaces on it are limited to 12mbps USB or 10mbit ethernet. In other words, very slow.

-brendan

Easiest would probably be an iPod running RockBox. You would be limited to 80 GB because, as far as I know, RockBox doesn't work on the latest iPods (6G). They did get it working on the 5.5G 80 GB and 60 GB models.

Hmmm. I'll look into that. Thanks.
Robert

How would the IPOD with Rockbox connect to the car stereo? Does Apple sell such hardware? And if they do, is it relied upon the original Apple Ipod software to work?

Robert

Cowon D2. I love mine and use it in the car quit often.

3.5mm jack plug?! A lot of newer stereos have an input or 2. Best also to make sure you get the line out from the iPod rather that through the amp as well.

Maybe you should first ask yourself, "Do I really need FLAC in my car?"

The noise floor in a car is noisy enough you're probably better off going with a lossy codec.

Ahem... LAME MP3 in VBR at -V3.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

I still have not bought the ipod yet. Other priorities unfortunately...

I don't want just an MP3 player because I don't want to maintain two different copies of my music.

Robert

Also it's a nice way to have a backup!

It is indeed!

I know that the OP doesn't want to change his in-car headunit, but in the interests of security and ease, I bought a £90UK Alpine headunit with the capability of playing MP3 direct from CD-R media. I can easily fit 10 albums on each disc at a quality level that sounds transparent to me under normal in-car listening conditions.

The headunit has a detachable security-coded front panel making the unit worthless to any car thieves who may otherwise consider stealing it. They're welcome to help themselves to my CD-R collection as they're only "backups" of CDs I keep safely stored at home anyway.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

What kind of stereo do you have? Does it have an aux input?

do what i do - FLAC at home and either AAC or VBR mp3 for the road. as noted, the noise floor kills any advantage of FLAC unless you'll be doing a lot of listening with the car off.

you'll be saving yourself some headaches and opening up way more options for mobile audio this way.

I second this. There are two reasons why lossless is pointless for me on the road:
1) Storage space - I can't fit all my music onto my PMP (soon to be a Creative Zen 32 GB, currently an iPod Photo 20GB) even if everything were lossily compressed.
2) External noise is always a problem on the go - people talking, cars, other electronic devices, etc. In my case, the other issue is that my portable headphones aren't very good. I have a pair of Sennheiser HD 280 pros for use at home, but they're too bulky to carry around. Since I can't stand in-ear headphones, I just picked up a cheap pair of clip-ons from Wal-Mart for when I'm on the go.

Having to maintain two copies of the music really is a pain though. However, I'm hoping to get Rockbox working on the new Creative. Since Rockbox (and even some commercial firmwares) doesn't require special software to transfer the music, you could easily write a script that transparently transfers the music to the PMP while also transcoding it to MP3 or some other lossy format.

With storage price/GB dropping almost daily and (gradually) more FLAC-friendly devices being built, it's becoming more trouble than it's worth. We're on our way to, "Why transcode? Just sync."

We're not there yet, but it's worth noting that right now the value of having two differently encoded instances of your music collection is declining.

Also, for a FLAC car player, I'd recommend looking for a PhatBox, by a company called PhatNoise. I don't even know if they're still in business. If they're not, then look for a used PhatBox. They're tough as rocks, work right outta the package with many factory and aftermarket heads (which treat them as CD changers) and can decode FLAC, WMA, MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis. Their downside is the high cost of the proprietary HD cartridges, although when new they come with a sufficiently sized one, so you may never need to buy an extra cartridge.

yeah, but FLAC doesn't coincide with "sufficiently sized" when you're talking about most if not your entire collection. is the cartridge the HDD itself? if so, you will have to buy a new one at some point.

Most people with HUGE music collections don't yet expect to take their entire collection with them in the car. The last PhatBox I bought and installed was in 2004, and it came with an 80GB cartridge. That's enough room for some 2400 tracks. But I think a common expectation of "full coverage" will reasonably come within 18 months.

I recommend the PhatBox as an interim solution, only because there hasn't been a recent influx of standout FLAC players in car audio. The basic technology is cheap enough now for an enthusiast to build his/her own car audio storage solution, but that only applies to enthisiasts (and, of course, people who are related to enthusiasts).

A modern level of data storage becoming common in automobiles is just around the corner, after which it'd only be a matter of using Microsoft Sync (or whatever your car would come equipped with) to download and install the FLAC decoder. (Or by some similar process.)

/tangent
We're in between technological and/or marketing breakthroughs in car audio right now. Kinda sucks, but I'm sure our patience will be justly rewarded. Soon your car will be as much a part of your home computing network as any other PC on it. (Sorry, for the diversion there, but I'm excited about these things that are just beginning to take shape.)

i totally agree and well overdue, imo. i'm from the old school car audio (when speakerworks ruled the circuit) so it's exciting to see these advances.

sorry, OP, back to topic.

Not to delve too far into off-topic land but I agree. It seemed like car CD decks were at a stand still for many years. I first purchased a car CD deck that was capable of playing mp3 data CDs and it had an auxiliary input (it actually had two; one on the front and one on the back). That was back in 2002 and it seemed like car CD decks didn't change for about 5 years. They only changed by adding more lossy codec support (such as WMA and AAC) but that was it. Then USB ports became more common with car CD decks and that has seemed to open up a whole new world. I now have a Kenwood car CD deck that has a USB port right on the front of the device. I can plug my iPod, pocket PC, USB thumb drive, PSP, or external hard drive directly into the unit and browse all of my lossy music. It deck plays mp3, AAC, WMA, and WAV files natively and Kenwood could always add support for more formats via a firmware update (they added iPod touch compatibility in a firmware update). So it seems as if this is the beginning of the transition where more and more manufacturers will start supporting a wider array of formats in their decks allowing for faster USB connections. When USB first came out, speeds were slow at about 10-12Mbps but my car CD deck operates at a faster speed. There will be a time (probably in 4-5 months) whenever car CD decks can operate at 100MBps+ speeds or even full USB2.0 speeds.

To the OP, the equipment that you need depends on the features of your current deck.
Does your deck have an auxiliary input?
If yes then all you have to do is purchase a FLAC compatible portable device and hook it up via a car charger and line-out accessory. The iPod would probably be best for this as it has a larger amount of 3rd party accessories. You can Rockbox your iPod and it will still be compatible with a car charger/line-out accessory.
If no then you can either purchase an iPod installation kit that will go through an antenna connection (it will still be hard wired so the audio quality will be fine) and purchase an iPod or you can get a new car CD deck. I think most iPod installation kits go for about $50-$75 depending on who makes your current deck.

I think your best bet would be to purchase a new car CD deck that has a USB interface and a 80GB-160GB portable hard drive (or any hard drive that can run off the power that a USB port supplies). My car CD deck has a USB interface that is still rather slow but it only takes 15 seconds for the unit to scan my 60GB iPod (which has 45GB of content on it) and resume playing from where it left off. A USB connection would be completely digital and give you the most options. I know that there are decks out there that can handle FLAC files. Just from doing some quick looking at Best Buy's website, it looks like you can pick one up for a little over $200. Either that or purchase a new CD deck that has an auxiliary input.

So it all depends on the features of your current car deck. Still, you should think about having two libraries (one lossy and one lossless) as portable listening environments (especially cars) just won't let you hear the benefits of lossless music. Not only that but you can fit so much more when using lossy music.

Wow. Lot of activity here lately.

I don't have a line-in or any other mechanism to get external audio into my car stereo, so I think a new stereo is in order first. Because of that, it put the halt on this project for awhile. Thank you for all the responses though. I'm certainly keeping track. I believe an Ipod gen < 5.5 is in order....

Robert

Well when you do want to look at a deck, this one is cheap and has full iPod connectivity:

http://www.incarexpress.co.uk/view_product...?partno=KDPDR41

Why does it have to be FLAC? Why not just use iTunes and Apple lossless? Then there would be no need to mod the iPod and you could use the latest iPod classics.

That's always a consideration, but it's a decision one should be sure about because of the work investment. If, like many folks here, you have at least 500 albums to re-rip, it could entail more than 100 hours of effort. Quicker to transcode everything from FLAC, although that would take many hours, too.

What would be really interesting is a system in the vehicle with a large hard drive, and when you drive up to your home, it wirelessly connects to your home network and updates its library to match that on your computer. In the long run, of course, a cellular connection in the vehicle that's capable of streaming music from your home computer over the internet would be even better. Same for PMPs - it would eliminate all the hard drive headaches. You would just need a small flash memory module that holds the OS, along with a cellular wireless chip to stream the audio. However, all this would require innovation on the part of the mobile telecom companies, and I have absolutely no faith in them

I haven't read all the answers above, but maybe you could get a Sony PSP. It's very portable and AFAIK you can play not only Flac files, but also a lot of other formats. It supports SD cards which are very cheap nowadays.

Regards!

you should point out which hack it takes for a PSP to play FLAC as it doesn't do it out of the box.

people have rolled their own like that. try http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/ or mp3car.com

here's an older example (as i don't have time right now to do a proper search)

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/software-s...-wifi-sffs.html

That's pretty cool, I'll have to check out the stuff on those sites. It wouldn't be too hard to do the wireless sync thing with your car, as that's only dependent on the end user, but streaming over a cell phone connection would run up HUGE charges, not to mention the fact that lossless streaming would be impossible (at least in the US). I don't think even 3G would be able to stream a FLAC file in realtime, hence the need for mobile telecoms to upgrade their networks.

Assuming negligible overhead, to stream an average 850kbps compressed FLAC file in realtime would take closer to a 7G connection.

the easiest way WOULD be to replace your HU with one that has an aux input on it and get a Cowon or mod your iPod for FLAC.



yeah, streaming over a phone isn't a good solution, imo, but a lot of other good ideas at that site