In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 20 Aug 2020 18:21:09 -0400, Dan Espen
wrote:

micky writes:

In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 20 Aug 2020 17:37:58 -0400, Dan Espen
wrote:

micky writes:

In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 20 Aug 2020 05:10:24 -0700 (PDT), bruce
bowser wrote:

The thing is, I never really bothered or let alone perfected recording
with much CD burning or thumb drive use strictly for audio, at least.
I have three thumb drives and they're all practically empty.

Unefortunately for me, my car radio plays only audio CDs, not MP3s
etc. and you can't get many songs on an audio CD.

I never knew my car radio/CD player handled DATA CDs with MP3s until I
tried it.

If that was a way of encouraging me to try it, a) you are very tactful.
(I mean it.) b) I did try it. IIRC the owners manual etc. said
nothing about audio CDs or MP3's or the difference . Surely MP3 existed
in 2005? But I guess the car radio people hadn't gotten around to it
yet. They were probably gloating about using a gps map in the radio
(and it does work very well to show where I am and what direction I'm
going.)

Tact is a virtue. I was guessing you'd look into it a bit.
I have the OEM radio in a 2006 Scion Xb.

Of course you can always have a new radio installed.

They sell devices under $20 that will plug into the back of many car
radios and have a USB input and an AUX input. One was listed for my
car, and I think if the car had been made later in 2005, it would have
worked. It didn't, but I took the radio out to find that out for
sure. (Crutchfield paid return postage and promptly returned my money)

In doing so, I was as gentle as could be, but still one place in the
vinyl dash, it crumbled. Less than a cubic mm. but enough that I don't
want to try it again or hve a pro try either.

The dash has 10 cracks, most 2 inches long. No cracks have gaps but I
expect things to get worse, maybe a lot worse, before I get rid of the
car around 2024.

I was also concerned that the steering wheel controls might not work
right, even though crutchfield sells a dedicated kit.

It's a tan dash too. Don't black dashes crumble earlier, and do red
dashes fade like the red street lines in a map I had that totally --
totally -- disappeared?

You can typically get 700 MP3 tracks on a data CD.

I tried it but eventually found out the radio has an 8 bit processor so
song count overflows at 255, so I can only play 255 tracks on each CD.

Interesting.

Still that's enough for me to get all of my collection on 31 CDs.
I typically play the same CD 2 or 3 times before I get bored and switch
to the next CD. I'm really happy with this solution. I really detest
radio and it's commercials.

I have about 20 CD's I got at a Goodwill store. That was all they had
from a set of about 35 that was made for sale to GI's in Germany during
the 70's (with songs from the 50's, 60's and a little 70's). Most are
original, but a few are reproductions. Some reproductions sound exactly
like the group that made the song famous, but a few are inferior.

But since I no longer have the changer, I only play one of them and it's
not even a good one.

I had 300 45s, 500+ LPs, and a number of CDs.
I can get obsessed in multi-year projects so I ripped them all
to my hard disk track by track. I don't regret the time spent
as I now have multiple ways of accessing my entire music collection
and full backup.

Sounds good.

I wrote some software to pick random tracks and spread them over
all 31 CDs so I don't have to listen to the same artist day after day.

My car is getting a little old now. I'm able to keep a full backup
of all my music on 1 USB stick but the car won't play from USB, only
that Apple thing.

You know for under $15 there are things that plug into the cigarette
lighter that transmit to the radio.

Nope, didn't know that.

They have USB and probably AUX
inputs and maybe even SD card input, and have switches to play the next
song, the previous song, to adjust the frequency to any unused freq. in
your area. There are dozens of models, some with flexible stalks,
others very short. Some have a little screen that shows the name of the
song that is playing. They also have bluetooth and work with the cell
phone. It's incedible how much they pack into a little thing for so
little money. Maybe by now some are $20. If you're interested, I'll
tell you which ones I like

Most have two USB jacks, one of which is only good for charging your
phone and one which takes a flashdrive and is input to the radio.

Thanks for the offer.

My CD scheme works well enough for my current car. Right now I'm not spending
much time in the car so I'm not hot to upgrade right now.

A USB player that supports FLAC would probably be the best way for me to

Is that Roberta FLAC?

go since that's the format my backups use. Random play would be
a necessity.

I've got most of my house and back yard covered with WIFI.
I tried bluetooth, but even with class 1 bluetooth I wasn't satisfied.

Wifi reaches my house and probably all of the yard, at least where a
radio might be, but I don't have any wifi radios. I have a bluetooth
radio that is about 40 feet from the computer and that is too far (so I
ran a wire that works fine)

But I dont' want to run wires to the bathroom and the kitchen and the
basement, so someone on sci.electronics.repair, I think it was,
recommended an FM transmitter.

I got the little one, $10 or 15 and it wasn't enough (even though he
thought it woudl be. ) so I got a 30 or 40 dolllar one and it reaches
the whole house and any FM radio will receive it. 90.5 but it will xmit
on any FM frequency. It's the strongest station on the dial when I'm
playing something. I'm in a townhouse and I wonder if my next door
n'bor get it, has come across it, and I wonder if she wonders why
sometimes it s there and usually it's not. But it's a vacant frequency.
I have a button on the radio for it so I check frequennty.

Getting away from radio stations with their obnoxious advertising was a very
good thing. I'm glad I spent all that time moving my entire collection
to my hard disk which is the root of the whole system.

Great.