On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:15:30 -0700, Chuck Gould penned the following
well considered thoughts to the readers of rec.boats:

Each time I resolved to replace the stereo system on my boat this
year, it would start working properly again and the task would drop
several notches on the priority list. Saturday, it gave up the ghost-
wouldn't turn on until about 50 attempts had been mae pressing the
switch, and even then the digital display was kaput. Only about 14
years' service from that unit- I guess they just don't make them like
they used to. :-)

Speaking of not making them like they used to.........

Holy Smackaroons

Used to think I knew a few things about car stereo (my stereo mounts
in the cabin where it's pretty protected- and I don't need/won't buy
"marine" version). Looking at the specs for potential replacements, I
can see where the industry has evolved substantially in the last 14
years while my technical awareness has not. It's like learning a new
language.

Questions for the more techinally hip:

1. Anybody got "HD" FM radio? Would you rate the difference in sound
quality as indistinguishable, marginal, or substantial?

2. Anybody using "memory cards" for music storage? Actually sounds
like a better approach than hooking up an external iPod, at least at
first blush. (We've got an entire galley drawer filled with CD's,
etc....would be nice to free up that space and store the music data on
something much smaller). So:

3. What are the pros and cons of memory cards, mp3 CD's, CD changers,
separate iPod's etc? There's a real smorgasbord og choices now
available.

4. Any general advice on this subject?

I just bought a JBL in anticipation of installation. This will be a
new install.....

Although it is iPod ready.... aux in.... I was really more interested
in it's ability to handle satellite radio (Sirius). I rarely listen to
AM/FM anymore.

--

Grady-White Gulfstream, out of Oak Island, NC.

Homepage
http://pamandgene.idleplay.net/

Rec.boats at Lee Yeaton's Bayguide
http://www.thebayguide.com/rec.boats
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Chuck Gould wrote in
ups.com:

3. What are the pros and cons of memory cards, mp3 CD's, CD changers,
separate iPod's etc? There's a real smorgasbord og choices now
available.


Ask it ONE important question......

Can I use Windows Explorer to simply copy a whole directory of MP3 music
files to the player, or its external memory card, and play it WITHOUT
using some hobbled up, record company approved, filtering software that
makes you do them one-at-a-time. God some of 'em suck moving music to
the player.

The computer should treat the player as just an external hard drive
copying files to....not filtering the files looking for illegal file
sharing which sucks even if you're not downloading like mad from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(your favorite genre here) newsgroups.....

Copy the files onto a massive portable hard drive you can plug into your
laptop on the boat in MP3 format. I just bought a Western Digital MyBook
USB hard drive, a whopping 750GB, for $179 on sale at Best Buy. This
book-sized hard drive will store movies and music for a whole year in
one, small package.....not 250 fragile CDs all scratched up and
unplayable in a car stereo player that's gonna crap, soon, on a boat.

Plug the hard drive into the laptop and the memory card or memory MP3
player in, too. Copy what you want to listen to on this watch to the
player and tuck it in your pocket. Mine is a 2GB Sansa the size of a
woman's lipstick case with color LCD screen, FM Radio, voice recorder...
$80 on sale:
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Cata...sa_Express_MP3
_Players.aspx
500 songs fit on its INTERNAL memory (2GB) and you can ADD another 2GB
with the external MicroSD very tiny memory module for $20 more from
Newegg.com. (I'm using Kingston memory now, lifetime warranty and they
replaced a bad one with no problem for free!)

You won't have to reload 1000 songs often. That's 64 hours without
hearing the same song twice. It also has random mode to shuffle the
deck.

The Sansa Express IS a USB plug...which runs 15 hours of continuous play
before you simply plug it into the computer for an hour to rapidly
recharge its lithium-polymer advanced battery pack.....all for $79!

(c; A condom would make a great waterproof carrying case in bad
weather...(c; Just put the open end with the headphone wire coming out
of it DOWN in your pocket.

To play through the boat's stereo is easy....use an FM stereo transmitter
like:
http://tinyurl.com/3axoru
I particularly like this model, though have never owned one, because the
whole transmitter is built right into a common 12V plug already in the
boats. If you want to play to the whole boat, not just yourself, plug
this cheap transmitter into the headphone jack on the tiny Sansa player
for days of unrepeated music you can also carry ashore, in your car,
listen privately in bed without disturbing HER...a real feature...(c;
(NOTE - The $150 FM transmitters sound EXACTLY like the $15 ones on any
radio.)

Larry
--
Paying for XM is just stupid.....

Paying for XM is just stupid.....

To each his own I guess. With XM, I don't have to worry about "using some
hobbled up, record company approved, filtering software that
makes you do them one-at-a-time," or copying "the files onto a massive
portable hard drive you can plug into your
laptop on the boat in MP3 format." I especially don't need to worry about
carrying a condom and making sure the open end is down in my pocket, to keep
things dry. g I just turn it on and listen.

Plus, I don't care how fancy an mp3 player you can buy, it just cannot get
live "out of market" baseball broadcasts. This last point is the real reason
I got XM in the first place... for the Red Sox. All the music is just an
extra as far as I'm concerned.;-)

Just my point of view. Like I said, to each his own.

--Mike


"Larry" wrote in message
...
Chuck Gould wrote in
ups.com:

3. What are the pros and cons of memory cards, mp3 CD's, CD changers,
separate iPod's etc? There's a real smorgasbord og choices now
available.


Ask it ONE important question......

Can I use Windows Explorer to simply copy a whole directory of MP3 music
files to the player, or its external memory card, and play it WITHOUT
using some hobbled up, record company approved, filtering software that
makes you do them one-at-a-time. God some of 'em suck moving music to
the player.

The computer should treat the player as just an external hard drive
copying files to....not filtering the files looking for illegal file
sharing which sucks even if you're not downloading like mad from
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(your favorite genre here) newsgroups.....

Copy the files onto a massive portable hard drive you can plug into your
laptop on the boat in MP3 format. I just bought a Western Digital MyBook
USB hard drive, a whopping 750GB, for $179 on sale at Best Buy. This
book-sized hard drive will store movies and music for a whole year in
one, small package.....not 250 fragile CDs all scratched up and
unplayable in a car stereo player that's gonna crap, soon, on a boat.

Plug the hard drive into the laptop and the memory card or memory MP3
player in, too. Copy what you want to listen to on this watch to the
player and tuck it in your pocket. Mine is a 2GB Sansa the size of a
woman's lipstick case with color LCD screen, FM Radio, voice recorder...
$80 on sale:
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Cata...sa_Express_MP3
_Players.aspx
500 songs fit on its INTERNAL memory (2GB) and you can ADD another 2GB
with the external MicroSD very tiny memory module for $20 more from
Newegg.com. (I'm using Kingston memory now, lifetime warranty and they
replaced a bad one with no problem for free!)

You won't have to reload 1000 songs often. That's 64 hours without
hearing the same song twice. It also has random mode to shuffle the
deck.

The Sansa Express IS a USB plug...which runs 15 hours of continuous play
before you simply plug it into the computer for an hour to rapidly
recharge its lithium-polymer advanced battery pack.....all for $79!

(c; A condom would make a great waterproof carrying case in bad
weather...(c; Just put the open end with the headphone wire coming out
of it DOWN in your pocket.

To play through the boat's stereo is easy....use an FM stereo transmitter
like:
http://tinyurl.com/3axoru
I particularly like this model, though have never owned one, because the
whole transmitter is built right into a common 12V plug already in the
boats. If you want to play to the whole boat, not just yourself, plug
this cheap transmitter into the headphone jack on the tiny Sansa player
for days of unrepeated music you can also carry ashore, in your car,
listen privately in bed without disturbing HER...a real feature...(c;
(NOTE - The $150 FM transmitters sound EXACTLY like the $15 ones on any
radio.)

Larry
--
Paying for XM is just stupid.....

XM is a great place to get ammo for your MP3 player.
Just record the data stream from the web cast, chop it up with a sound
editor and rip it to MP3.
It is where I get some of the old stuff they play on "Bluesville" that
you really can't find at Wal-Mart

Hehe, that's exactly what I do. I don't even bother to chop it up. I'll just
grab the stream from DirecTV and record a huge mp3 to a cd-rw, and play it
in my truck. When I get to the ends, I do it again (on the same CD). I only
have XM in my boat.

--Mike

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:12:29 -0700, "Mike" wrote:

Paying for XM is just stupid.....

To each his own I guess. With XM, I don't have to worry about "using some
hobbled up, record company approved, filtering software that
makes you do them one-at-a-time," or copying "the files onto a massive
portable hard drive you can plug into your
laptop on the boat in MP3 format." I especially don't need to worry about
carrying a condom and making sure the open end is down in my pocket, to
keep
things dry. g I just turn it on and listen.

Plus, I don't care how fancy an mp3 player you can buy, it just cannot get
live "out of market" baseball broadcasts. This last point is the real
reason
I got XM in the first place... for the Red Sox. All the music is just an
extra as far as I'm concerned.;-)

Just my point of view. Like I said, to each his own.

--Mike
XM is a great place to get ammo for your MP3 player.
Just record the data stream from the web cast, chop it up with a sound
editor and rip it to MP3.
It is where I get some of the old stuff they play on "Bluesville" that
you really can't find at Wal-Mart.

LOL! I did the same thing with 8-tracks. Thinking back to those days is what
made me start recording XM.

--Mike

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:15:09 -0700, "Mike" wrote:

Hehe, that's exactly what I do. I don't even bother to chop it up. I'll
just
grab the stream from DirecTV and record a huge mp3 to a cd-rw, and play it
in my truck. When I get to the ends, I do it again (on the same CD). I
only
have XM in my boat.

I did that on 8 tracks before some of these folks were born. Back in
the olden days they would run FM shows in the middle of the night
without many commercials. I could set up my recorder to make a tape
from 2 to 3:30 and have a good tape to play in the daytime when it was
all commercials all the time.

What I like about digital music is it is very easy to go in and chop
out any particular song you want. I have an old copy of Sound Forge
that will let you do tricks with sound that would dazzle a recording
studio engineer 20 years ago.

wrote in news:qbqje3dq2kfigfl5kc9lgvhuledtd3p2iv@
4ax.com:

It is where I get some of the old stuff they play on "Bluesville" that
you really can't find at Wal-Mart.



alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.blues

How big are your hard drives??....(c;

You don't have to download them in SLOWtime...one at a time. Download
Grabit from www.shemes.com and don't buy their service. Grabit is free
and completely automates downloading usenet binaries....at full cap
speed, 24/7.

Man, they got great old Blues on usenet...or about anything else you'd
like to listen to but can't find and XM DOESN'T PLAY.

Larry
--
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.(your favorite genre)

wrote in news:2itje3pvc3g57h6dis94jrhlmj2dn1ocb0@
4ax.com:

What I like about digital music is it is very easy to go in and chop
out any particular song you want. I have an old copy of Sound Forge
that will let you do tricks with sound that would dazzle a recording
studio engineer 20 years ago.


You guys might want to look at "Total Recorder" from
www.totalrecorder.com

Total Recorder sits between whatever is playing and your soundcard, like
a proxy server. I can also simulate a soundcard to record in silence as
fast as the server will send it, much faster than X1 speed play. Total
Recorder will rip ANY audio from ANY source on the net, webpages,
Realaudio, WMP, any secure player, any sound input (digital or audio).

It's later versions have a neat intellegent recording function for those
late night recordings! Total Recorder now turns individual songs
DIRECTLY into MP3 separate files, complete with functions to strip off
the 2 second deadtime, etc. It will automatically rip like this from any
source, including very high speed conversions of your CD collection
direct to whatever speed MP3 compression you select. All you do is
change CDs. Works great with its own normalization, DC offset, a full
compander to level some awful recordings or streams. It also has a clock
so it can start recording that XM or internet stream and stop it as you
select. The scheduler has lots of modes and options.

TR is not free, but you get lifetime upgrades for a pittance....

To catalog/search/play/log your extensive MP3 collection, I recommend a
Russian program "MP3 Catalog Pro" from www.wizetech.com, the blazingly
fastest MP3 catalogger on the planet. It's not free either but is cheap.
It automatically creates a catalog of any and all MP3s on your system,
reading the IDx tags off all MP3s it finds for instant searching through
thousands of songs as fast as you can click. Drag the desired search
results to another folder to burn or Winamp's playlist to play works
great. Dragging to Nero burner also works flawlessly...in digital or CD
mode.

Just thought you'd like this information.....Sorry it won't switch XM
channels from its scheduler...(c; Maybe in the future if there's a
demand.

Larry
--

I will check it out. Thanks!

--Mike

"Larry" wrote in message
...
wrote in news:2itje3pvc3g57h6dis94jrhlmj2dn1ocb0@
4ax.com:

What I like about digital music is it is very easy to go in and chop
out any particular song you want. I have an old copy of Sound Forge
that will let you do tricks with sound that would dazzle a recording
studio engineer 20 years ago.


You guys might want to look at "Total Recorder" from
www.totalrecorder.com

Total Recorder sits between whatever is playing and your soundcard, like
a proxy server. I can also simulate a soundcard to record in silence as
fast as the server will send it, much faster than X1 speed play. Total
Recorder will rip ANY audio from ANY source on the net, webpages,
Realaudio, WMP, any secure player, any sound input (digital or audio).

It's later versions have a neat intellegent recording function for those
late night recordings! Total Recorder now turns individual songs
DIRECTLY into MP3 separate files, complete with functions to strip off
the 2 second deadtime, etc. It will automatically rip like this from any
source, including very high speed conversions of your CD collection
direct to whatever speed MP3 compression you select. All you do is
change CDs. Works great with its own normalization, DC offset, a full
compander to level some awful recordings or streams. It also has a clock
so it can start recording that XM or internet stream and stop it as you
select. The scheduler has lots of modes and options.

TR is not free, but you get lifetime upgrades for a pittance....

To catalog/search/play/log your extensive MP3 collection, I recommend a
Russian program "MP3 Catalog Pro" from www.wizetech.com, the blazingly
fastest MP3 catalogger on the planet. It's not free either but is cheap.
It automatically creates a catalog of any and all MP3s on your system,
reading the IDx tags off all MP3s it finds for instant searching through
thousands of songs as fast as you can click. Drag the desired search
results to another folder to burn or Winamp's playlist to play works
great. Dragging to Nero burner also works flawlessly...in digital or CD
mode.

Just thought you'd like this information.....Sorry it won't switch XM
channels from its scheduler...(c; Maybe in the future if there's a
demand.

Larry
--

wrote in news:r0qje3l6bgesnvtqtmioa5li0av0d97b7f@
4ax.com:

My Sansa works like that. I am running straight W/98 and this shows up
as a USP portable drive when I plug it in. Anything I load out there
plays.


Sansa used to be a no-nonsense ramplug drive, but has knuckled under of
late. My Sansa Express 2GB will PLAY any file WinExplorer loads to it,
directly, but the 2GB memory no longer operates in memory mode, only
music mode so you can't offload it...which I don't like but it's not my
favorite player. I only use it riding motorcycle.

They don't make my player any mo
http://tinyurl.com/24dhse
Mine came with 100GB drive, but, because it's a STANDARD laptop hard
drive, I've swapped it out to a 120GB I got for free from a trashed
laptop whos battery exploded. The Digital Mind Xclef HD-500 is huge by
Ipod standards. It uses a STANDARD Li-Ion battery you can buy from any
place that supplies cellphone batteries and the STANDARD laptop hard
drive, which is VERY rugged, indeed. The included nice leather case
protects it from the scratches and bumps. Mine is old, now, but still
playing great!

It came from an obscure Korean military contractor:
http://www.mclsys.com/index.html
where I can still get firmware upgrades, easily installed over its
STANDARD USB connector....just copy the firmware file to the hard drive
where the bootloader looks for it...just like any computer. No rom
burning necessary to crash.

The Xclef IS a portable 120GB hard drive and will store, use, transport,
copy, delete any kind of file...even from DOS it works....no funny
business.

Larry
--
Did I mention it's HUGE?!...(C;

"Mike" wrote in news:juHGi.9460$924.3035
@newssvr23.news.prodigy.net:

I will check it out. Thanks!

--Mike



Quite welcome. I've been using TR for many years.



Larry
--
Search youtube for "Depleted Uranium"
The ultimate dirty bomb......