What did you do in your shed / man cave today?

[jw2170]

a few adaptor cables to complement the battery boxes:

from top to bottom:

anderson sb50 to dual anderson powerpoles (30amp)

anderson sb50 to dual anderson sb50's

anderson powerpole (30amp) to dual USB (for chargers and our USB fans for sleeping)

Thanks, Paceman. I hope you don't mind if I copy?

[jw2170]

Yes !!
Took me ages to figure out as the pioneer manual that came with it was all Greek to me ( no offence to Greeks intended ) until I went looking on you tube for eg: how to connect smart phone via Bluetooth to pioneer stereo model.
Managed to connect but it must be in sequence or it will fail...or at least it did for me.
Can't remember off the top of my head how I did it now..sorry....but it was VERY FRUSTRATING 
The other thing with the USB...there is a setting that needed to be selected in order for the USB to automatically play when plugged in.
Good luck.

Cheers
Rob

Thanks Rob.

I had so much trouble linking the iPHone to  bluetooth on the in car stereo, I may not risk it again.

Will have a look to see if there is anything mentioned on the stereo menu.

[paceman]

Thanks, Paceman. I hope you don't mind if I copy?

knock yourself out... 

i wouldn't be the first to make up these sorts of adaptor cables...

[noel_w]

Thanks Rob.

I had so much trouble linking the iPHone to  bluetooth on the in car stereo, I may not risk it again.

Will have a look to see if there is anything mentioned on the stereo menu.

I have had an interesting few days with a new headunit i bought for the troll regarding USB sticks and music. I might start a new thread with my findings. It all stems from a technology called Gracenote which has/is being introduced into car headunits now.
Basically it can control how you listen to your music unless you find a way around it.

[archer63]

Very much looking forward to hearing back from you Noel !!
For the the moment I have just concentrated on copying everything over to folders etc.
Really hoping that by the time I have finished....I can then try and sort a better artist/song identifying method out.

Cheers
Rob

[Troopy_03]

Very much looking forward to hearing back from you Noel !!
For the the moment I have just concentrated on copying everything over to folders etc.
Really hoping that by the time I have finished....I can then try and sort a better artist/song identifying method out.

Cheers
Rob

Not sure if you said already, but you have populated the ID3 tags with Album, Album Artist, song title etc.. haven't you? If so, (at least on my Kenwood stereo) you can set display to various displays (Title/Artist, Album/Album Artist etc.), as each song plays. This means if you select the display to read Album and Album artist, when you select folder up or down, it will show Album and Album artist for each folder as you select it, instead of just folder numbers.

edit: Over the last couple of weeks I ripped about 500 of my "backup" CDs. Just gotta all the originals to do now...

[jw2170]

Showing my ignorance, but what is an ID3 tag...?

I love plug and play....LOL.

[Troopy_03]

The ID3 tag is a part of the music file that contains the meta data. That is, it lists the Album Name, Album Artist, Song Title, Song Artist, Year, Genre, etc etc etc.. It can also hold a graphic of the album cover or even a couple of different graphics that can be displayed on many different players, phones etc.
This link will explain it, and as you will see, it holds a lot more than I have listed too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

[archer63]

Thanks guys !!
Will plug the USB into my pioneer CD/USB/Radio today and have another look at folder settings etc.

Troopy...if you've done 500 CD's....you will know exactly how tedious and time consuming an exercise the process is...but worth it in the end.

I've so far spent about 22 hours doing this to my cd collection and I'm about 85% done.

For anyone else considering doing the same thing I've found that doing batches of say 10-20 CD's at a time makes it a lot easier to sort, rename if needed etc as the longer I'm at it, the more copied CD's seem to go missing into cyber space somewhere and my attention span starts to deminish somewhat 
I've been copying my CD's with windows media player, rename or edit titles on 10% of these or on my own compilations, then sync with my USB or portable hard disc drive.
But I've since found it easier if I create a temporary folder on my desktop and put them there first, check them for accuracy, then finally move them onto the USB.

Oh...one more thing...I started out with a 32GB USB, but it soon became apparent that this was not going to be big enough ( all copying done at best quality setting ) so have now bought a 64GB USB.

I'm also keeping a master copy on my portable hard disc drive.

Cheers
Rob

[jw2170]

The ID3 tag is a part of the music file that contains the meta data. That is, it lists the Album Name, Album Artist, Song Title, Song Artist, Year, Genre, etc etc etc.. It can also hold a graphic of the album cover or even a couple of different graphics that can be displayed on many different players, phones etc.
This link will explain it, and as you will see, it holds a lot more than I have listed too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

What editing program do you use?

[Troopy_03]

Yeah, I do mine in batches of 20 to 30 albums at a time too, but ripping is the easy part, it's pretty much automatic and places files in preordained folder structures, with the tags mostly already populated. Checking and editing tags if needed takes longest.

Just a point I found out (and is the reason for re-ripping mine), it is better to keep your archive copy in a lossless format. I keep mine in FLAC with a compression level of '3'. This seems to be the optimum compression level where file size versus processor power is at it's best. That is, any more compression takes a lot more time, for not much more reduction in file size. Compression level of '0' will actually end up larger than the wav file anyway, because it also contains tags.

Compressed FLAC is still lossless and is not like MP3, which uses psychoacoustic algorithms to remove some of the music data deemed not as important/noticeable to the listener, to give an even greater reduction in file size.

Once the flac files have been checked via MediaMonkey, to make sure the tags are accurate, and to embed a cover graphic (which I do manually because I'm a tad OCD), I get MM to generate a copy in MP3 format @ 320Kbps to use in the the car, where the quality of FLAC is wasted anyway. This is done by batch, of the 20 or 30 albums at a time, with a couple of mouse clicks. The FLAC files are definitely better to listen to, streamed via a Raspberry Pi mini computer, into my home stereo though.

You can always encode from your lossless FLAC files to lossy MP3 files when your USB devices die too, but it degrades even further if you go from a lossy format to another lossy format.

[paceman]

The FLAC files are definitely better to listen to, streamed via a Raspberry Pi mini computer, into my home stereo though.

have you got any more info about this process?  applications, speaker setup, etc?

sounds like a nice little project for the outdoor area...

[Troopy_03]

What editing program do you use?

I use Exact Audio Copy to rip, because it is very easy to set up tasks to be done automatically (I'm sure some of the others are too), and is very good at error correction.

And I use MediaMonkey Gold (gold is the payed for version) to edit and manage my collection. The free version of MM is pretty good though, and will do just about everything you need anyway.

[Troopy_03]

have you got any more info about this process?  applications, speaker setup, etc?

sounds like a nice little project for the outdoor area...

Yeah, but probably best in it's own thread. I'll try and put some info together and post it separately if you like.

[paceman]

Yeah, but probably best in it's own thread. I'll try and put some info together and post it separately if you like.

what ever is easiest... PM is fine too...  no rush...

a thread might be cool so we can spitball ideas from others...

[noel_w]

Oh...one more thing...I started out with a 32GB USB, but it soon became apparent that this was not going to be big enough ( all copying done at best quality setting ) so have now bought a 64GB USB.

Cheers
Rob

Just one thing I have come across recently that if you purchase a 64G USB it will most likely be formatted in xFat format. Some headunits complain bitterly about xFat and need to be formatted Fat32. There are some utilities that will format large USB sticks in Fat32 such as http://downloads.techradar.com/downloads/usb-disk-storage-format-tool


Windows does not natively do it.

[archer63]

USB: Sandisk 64GB - new model....metal outer case...only half as big as other USB's.
Plugged USB in this am and noticed music album and song details....which was a relief.
Think it also displays albums in alphabetical order.....just need to get more familiar with it.
Sound is good....albeit a fraction muddy....need to add some tone to the setting for USB....another hurdle !!
Would be perfect if I could adjust tone settings for USB.....another small problem to get my head around.

Cheers
Rob

[Troopy_03]

Just one thing I have come across recently that if you purchase a 64G USB it will most likely be formatted in xFat format. Some headunits complain bitterly about xFat and need to be formatted Fat32. There are some utilities that will format large USB sticks in Fat32 such as http://downloads.techradar.com/downloads/usb-disk-storage-format-tool


Windows does not natively do it.

To be honest, I didn't think to check the filesystem format on the 64G Sandisks Ultra fits I bought, but they just plugged in and played. Maybe they are FAT32 anyway.

[Troopy_03]

what ever is easiest... PM is fine too...  no rush...

a thread might be cool so we can spitball ideas from others...

Have a look here:
http://www.myswag.org/index.php?topic=48925.0#new

[noel_w]

To be honest, I didn't think to check the filesystem format on the 64G Sandisks Ultra fits I bought, but they just plugged in and played. Maybe they are FAT32 anyway.

That is the one I have. It came formatted xFat. Is now Fat32

[Troopy_03]

That is the one I have. It came formatted xFat. Is now Fat32

Sure you didn't format it previously? I just checked one straight out of the pack and it's FAT32

[noel_w]

Sure you didn't format it previously? I just checked one straight out of the pack and it's FAT32

Nup, was xFat bought from Umart last week. First thing I checked when I opened the package, I thought that's interesting.
Probably same brand, different factory.

[Nay-DMAX]

personally, I don't bother. I just set "All Random" and listen to whatever gets selected

X2

[D4D]

Cleaned my new bike after getting it dirty.

[Coolblue80]

Out with the old & in with the new. Fitting up a 409s/steel 2.5inch mandrel bent exhaust on my Fzj80 Cruiser. Throwing a st of second hand extractors as well. The old exhaust is 95% the original Toyota system. 20 years old this year. Should hit them up for a warranty claim.
Cheers, Mike.