Hey I have Pioneer headunit which is harddrive capable via a cable, but is not user friendly as it is about 4 years old now (only comes up on the screen with 8 digits so useless for scrolling). Have been searching for some options, either new head unit with better scrolling options (looked into Alpine and Pioneer double din units) and trying to decide if an external hard drive is the way to go, or to go ipod/mp3 player route? I will need max capacity as I want to have lossless songs, and I also want the best sound quality i can get, whichr eally rules out the ipod. I have looked at the latest Sony MP3 player that they are touting as audiophile quaility, but mega $$ for what it is and not enoguh memory capacity on it yet. I have tried bluetooth connection with my phone but the music has the odd blank patch so I don't think the connection is very good. Does anyone have any suggestions - what is working in your cars?
I have Image sub, Pioneer pro speakers (yellow kevlar ones), 4ch pioneer amp, mono kenwood amp for sub, and the Pioneer head unit.

welcome to the club :D

I too have looked at many options the "whole hog" is the carputer option, with it's almost unlimited capacity. and you will need a card for FM should you wish to have radio unitil we have XM in this country.

cpufix has worked with building a carputer i believe it all started somewhere about here. http://z4.invisionfree.com/lexusaltezzaclu...?showtopic=1849 not my cup of tea although you can buy units off the shelf from the US from http://www.mp3car.com


The newer pioneer units have the USB in option but as i understand it will only support smaller external hard drives up to 20 GB which is not enough space for me. and only single USB plugged units

The "honest" option is to own all the original CD's and change them when you tastes change... we all know how impratical that is.

You could try the ipod option ?, 64GB flash drive ?

Man that is one badly worded question hahahah. Also your thread title has sounds spelt wrong.

You can either use a 3/4 jack this will be the worst and not really a good solution
Or use a HU with a HD input

File formats... wav or flac.. i'd take wave anyday.

HD's are the way to got to listen to wav's it's your only option, still most unit's don't do wav decoding, JVC's do. I don't think pioneers or alpine do yet.

THe major concern here is the folder structure which the HU can handle, the JVC interface is crap compared to the Pioneer, but i don't get the point of having a nice interface that won't even decode wav when the difference is easily audiable.

When I get my car back i'll let you know how the JVC goes with the 120gb drive, It definately plays wav's the problem is wether i can get the folder structure easy enough for it to deal with. Depth doesn't seem to as big a problem as the number of folders in one view... actually i'll have to get back to you on this one.

The newer pioneer units have the USB in option but as i understand it will only support smaller external hard drives up to 20 GB which is not enough space for me. and only single USB plugged units

The "honest" option is to own all the original CD's and change them when you tastes change... we all know how impratical that is.

Hey caveman, yeah I spoke to a techo at Monaco (who supply Pioneer to NZ) who was very helpful, he said they support up to 250gb (but will only charge current for 500ma I think it was, apparently there is a Seagate HD that will do that, otherwise need a 12v car charger for any other HD) which isn't bad. He said the best scrolling option would be to get the double din Pioneer unit. I have the dehp7850bt which is one of the first to be compatible, but I think I will have to upgrade it. I do need to figure out if I hook up an ipod to it if I can scroll through that instead of the head unit, that might work bettwr, and I will have to deal with the sound quality difference I guess :(
And yeah I have all the original CDs, but I am scratching them like crazy pulling them out of CD covers and changing them all the time, gonna have to replace some already cuz they are skipping!!

And Pras:
Man that is one badly worded question hahahah

yeah I know was hard to describe!!! Let me know how you get on with your JVC. I thought Pioneer could do wav? hmmm ah well!

Is anyone using a Pioneer with an ipod? Can you scroll thru the ipod or do you have to go thru the headunit?

No worries, you got your point across in the end.

I will make sure that I let you know how the JVC goes with playing wav files off the harddrive. I got the headunit for 700, the retail is wayyy higher.
I wasn't looking at the real high end stuff and my investigations are several months old.

1; Have you thought about getting a dvd stacker and putting wav files or cda files on them? I believe there also in dash dual din stackers available, you pay around 1.5k for these ofcourse.

2; alternatively I'm not sure what file formats ipod can decode on the fly;
If they could do WAV, then that would be your best solution, or if they could to FLAC that would work too.

I used to carry around 100cd's in the car, and it is impracticle. I guess the lower and higher end really suffers when it come to the real difference between mp3's and wav files to me. It's not always in the audible range, but noticable.

Let us know how you go with this...

Othervise a while back, i can't fnd the thread, there is this company that used to make like 4k carputers and now they've come out with a 1.5k one, it's meant to be the shiznit, I tried googling it... maybe try MEA

hmmm yes the stacker could be an option, didn't even think of that! That could be a much cheaper option, just have to find the boot space, subbox takes up abit!Ipod has a "lossless" option, but I want fully uncompressed if possible.
I might sniff around and see how much a changer is.... seems easier if in 1 box like a harddrive, but this way might be much easier and cheaper (and means I don't have to replace headunit!). Thx for the idea!

No worries man, or you could always shove it in your glove box, or mount it under a seat, depending on thep profile...

I'd definately try to go for a dvd stacker so you could have 6-7 albums on a disc, but unless you have a dvd hu it's unlikely these are an option..also having spare disc magazines might be a nice idea... the only pain is having to classify your music so you can find what you want to when you want to.

I don't think these are cheap, however maybe something second hand would do the job just as well