terrain

What are the ways you can add MP3's to the ML Hard-Drive?

rominl

iTrader: (4)

no way

you can only rip an audio cd (meaning songs in CDDA format) to the hdd. you can't copy mp3's to the hdd

2thfixr

Yup and I must say that it was quite a disappointment to discover that.

terrain

That makes the 'HD' system quite a bit less appealing... I was considering the ML a must primarily due to the HD. I had heard so many good things about the ML in terms of audio quality both my wife and I were quite dissapointed hearing one for the first time last weekend... its better than the stock system but that's not saying as much as we expected.

Is the compression similar to MP3 - or is it closer to WAV?

Ripping CD's in the head-unit sounds like a lot of wear and tear on the head-unit - wonder what they were thinking on this one.

kalvano

By allowing people to just upload MP3's, they were afraid of the possiblity of a virus being uploaded to the computer in the car.

You can still make MP3 CD's and rip them to the HDD.

The HDD rips are either "Good" quality, which is 192KBs (or 160, I can't remember), and "Excellent", which is 256KBs. I don't know which compression technique it uses.


And if you weren't blown away by the ML, then it wasn't tuuned right or the source material sucks. The ML is absolutely amazing, especially in the LS.

terrain

Kalvano - Great - so you can take a MP3 CD and rip that on the HD.

I took along my wife who is a professional musician and while I thought the ML was good she was not impressed. We first listened to a stock radio then the ML -- then another ML to see if they all sounded the same. We set everything back to 'mid point' in Audio settings - base, treb etc... To my untrained ear it was fine - but then again my ear is untrained and I'm not that picky.

At this point I have yet to see an L w/out ML - so ML we will have :-)

rominl

iTrader: (4)

incorrect, you can play mp3 CD, but not copying any mp3 files to hdd. again, that can't be done. i also think it's stupid

about the ML system, maybe it's the tracks you listened to? the reference system on the ls460 and lx570 are among the best in the market

kalvano

Sorry, I wasn't clear. You have to burn your MP3's onto a CD, but it can't be an MP3 CD, it has to be one that can be played in a standard CD player.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

no....... you should go check again. it can be a mp3 cd. me and so many other people are buring 100s of mp3 on a cd and the system will play it just fine. the system is capable of decoding mp3 and wma format on cd, more capable than a lot of cd players out there

but the system can NOT decode mp3 on dvd

whlkev

yea our car plays mp3 filled CDs just fine, but DVD doesn't work

6 disks filled with MP3 is enough IMO, then more with HDD

how many songs do people have.. jeez

Johnny

mp3s do not do any justice to the ML system, and in fact ML is so good, it will just magnify how bad mp3s really are, which in turn gives the illusion that the ML system sounds bad. But that's where human intelligence is supposed to kick in, and put things in perspective. It is a reference system, a topic which has been discussed at length many times here. Rather than repeat what has been said before by some of our knowledgeable audio expert posters, I suggest interested parties check out these threads, and inform themselves.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=296533

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...ighlight=audio

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...ighlight=audio

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...ighlight=audio

There you go, I've saved you a little search time. Now send $1.00 to my Paypal account.

kalvano

If you tell your burning program to make a CD that can be played in a standard CD player, it can only hold about 12-15 songs on a CD-R, but it converts them to a format that the car can read and rip to the HDD.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

our point is you can just burn mp3 on a cd and just play it, no need to rip anything to hdd (which is silly imho)

kalvano

Yup.

Just pay for an iPod connector. Much easier.