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Post by wvengineer on Jul 11, 2021 17:11:50 GMT
Anyone do car audio? I''m looking to upgrade my car and have a few questions.
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Post by the light works on Jul 11, 2021 20:08:20 GMT
sorry. haven't done in in years.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 11, 2021 20:54:40 GMT
I've recently updated the audio/information system in my wife's jeep. The radio I got came with a wiring adapter to match the jeep so that part was pretty much plug-n-play. Even the steering wheel controls worked with the new radio. The radio had provision for a back-up camera and that took some extra wiring. There was a fair amount of disassembling of the dash to get the new radio in, but there were a number of YouTube videos showing how to do that. It wasn't that difficult, but did take some time.
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Post by wvengineer on Jul 16, 2021 13:07:34 GMT
On one hand, there are kits available for my car that make the install pretty easy if you can handle basic tools and a soldiering iron to make the splice between the dash kit wire harness and the new radio's wiring harness. Some of these kits actually give a pretty clean, factory look.
On the other hand, pricing is rather insane. In the last 6 months, prices on the radios that I am looking at have nearly doubled, and that is assuming you can get anything at all. If you look at the more well respected brands in car audio, many are simply sold out and unavailable anywhere.
Prices are so crazy that you can actually get the custom fit large screen table (Tesla) style car systems for cheaper than buying the radio and dash kit for my car. The problem there is I don't know if I trust some of these companies because I have never hard of them. Not sure if I want to take a gamble with that much money.
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Post by the light works on Jul 16, 2021 14:09:29 GMT
On one hand, there are kits available for my car that make the install pretty easy if you can handle basic tools and a soldiering iron to make the splice between the dash kit wire harness and the new radio's wiring harness. Some of these kits actually give a pretty clean, factory look. On the other hand, pricing is rather insane. In the last 6 months, prices on the radios that I am looking at have nearly doubled, and that is assuming you can get anything at all. If you look at the more well respected brands in car audio, many are simply sold out and unavailable anywhere. Prices are so crazy that you can actually get the custom fit large screen table (Tesla) style car systems for cheaper than buying the radio and dash kit for my car. The problem there is I don't know if I trust some of these companies because I have never hard of them. Not sure if I want to take a gamble with that much money. best advice right now is to wait a bit, if you possibly can, because the prices are most likely inflated by the shipping backups. also, if you have audio software on your computer, thumb drives are the new mixtapes. |
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Post by wvengineer on Jul 16, 2021 14:18:57 GMT
The reason I'm looking at this is that:
1. Due to a known design flaw, my factory radio is slowly dying. I get these weird errors like the USB port not working or the Bluetooth intermittently having problems connecting with my phone. The problem is the APIM is defective, out of warranty, and costs way too much to replace. It's a known issue, but because it's just for the infotainment system, there is no recall for it.
2. After taking a couple rental cars for work, I grew to really like the Android Auto system. It's a great way to take what I use and make it easier on the road and add new functions for a reasonable cost.
So the question is what will happen first? Prices drop back to normal, or the radio dies completely.
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Post by the light works on Jul 16, 2021 14:49:50 GMT
The reason I'm looking at this is that: 1. Due to a known design flaw, my factory radio is slowly dying. I get these weird errors like the USB port not working or the Bluetooth intermittently having problems connecting with my phone. The problem is the APIM is defective, out of warranty, and costs way too much to replace. It's a known issue, but because it's just for the infotainment system, there is no recall for it. 2. After taking a couple rental cars for work, I grew to really like the Android Auto system. It's a great way to take what I use and make it easier on the road and add new functions for a reasonable cost. So the question is what will happen first? Prices drop back to normal, or the radio dies completely. yeah, that's always a race. I like the android auto functionality of our car. and I know that for some stupid reason factory infotainment systems for cars are ridiculously overpriced. I've really reached a point that except for if I ever get around to replacing the system in the Jeep - which should be a straight component swap, assuming I can still get basic components, I have reached the point of paying someone else to have the headache on my behalf. |
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Post by wvengineer on Jul 19, 2021 16:00:17 GMT
also, if you have audio software on your computer, thumb drives are the new mixtapes. I have a rather large collection of MP3's that I have been working on since the mid 90's. Just the popular music alone is about 18 GB. That's not counting the classical, holiday, and movie soundtracks that I have. I found that 16 GB is about all that my current Ford SYNC system can handle. It starts to have trouble keeping track of everything with I use more than that. Being able to use a larger thumb drive that holds all my music would be nice. Of course, the Ford SYNC voice activated search system is nice. I would miss that. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 19, 2021 16:32:32 GMT
also, if you have audio software on your computer, thumb drives are the new mixtapes. I have a rather large collection of MP3's that I have been working on since the mid 90's. Just the popular music alone is about 18 GB. That's not counting the classical, holiday, and movie soundtracks that I have. I found that 16 GB is about all that my current Ford SYNC system can handle. It starts to have trouble keeping track of everything with I use more than that. Being able to use a larger thumb drive that holds all my music would be nice. Of course, the Ford SYNC voice activated search system is nice. I would miss that. I've been curious what would happen if I hooked up my terabyte backup drive. guess I won't do that. I think we use 5 GB drives in the car. the next bit of tech I need to get the Mrs to work with me on is to delete songs that get skipped every time. |
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 19, 2021 19:29:28 GMT
also, if you have audio software on your computer, thumb drives are the new mixtapes. I have a rather large collection of MP3's that I have been working on since the mid 90's. Just the popular music alone is about 18 GB. That's not counting the classical, holiday, and movie soundtracks that I have. I found that 16 GB is about all that my current Ford SYNC system can handle. It starts to have trouble keeping track of everything with I use more than that. Being able to use a larger thumb drive that holds all my music would be nice. Of course, the Ford SYNC voice activated search system is nice. I would miss that. I'd just get a radio that has either Apple CarPlay or Android Auto and keep everything on your phone or in the cloud. That way you can also stream Pandora or Amazon Music. The radio I put in my Jeep doesn't have CarPlay or Android Auto but it does connect to the phone through Bluetooth. I've just been streaming everything from the phone. If I ever do get another radio, it will definitely have CarPlay on it. |
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Post by wvengineer on Jul 19, 2021 19:29:33 GMT
A lot depends on the radio you are using. The radio in my car has trouble with anything more than 16 GB. But it's also a 2016 model, based on who knows how old of tech behind it. A more modern radio, with more memory and based on today's standards likely will have better ability to properly address a larger file system. If it is build on, say, 2013 tech, a 16 GB flash drive may have been all they could conceive of someone having at the time because at the time 2 GB was considered massive.
I'm just guessing on things here. I have no idea how much future proofing went into the design of this stuff.
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Post by the light works on Jul 19, 2021 19:35:08 GMT
A lot depends on the radio you are using. The radio in my car has trouble with anything more than 16 GB. But it's also a 2016 model, based on who knows how old of tech behind it. A more modern radio, with more memory and based on today's standards likely will have better ability to properly address a larger file system. If it is build on, say, 2013 tech, a 16 GB flash drive may have been all they could conceive of someone having at the time because at the time 2 GB was considered massive. I'm just guessing on things here. I have no idea how much future proofing went into the design of this stuff. my Digital ELPH camera can't take more than a 2MG SD card... |
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 19, 2021 19:56:04 GMT
A lot depends on the radio you are using. The radio in my car has trouble with anything more than 16 GB. But it's also a 2016 model, based on who knows how old of tech behind it. A more modern radio, with more memory and based on today's standards likely will have better ability to properly address a larger file system. If it is build on, say, 2013 tech, a 16 GB flash drive may have been all they could conceive of someone having at the time because at the time 2 GB was considered massive. I'm just guessing on things here. I have no idea how much future proofing went into the design of this stuff. my Digital ELPH camera can't take more than a 2MG SD card... Problem is much of the older electronics uses FAT32 to format and/or read thumb drives and SD cards. FAT32 can only handle memory up to 32GB. Cards or thumb drives larger than 32GB need to be formatted using either NTFS or exFAT (FAT64) which can handle memory up to 2 TB. The problem isn't just being able to read larger memory cards, you also need to have some type of directory structure so you can easily find what you are looking for. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 19, 2021 21:31:56 GMT
my Digital ELPH camera can't take more than a 2MG SD card... Problem is much of the older electronics uses FAT32 to format and/or read thumb drives and SD cards. FAT32 can only handle memory up to 32GB. Cards or thumb drives larger than 32GB need to be formatted using either NTFS or exFAT (FAT64) which can handle memory up to 2 TB. The problem isn't just being able to read larger memory cards, you also need to have some type of directory structure so you can easily find what you are looking for. of course, I remember when my 486 could only read 500 megs of my Maxtor 540 hard drive. |
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Post by wvengineer on Jul 31, 2021 0:59:06 GMT
TLW, I wonder how much of that was the compute couldn't address that much hard drive space, and how much was due to the difference between marketing and computer counting. I saw this a lot on hard drives in the 90's. Marketing would advertise a drive at 540,000,000 bytes. However, a computer considers a MB to be 1,048,576 (2^10) bytes. So the computer only see 514 MB. Base 10 vs base 2 counting.
Well, two weeks ago I ordered all the mounting hardware to install an aftermarket. However, the radio head units were sold out everywhere I went. Local stores, Walmart, Amazon, Crutchfeild, Best buy, etc. All of them were sold out of every Andriod Auto enable head unit that isn't some Chinese brands I have never heard of. So for the last two weeks it's been a matter of watching all the major sources, and seeing how overpriced the occasional unit that does pop is.
Today I finally found a reasonably priced head unit. After fighting with Best Buy's website, I finally have a head unit on order and they claim it will be arrived Wednesday. So hopefully I'll have a project next weekend to install all of it.
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Post by the light works on Jul 31, 2021 1:46:54 GMT
TLW, I wonder how much of that was the compute couldn't address that much hard drive space, and how much was due to the difference between marketing and computer counting. I saw this a lot on hard drives in the 90's. Marketing would advertise a drive at 540,000,000 bytes. However, a computer considers a MB to be 1,048,576 (2^10) bytes. So the computer only see 514 MB. Base 10 vs base 2 counting. Well, two weeks ago I ordered all the mounting hardware to install an aftermarket. However, the radio head units were sold out everywhere I went. Local stores, Walmart, Amazon, Crutchfeild, Best buy, etc. All of them were sold out of every Andriod Auto enable head unit that isn't some Chinese brands I have never heard of. So for the last two weeks it's been a matter of watching all the major sources, and seeing how overpriced the occasional unit that does pop is. Today I finally found a reasonably priced head unit. After fighting with Best Buy's website, I finally have a head unit on order and they claim it will be arrived Wednesday. So hopefully I'll have a project next weekend to install all of it. my brother's explanation was that the version of windows at the time couldn't count past whatever it recognized the drive as, so the drive actually had platter space that never got used. |
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Car audio
Jul 31, 2021 4:51:37 GMT
via mobile
Post by GTCGreg on Jul 31, 2021 4:51:37 GMT
TLW, I wonder how much of that was the compute couldn't address that much hard drive space, and how much was due to the difference between marketing and computer counting. I saw this a lot on hard drives in the 90's. Marketing would advertise a drive at 540,000,000 bytes. However, a computer considers a MB to be 1,048,576 (2^10) bytes. So the computer only see 514 MB. Base 10 vs base 2 counting. Well, two weeks ago I ordered all the mounting hardware to install an aftermarket. However, the radio head units were sold out everywhere I went. Local stores, Walmart, Amazon, Crutchfeild, Best buy, etc. All of them were sold out of every Andriod Auto enable head unit that isn't some Chinese brands I have never heard of. So for the last two weeks it's been a matter of watching all the major sources, and seeing how overpriced the occasional unit that does pop is. Today I finally found a reasonably priced head unit. After fighting with Best Buy's website, I finally have a head unit on order and they claim it will be arrived Wednesday. So hopefully I'll have a project next weekend to install all of it. my brother's explanation was that the version of windows at the time couldn't count past whatever it recognized the drive as, so the drive actually had platter space that never got used. I had an early version of windows 95 that couldn’t recognize a 1G hard drive. There was an external driver you had to load to get Windows to be able to count that high. I think Microsoft eventually came out with an update for 95 to recognize the larger drives. |
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