[Lincoln30]

that will work in a non-iDrive Logic 7 System.

1st attempt: I tried to rip them to my HD with Windows Media Player and then copied to a 16G USB flash drive and it worked for part of one song and then the drive was no longer recognized by the car.

2nd try: Rip them directly to the USB drive using WMP, car didn't recognize drive...

3,4th: more tries with WMP, no success.

5th: tried to rip directly to USB with Roxio easy media creator. THIS WORKS BUT...There is no Album, Artist, or Genre info (all songs show up in these categories). The DIR shows the folder structure (in my case, each CD was in a folder).


TIA
So, I'd like to know if there is software that I can use to rip WAV files that will give me the ability to have Artist, Album and Genre functionality??? Ultimately, I'd like to get a large (1TB) portable HD and rip hundreds of CDs in WAV format to the drive to use in the car...will that work???

[Weaselboy]

Below it the list of supported formats pasted from the manual. I don't think a WAV is going to work.

Compressed audio files: MP3, WMA, AAC, M4A.

I would use something to rip the CDs into AAC or MP3 format. I use iTunes on the Mac to rip CDs to 256kbps AAC and the quality is quite good. My iTunes settings are below.

As the CDs are imported iTunes downloads all the ID3 tags and organizes by artist/album. I am able to just go to the file manager (Finder in OS X) and copy the music folders direct to a USB key and then import to the car.

I assume the Windows version of iTunes would do the same for you.

[Lincoln30]

Thanks for the reply but WAV files do work.

I have an iPhone and with a few exceptions where I have WAV files on it, I use all ALAC (which is much better then the default AAC and also works in the car) and still doesn't sound good to me. WAV sounds correct to me, but my iPhone doesn't have enough storage space to accomodate to amount of WAV files I wish to rip.

IMHO, compression of all types, even FLAC (the best) take the depth out of the music, so I looking for a WAV solution now that large portable USB storage is cheap.

[Weaselboy]

Originally Posted by Lincoln30

Thanks for the reply but WAV files do work.

I have an iPhone and with a few exceptions where I have WAV files on it, I use all ALAC (which is much better then the default AAC and also works in the car) and still doesn't sound good to me. WAV sounds correct to me, but my iPhone doesn't have enough storage space to accomodate to amount of WAV files I wish to rip.

IMHO, compression of all types, even FLAC (the best) take the depth out of the music, so I looking for a WAV solution now that large portable USB storage is cheap.

WAV does not support ID3 tagging, so it is not going to work... or at least not work properly with the tag data showing in the car.

[ctuna]

320 bit mp3 is pretty close to wav files .

[Weaselboy]

Originally Posted by ctuna

320 bit mp3 is pretty close to wav files .

Agreed. Even 256k AAC would be difficult to distinguish from a WAV in a car stereo system.

[Lincoln30]

Let me clarify something. I am not looking for alternative suggestions in the file format. I plan to use WAV files, they do play in the car over the USB connection.

I am just looking for a way to better organize and replay WAV files. If they don't support ID3 tagging then what I am already doing with Roxio may be the best way to do it???

ctuna - I do appreciate the reply, but there is NO way that a 320 bit file sounds "close" to a 800-1000 bit ALAC file or a 1400bit WAV file.

I've done some preliminary tuning of the system with an RTA and done some comparisons in sound from an ALAC on my phone and then playing the same song on the USB drive in WAV format...there is no question the WAV file sounds noticeably better.

I could always buy a 160g iPod and burn 270+ CDs in WAV format to that and retain all functions that an iPod has but is only about 1/2 of the space I need now and 1/4 of the space I'd like to buy at more then double the price.

[Lincoln30]

I have uncompressed (.WAV) music playing from a 1TB USB drive. I've been using EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip the WAV files to the HD. I create a folder for each Artist in the root directory of the HD and a sub directory for each album. It takes a few minutes for it to initialize and load each time I drive the car but the sound quality is excellent. The DIR function shows the folder structure I created so I can easily choose an album to listen to (or I could drop any songs I want into a folder to create a "playlist"). The Album, Artist, Genre functions show ALL songs on the HD in one big group, I use this with random play most of the time.

[rollinstone157]

I use Max (OS X) or DBPowerAmp (Windows) to convert my ALAC/FLAC files to WAV lossless, which gives me nearly uncompressed music, with metadata. Then, I use DoubleTwist (OS X/Windows) to send my AAC/MP3's to the drive, and manually copy-paste the output folders from DBPowerAmp/Max to said drive. Works awesome!

DoubleTwist automatically puts things by Artist-->Album--Track # Song Title, so I just browse the directory and select what I want. I haven't been able to get the artists to populate the built-in artist/album/song database yet...but I hear a combox unit could help with that.

The drive itself is a 120GB HDD in a cage, with a cigarette USB adapter and a USB y-cable. I cannot tell you how well this setup works. For more speed/reliability, I might upgrade it to an SSD eventually, once the last-gen models get "dirt" cheap--or as cheap as a 120GB SSD will get!

[Lincoln30]

Originally Posted by rollinstone157

I use Max (OS X) or DBPowerAmp (Windows) to convert my ALAC/FLAC files to WAV lossless, which gives me nearly uncompressed music, with metadata. Then, I use DoubleTwist (OS X/Windows) to send my AAC/MP3's to the drive, and manually copy-paste the output folders from DBPowerAmp/Max to said drive. Works awesome!

DoubleTwist automatically puts things by Artist-->Album--Track # Song Title, so I just browse the directory and select what I want. I haven't been able to get the artists to populate the built-in artist/album/song database yet...but I hear a combox unit could help with that.

The drive itself is a 120GB HDD in a cage, with a cigarette USB adapter and a USB y-cable. I cannot tell you how well this setup works. For more speed/reliability, I might upgrade it to an SSD eventually, once the last-gen models get "dirt" cheap--or as cheap as a 120GB SSD will get!

I would like to upgrade to an SSD eventually too. The 1TB portable drive (gets power from the USB) was $129 on Amazon. I could fit everything I want to have in the car on 256GB drive but Flash drives and SSDs in this size are pricey compared to the HD.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I formatted the drive FAT32.

[rollinstone157]

Originally Posted by Lincoln30

I would like to upgrade to an SSD eventually too. The 1TB portable drive (gets power from the USB) was $129 on Amazon. I could fit everything I want to have in the car on 256GB drive but Flash drives and SSDs in this size are pricey compared to the HD.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I formatted the drive FAT32.

Oh yeah, ditto to that too. I went with the 120GB HDD b/c it was only $30 from Newegg, cage included! I'm not sure if the combox fixed this issue, but right now, iDrive seems to flake out if the partion/drive size is greater than 200ish GB (haven't found exact value yet...not worth it) just something to keep in mind!