Music Server - MP3's

Hello all,

I just got my Outlander yesterday and noticed when I put a regular CD in the music server automatically ripped the songs onto the music server.  However, I used to have an MR2 with an MP3 player in it so I have a data cd of just MP3's that I put in and the system will play them fine, but would not copy them to the HDD.  Is there any way to copy MP3's from a data list to the HDD?  Sorry if this is a newbie question heh...

Oh and I love my new car, it is freakin' awesome.  Glad I stumbled across the Outlander on consumer reports online =)
Thanks in advance!

-Jared

The shorth answer is no. It does not copy mp3 CDs.
 
However, some members here are trying to pull out the hard drive in order to:
1. replace the 30G 2.5" hard drive with a larger one, and
2. find a way to load mp3 files directly.
 
But nobody has succeeded yet. So stay tuned.
 

I dont understand why it wont load mp3. Doesnt it play them on the cd? So why wont it just copy them like every other cd you put in there?

quote:

ORIGINAL: antlip

I dont understand why it wont load mp3. Doesnt it play them on the cd? So why wont it just copy them like every other cd you put in there?

 
Obviously, this is not something technical.
I guess their concern is more related to copywright stuff.

Well does it copy songs off normal cds that werent burnt? Like say you download 10 songs and put it on a normal cd will it copy it to the server? I have everything on my ipod now so I have only played 1 cd total in 7 months.

The server only copies CD with normal audio format, i.e tracks.
It simply plays mp3 CDs without copying it to the hard drive.

You have to make it an MP3 music CD and not a MP3 data CD. Definitely a lot less songs to fit on one CD though.

When I play a cd with mp3, my navi-unit spend 3,5 sec between every track.. Is this a joke? Do I need a software-fix? it's a '08.

GPseek,
I inserted a disc w/MP3 saved music that i burnt on CD-RW and it downloaded it the server with no issues.  It's an old disc so i don't recall what format i saved the music in, but it worked for me fine.
 
TorePupper,
The delay you are experiencing may be the formatting of the disc or just how the server reads the data from the CD.

All the mp3 CDs I've burned and used with the MMCS take forever (3-5 seconds sounds right) to seek between tracks.  The unit is indeed very slow in this area.  One thing that might help is configuring your CD burning software to organize all the tracks physically on the disc in the same order you'd play them (i.e. alphebetical), but it might not be much though (and seeking to a random track will always be slow).

Depending on the program you have for burning CD's, you may be able to change the pause time in between songs.

As stated above, MP3 music cd's work, but you can only hold about 30 or so songs. My program doesn't allow me to attach the CD-text to MP3 music cd's, so I just use the regular CD format so I can have the song title show up on the screen.

A 700mb cd-r or cd-rw will hold around 60-70 songs. Depending on the size of each song in mb. This is what I do. I use Roxio software to burn discs, and it burns mp3 files alphabetically. On the MMCS it shows all the file names in a list (which if you name them right are the artist and song titles) and it takes about 2-3 seconds in between tracks. This is maybe a 1 second or so slower than my old pioneer deck. You do have to remember that the system has to OPEN mp3 files and play them. So yes, its probably the software that is lagging opening up the mp3 songs.
 
CD's that are written normally (time wise, not data) is totally different and is faster in between tracks.
 
One thing to remember is the MMCS will only record music from a music-disc and not from a data-disc (mp3). If you dont know the difference between the two you have to business posting.

How about burning the tracks to a dvd-rw disc,anybody tried that?

I have heard that people have burnt mp3's onto dvd-r's and they worked just fine for playing, just like a regular mp3 cd, but again you can not rip them. I have not tried using a dvd-r, as I just loaded my music onto the server in the beginning, but if you have a lot of music and you don't want to rip them to the mmcs, then this might be an easy option.

If someone can pull out the Hard Drive, in the unit, and its anything like a PC HDD. It's hackable, and anyone should be able to connect it to a PC and transfer all their data, even replace the HDD and drop in a much higher capacity unit for cheap. I'm a computer nerd. I'm new to the forums and just got an 07 with 6k miles fully loaded, love it! I haven't had time to play with the radio and the burning features. I'll see about pulling the drive out and manually loading my 9,000 mp3's on the bad boy. :-) Although maybe only half of them will fit on the tiny 30 GIG drive. i'll report in when I figure it all out.

Search the forums for MMCS Unlock.  It is most certainly not as simple as pulling the hard drive and copying mp3s to it.  a) the drive is locked with ATA (easy to get around now though), b) the files in the music server are not in mp3 format (exact format and DRM is still unknown).

Also I've tried burning mp3s to a DVD-R as a data disc with no luck.  People who have burned audio files to a DVD burned it as a DVD-Video disc, using the DVD-menus to switch between songs (which you can't do while vehicle is in motion).

quote:

ORIGINAL: gluv4u2
i'll report in when I figure it all out.

Thanks. please do update us