I tried searching for this but found no answers.

For people with installed mp3 players,

have you found them to be worthwhile?

Do they play VBR mp3's, or other compressed file formats like wma's perhaps?

Also, is the directory navigation satisfactory?

Also, is there a random function?

thanks

 

Try reading up on these 3 threads:
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-do-yourself-forum-73/diy-mp3-factory-head-unit-removal-install-7644/
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-interior-audio-electronics-24/mp3-operating-instructions-please-7889/
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-interior-audio-electronics-24/mp3-player-installation-anyone-7206/

The manual does NOT say that it plays WMAs, so I'd imagine that it does not. It also does not specify that mp3s must use CBR, so I'd imagine that VBR is also acceptable. Have I found it to be worthwhile? Hell, yeah! I LOVE my mp3 player. As long as you do a really good job with your encoding, it sounds just as good as the original (in a car, anyway), and the features and convenience clinch the deal.

 

I second that. The mp3 player is a great upgrade. I'd recommend it.

 

The MP3 is definately worthwhile if you have any sort of mp3 collection.

VBR = I'm guessing this is 'variable bit rate', if so I do recall reading that it plays those as well. I will verify tonight. I have 20 burned MP3 discs that range from 120-150 songs on each disc. I have yet to see the device not play a song or not play a disc...

Discs with a 150 songs and no sub-directories could take up to 20-30 seconds for it to read the disc before it plays. If you leave the disc in after subsequent starts and stops that initial "boot-up" period does not return until you fully eject the disc and put it back in again.

 

There are two things that bother me about the MP3 player, unless I just haven't figured out how to do it properly:
1. Searching through the directories only lists the songs by track number, so no quick way to find a song by title or band. Also, the directories are also numbered so if a folder was a band name, you don't see it.
2. No way to do a random mode across the whole disc, only in whichever folder you are in at the time.
I guess I'll have to dump them all in to one big folder. Other than those two things, I'm satisfied with the player.

 

Navigation is not the greatest.
Also, the directories are also numbered so if a folder was a band name, you don't see it.
If you hit the display button it eventually lands on the folder name and displays it. But this is not a good tool in terms of trying to use it for navigation.

Yes, it only seems to shuffle in the directory your in. If you want to have 10hrs of continuous music without repeating a song then it is better to have all songs on the root directory without sub-directories.

 

I noticed that, too. Same with Repeat - you can only repeat one track, not an entire directory.

The Sony CD changer in my last RX-7 had multiple repeat modes - a single press repeated a single track; two presses repeated the current disk; three repeated the entire changer (if you had multiple changers daisy-chained). It would have been nice to see similar functions in the MP3 player - track/directory repeat and directory/disk randomize.

 

I read in another thread that the random function is truly random: rather than shuffle the tracks and play each track once in random order until all have been played, it randomly determines which track to play next as each one finishes. In extreme cases, it can even decide to play the same track again!

Thus the only way to hear 10 hours of music without repeat is to let the disk play through from beginning to end without using the random function, and in that case it won't matter if the tracks are in directories or not.

The only way to get random-order single-play would be to put the tracks in a single directory and randomise them before you burn them to disk.

 

Yeah, that too. It's happened to me twice so far - playing the same song twice in a row or just hearing the same song with a few in between. Also, is there a better way to skip to the next random song other that pressing the random button twice (off then on again) to get to the next one?

 

If there is, I haven't found it. As you have obviously discovered, pressing the track skip button on the steering wheel skips to the next track on the disk and disables the random function. Stupid implementation, if you ask me.

 

Yup, you are right, I was thinking of my mp3 player at home, doh. This unit is truly random and it will do repeats!!!

 

So the display function button will fix the ID3 problems people are having?