[lammer]

I haven't been able to see any text on any commercial cd's yet???

The 2004 Freestar Sport I have, certainly doesn't have any Audiophile system,yet I can see what song is playing by pushing the button.

Has anyone else been able to get the text function to work on store-bought cd's?

 

[swoop1156]

With CD-TEXT, no, but with MP3 ID3 tags, yes.

 

[ming321]

SWOOP, please explain how you get CD Text to show. I have the MP3 6 disc changer and it won't show anything but disc and track number. I burned all my store bought CD's to Yahoo Music and then made disc's for my car with all my favorites. Do you think the lack of song title, etc is due to the way I made the CD's- and what's a ID3 tag. Lastly, who knows what the Compress feature does (I can only find it when pressing Menu while listening to CDs). Thks

 

[sternyy]

It depends on how you made the CDs from yahoo music. Did it burn a data CD or an audio cd? Big differences with both. A data CD can hold about 175 MP3s (@ 4mb a MP3). An audio cd is just like a CD you buy from the store, it holds around 80 mins worth of audio.

Next time you go to burn your CD choose data CD and put the actual MP3 files on it.


The ID3 tag in a MP3 files tells the player the artist info, track info, album info, etc of the song.


The compression feature compresses the levels (volume). The easiest way to understand it is that it sort of averages out the levels so there are not huge differences between quiet and loud levels. I keep the compress feature off.

 

[ming321]

I must be doing just an audio CD since it holds about 18 songs and 80 minutes. My understanding is MP3 doesn't cover the full musical spectrum and thus the sound isn't quite as good, but not that perceptible with earphones. However, in a car with a full range sound system, I wonder if there would be a difference in sound quality for a data CD vs MP3.

 

[sternyy]

Honestly, even though the factory system is decent to the average user, it is hard to hear a difference. You have to know what too look for. Now if you are a true audiophille and know what to look for, you wouldnt be listining to a factory radio anyways  :lol:

Also, how did you rip your CDs to Yahoo music? Do you know what file type (MP3, WMV, ORG, AAC, etc)? The sound quality the you reffered to earlier totaly depends on how the song was ripped from your audio CD. Once you ripped your songs from the audio cd you got from the store, the sound quality of the song will be the same as what you ripped regardless if you burn back on to a data CD or audio CD.

 

[ming321]

I agree with the comments on not hearing the difference, and my ears probably aren't that good. However, I do have upgraded Kenwoods in the door, tweeters in the a-pillar and a 12" JL sub and amp in the trunk. My concern was losing the highs and lows, especially since I have speakers that can produce those frequencies.

As for how I ripped my CD's, I'm not sure. I loaded the CD and saved it to the hard drive. I then saved select songs from the hard drive onto a CD. I understand what you are saying about garbage in, garbage out, but is burning at the data CD rate going to degrade the sound further.

Thanks

 

[sternyy]

ok good thing you understand about the garbage in garbage out... i lose a lot of people talking about that...

Its like this... say you ripped all your songs to a MP3 format @ 192 kbps. So all your songs are on your hard drive (yahoo music, napster, whatever). Average size for an average length song is... say is 5 mb. This is now your new file to put back onto a CD... its only 5mb big. You can either put the song back onto a CD as data or audio. Here is the confusion: when the burning program re-encodes the song for the audio cd, and that song now becomes about a 60mb file. So your 5mb file became a 60mb file, but with NO DIFFERENCE IN SOUND QUALITY! You can do the math for a 700mb CD.

This is exactly the same in your case: What you did was ripped a song from a cd. It saved it on your computer, most likely as a MP3 file around 5mb. then you burned it back as an audio CD. What you hear now will be the exact same as what you would hear with a data cd. You can just put a heck of a lot more songs on a data cd

 

[swoop1156]

I CAN hear a difference between a CD and an MP3 -- but not a beneficial difference. There is slight [if any, honestly] static and distortion at extreme highs. I love having 6 cd's piled with say, 200 songs and set it and forget it.

 

[ming321]

Thanks for the explanation. Is there a difference between data discs and the CDr's I've used or do I need to tell my computer to download as data vs MP3. I wish I new all of this before I created 10 home made CD's with all my favorites :dur:.  I guess I could have put them all on 1 or 2 data discs.  Thanks again

 

[sternyy]

yeah you will hear a difference between a converted MP3 and a store bought cd, but like you said, mostly in the highs (cymbols, etc) if you are looking for it. But once you convert that store bought cd to mp3, it doesnt matter if it goes on back as data or audio because its the same file being put on the disc.

A MP3 file is a data file. What you do is tell your burning program (nero, roxio, etc) to burn a data cd, not a music cd. Then you put all the data files (MP3s) onto the disc. When one says data, its a file. sorta confusing. Its the same process you would do if your backing up files on your drive to a cd.

 

[1sttimeMercury]

Speaking of CD/mp3 text, is there any way of scrolling through the text if the title of a song is too long to be displayed all at once? Right now it will list the first couple of words with an arrow pointing to the right as an indication the title continues, but I can't figure out how to scroll to the rest of the title, if it even does that.

 

[sternyy]

yeah mine doesnt scroll either.... it has the arrow like yours.

 

[bitdrift]

I have to press the TEXT|SCAN button to get the Title/Artist info to show up. If the Title is to long and displays an arrow, you just press the SEEK > key. Anyone know a way to get it to always display the Title info? I have the 6 Disc Premium head unit.