Re: RVing Tunes on the Road: Modifying a MP3 Player

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 14:07:48 GMT, GaryO < @ . > wrote:


Surprisingly, I've not found this feature on home systems. There are
several which will play files from one's PC via a network connection,
but there is no need for that in this day and age. I don't want to
turn my PC into an audio file server - PCs crash, etc. Give me a unit
which will either read directly from a network connected drive, or via
a USB drive. I should not have to run proprietary software on a PC in
order to play audio files on my home system.

You don't. But an old PC sure makes a nice player. Especially with
something like a Soundblaster Autigy with the remote control.

There are several choices. Since soundblaster sill provides DOS
drivers, you can load an old PC with Free-DOS and have a very fast
booting, quite reliable stereo player. There are several quite good
DOS-based MP3 players out there, all of 'em free.

If you strip all the crap out, even and winders system is as reliable
as any other computerized appliance. Rebooting because of crappy soft
or firmware is just a fact of life these days. I have to remind my
mom to reboot her DVD player fairly often when it quits working.


I guess that my record collection is too large (114,000 songs
digitized and still workin' :-) Probably another 150 vinyl albums left
to digitize) but just the act of having to select songs to copy to the
memory stick is daunting. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a good
album manager available that could copy from playlists. I guess one
could make batch files to copy to the sticks but that's tedious too.

After I posted that I found some potentially useful software. MDB
(music database) on Sourceforge will do what I describe above - if it
ever quits crashing while scanning my library.

For shooting random music to your memory stick or jukebox, I found
this nifty little program:

http://otterplus.com/randomfill/

It works as advertised.


One of my goals, yeah its on the list, but far down at the moment, is
to get all my old vinyl albums digitized so that I can listen to them
again. What sort of hardware/software are you using for this process?

A laptop with a USB2 Audigy sound "card" fed by a Parts Express preamp
which in turn is fed by a commercial turntable (can't recall the
brand) that I snagged from the local PBS station when they converted
to digital. For software I use CoolEdit Pro (unfortunately now owned
by Adobe and renamed something else.) It is a superb sound
recorder/editor. Its pops-and-clicks filter is great. If the vinyl
is in decent shape at all, almost all the noise will be eliminated.

I like the Archos unit and its software hacks. While the IPOD is
nice, I don't want to deal with it's problems, like cost, battery pack
replacement, non-upgradeable hard drive, etc. It is a fine solution
for a small 'walk-about' portable unit, but I need a solution for the
home or vehicle without the IPOD's constraints. The Archos fits this
bill nicely. If I need the 'walk-about' capability there are a ton of
tiny, inexpensive, solid state, long battery life units.

The bad news is, Archos discontinued the Jukebox Recorder Vers 1 (vers
2 is total crap). The good news is RockBox is running fairly well now
on a couple of versions of the iPod. I could never allow Apple to
have any of my money but I COULD pick one up used somewhere.


< good stuff snipped >

Funny this would come up right now. I'm sitting here at my Tellico
cabin teasing files off my JBR. The hard drive's spindle bearing
started growling last night and I'm trying to recover as much as
possible before it quits totally. If I hold the unit at juuuuust the
right angle, it'll spin up and read for awhile....

I've found that sometimes I can coax a non-functioning hard drive
temporarily back to life via either heating or cooling it. Try
sealing it in an anti-static bag and placing it in the refrigerator
for a while. If the cold doesn't do it try some mild heat - no not
the microwave!

Yup. Been doing that. It seems to like heat. I have it wrapped up
in a towel, propped at an angle. It's doing a lot of retries but so
far so good. If not, I'll open the drive and move the platter to an
identical drive with unrecoverable errors.


My playlists were the FIRST thing to be recovered, as they're
irreplaceable. I can't believe I've never backed them up! <smack!>

One other little thing I'll mention. MP3 data frames have a gain
field. This field tells the player how much gain to use on that
particular packet (about 0.16 second if I recall correctly). There is
a program called mp3Gain (http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net) that
analyzes the song and using a very slick psycho-acoustic volume
leveling algorithm, implements a very fine AGC on the song. It writes
each packet's gain field with the value that will make the song play
at a constant loudness.

This is a great little utility. I sicced it on the entire hard drive
of my JBR and now everything on there plays at the same loudness. No
more worries about a song encoded much louder than the rest blasting
out the room or car. (I use "track" analysis and gain and set the
level to 94.0 db)

Does this program do a single gain adjustment for the entire song
while preserving its dynamic range, or does it act more like an AGC
throughout the song? I'd prefer the former so as to not compress the
music's dynamic range.

RePlayGain can't be tagged with either simple description. It's a
little of both, actually. I've not taken the time to learn the
details of RePlayGain. I just know that it works. Here is the
RePlayGain page.

http://www.replaygain.org/

< more stuff snipped >

Thanks John, for the wealth of info!

You're more than welcome.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.johngsbbq.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
.

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