playing MP3 in car audio equipment

[Goblin]

Hi all,

Im new to the Lab. I think its a great forum and there are alot of good topics on here - now for one that hasnt been covered..


This is for anyone that has MP3 car audio equipment or interested to learn about the PROS and CONS of having one.

I recently brought a MP3 player for my car. Its the Panasonic CQ-RDP472N model. This unit is the cheapest on the market compared to the other manufactured brands out there. So I recommend you check it out if you are looking to buy one.

The Panasonic CQ-RDP472N supports: CD-R CD-RW TEXT CD-R (MP3) CD-RW(MP3) CD-ROM (MP3)

more info- http://www.panasonic.co.uk/product/carc ... RDP472.HTM

Okay so heres what happened, I burned an MP3-disc consisting of mixed 128kbps - 192kbps songs with Nero Express, I used "Track-At-Once" as Write Method I toasted the CD at 16x (successfully). I used Imation CDR

The problem is some tracks have a hitching (scratching) noise during playback in the CD player car unit. So I thought maybe 16x might of been bad for the CD or the unit couldnt read it correctly so I went back and made the exact same disc of tunes using the Mitsubishi CDR and at 12x speed.

Unfortunately the new CD had the same problem, the same tracks that made the hitching noises appeared again. So I was clueless what to try next and I never had this kind of problem with MP3 playback. I tested the CD in my cd-rom and its perfectly fine, no hitching sounds or nothing.

So I contacted Panasonic Tech Support by phone, and they told me they were aware of the problem but they didnt have any solution other than to find other sources of the encoded songs.

In the manual it says "It is recommended to set the bit rate to "128 kbps or more" and "Fixed"

Does this mean I need to re-encode the MP3's? or maybe it doesnt like 192kbps tracks? Its doesnt make sense coz I have as example below of the one track that makes hitching noises in certain parts of the track while the other plays perfectly fine.

Hitching noises in playback
Size: 5251993 bytes
Header found at: 626 bytes
Length: 218 seconds
MPEG 1.0 layer 3
192kbit, 8389 frames
44100Hz Stereo
CRCs: No
Copyrighted: No
Original: Yes
Emphasis: None

Perfect playback
Size: 1899224 bytes
Header found at: 0 bytes
Length: 79 seconds
MPEG 1.0 layer 3
192kbit, 3033 frames
44100Hz Stereo
CRCs: No
Copyrighted: No
Original: Yes
Emphasis: None

Its quite cool having the ability to play the music you download in your car and squeezing so many mp3's onto a CD is a bonus.

My CD writer is the LG (GCE-8160B) still running the factory 1.01 firmware


I appreciate any feedback or tips to help find a solution.

Regards, Goblin

[BuddhaTB]

I would try re-encoding some of the MP3's that have the Hitching noise. It might be caused by poorly encoded MP3's. Just a thought on how to fix the problem.

[Goblin]

hey thanks for the tip, is there any software you recommend for re-encoding? I hope i can keep them in 192kbps coz i dont want to lose any sound quality. I know theres a huge debate between what sounds better but i definately can tell the difference between a 128kbps song and a 192kbps song. Cheers

[wrecker]

i personally use EAC and CDex for ripping and the LAME plug-in for encoding. use the settings on r3mix.net for best results.

[Reg-da-Ripper]

If your Panasonic head unit uses mechanicals that are similar to the Panasonic DFX-572U and DFX-972U head units, then you are out-of-luck with playing VBR MP3s on your head unit. You will get the noise that you described since these Panasonic head units do not support VBR MP3s.

Check out this thread in another forum for more information.

[Goblin]

Now were pinning it down!!@ Thanks for the link

This proves it not only happens to me but people that have brought Panasonic's other models of the unit. Geez you would think Panasonic would of fixed it by now. Bad Tech Support.

But atleast we know its the VBR causing the problem!

Any ideas what I'll need to do to my mp3's? I had a look at r3mix.net but I got a bit lost coz its covered in all kinds of encoding methods. Cheers

Thanks for everyones support here!

[Spazmogen]

hey thanks for the tip, is there any software you recommend for re-encoding? I hope i can keep them in 192kbps coz i dont want to lose any sound quality. I know theres a huge debate between what sounds better but i definately can tell the difference between a 128kbps song and a 192kbps song. Cheers

Yeah. I'd go with EAC as well.

You can encode right up to 320kbps if you want.

I've backed up my 20 something Jimmy Buffett cd's @ 320kbps CBR

You're existing mp3's are useless in that player. You'll have to re-encode them in CBR.

[MikeTR]

The EAC/Lame combo definately is the way to go. But for reference look here: http://www.audio-illumination.org/forums/index.php?s=854f855990a20dbbd521e5d7894a106c&act=SF&f=15 instead of r3mix. I started there as well, but found the Hyrdo a lot more active.

[supersej]

I know it's quite some time ago you all posted in here but i found the solution to the Panasonic problem.

All your mp3´s has to be "joint stereo"
does not seem to matter if its vbr or cbr
(ps i only testet it with 128 kbit, but with diffrent codecs)