Gosh I am feeling my age ;)

My husbands new car says it plays MP3's

I know you download music from the internet onto them (somehow).

I can't find anywhere near the radio or CD player to plug anything into.  Do they plug into a car?

Also what is the difference between a MP3 and an Ipod?  I think they both download music, that is about all I know.

Sandra

hiya sandra,

i'm unfortunate enough to have a gadget freak of a hubby (although it can work in my favour...).

we bought a CD/MP3 player for our old car. It simply played downloaded mp3's that had been put on CD's. As far as i know, and anyone feel free to correct me here, BMW, Merc, Audi, VW, & Honda are the only car manufacturers (so far) to be building an iPod bit in their cars, although Apple sell car docking stations for them.

i have an iPod mini, but rarely use it (it was forced upon me even though i said "i'll never use it"), so i wouldn't have a clue about using it via a car stereo. They use audio-out jacks on the car stereo apparently, but wouldn't know where to find one of them!! They charge off the cigarette lighter, but you need a couple of things to make iPods playable in cars-probably cheaper and easier to buy a CD/MP3 head unit!

iPods are just hard disks with headphones. You save mp3's to them so you can listen to them, but thats about it. Saying that, they are pretty cool, and they come in pink!!

nicola

Thanks Nicola

It must be the CD's it plays then.  Do you plug the MP3 into your computer then to download the music and then copy it from that to disc?

Can you not just copy music from the computer straight onto the CD then?

Sandra

you don't plug the mp3's in themselves, an mp3 is a type of file-its a compressed version of a standard audio file. It just makes them smaller so you can put more on, and you don't lose the sound quality.

if you want to have say all robbie's albums on one cd, you can. You would have to convert the audio files to mp3's to make them smaller. I find the easiest way to do this by using iTunes-its a free download from apple.com.

if you use it as the program to playback music, it will keep all the songs in its 'library', which means you don't have to keep on putting the cd in everytime you want to listen to it! iTunes will convert the audio files into mp3's for you, and at the click of a button will burn the selected tracks onto cd for you.

you can copy cd's to your pooter, then burn the tracks onto cd. I do if its just one particular album i want, but if i want say, all robbies' (who wouldn't?! :D) tracks on one cd, i'll convert them to mp3's. To be honest, mp3 cds are only beneficial if you want a lot on one cd. I like them because it means less cd's rattling round your glovebox!

Thank you for the reply

I think I tell him to stick to CD's, all sounds very technical and confusing to me

Unless of course I am really stuck for a Christmas present, then I will let him work it out how to use it!  :D

I'm considering having an iPod connection fitted in my Mini (they do it now). Lovely, on a long journey, instead of loads of cd's filling up the glove box just one little iPod, hundreds of tracks, all operated from the steering wheel - no dangerous manoeuvres trying to open a cd case and swapping disks.

Val

hehe! Its not too bad once you get the hang of it. I would try it-seems a shame not to if your head unit will play them. If you do try it, i'd suggest using iTunes and maybe following the help section?

i'm getting to be a dab hand at doing things OH could but i couldn't. I found myself ripping apart the old cat flap and exchanging bits of a new one (i bought the wrong one, so it didn't ift, hence pulling it to pieces and using the usable bits!) today..i even siliconed all the seals-and what a fab job if i might add. Far better than OH's attempts with the old one. I've now said i'll reseal the shower in our en-suite. There'll be no stopping me with that gun (as in silicone gun)!!

I got to be quite a dab hand with the silicone gun in my kitchen.  Tip from tiler - Use spittle to smooth rather then water.  He was right too. :)

i'll bear that in mind when i tackle the shower tomorrow-today was water. Ooo i'll be al blokish tomorrow...silicone....spitting...... Rich will have never wanted me more, hehe!

I think some of the replies have made it a bit more confusing!

MP3 (in layman's terms) is a new technical word for a song format. eg you had LP's and singles on vinyl, then songs on CD's, now you get MP3's which can be played on a computer (and now all the other gadgets that play them).  Think of an MP3 as computer file.

MP3 players are the gadgets you can play them on (as well as computers) and Ipod's are a brand name, for the MP3 players made by Apple (as in Apple Mac).  They don't download music, you do the downloading from the internet on the computer and then transfer it to the MP3 player/Ipod for playback (although you probably can download straight to an MP3 player if you are technically minded with a clever mp3 player,!) but that's the general idea of it, that you 'download' to the computer and then transfer to MP3 player).  The problem is that the word 'download' describes two different things.  Generally it means to take from the internet, but techies also use the term to describe, for example, transferring files from the pc to ipod.

Your hubby's car stereo plays MP3's, this means if you download music on your computer and 'burn' them on to CD's, you can play the CD's in your car, (but with the files being MP3's, instead of getting say 12 songs on a CD you will be able to get say 80 songs on one CD -as an example, I don't know how much they take, depends on the size of the files/songs).  You don't need to plug anything in to the car cd player, it just means the cd player 'reads' MP3 files as well as playing normal CD's.

You don't need iTunes software etc. if you have a cd burner on your pc and Windows Media Player.  If you have a fairly new computer with XP you probably do, if your computer is older, you need to check you have a cd burner.  If you are used to burning CD's with Windows Media Player, it automatically converts files from MP3 to CD format for you to make a CD you can play in your (house) stereo/CD player.  However if you are making a disc of MP3's, you don't want to convert it so instead you want to save the files on a disc as if they were normal computer files (I always open up 'My Computer' and then highlight all the files I want to put on a CD and drag them over and it saves the files in the same way as saving word processing documents to floppy disks in the old days).  You can then get loads and loads of songs on a CD instead of just 12.  However the discs will only play on a MP3 compatible player, like hubby's car stereo or your computer - they won't work if you put them in a standard household cd player.

But before all that you need to 'get' the MP3's.  I have never downloaded songs legally I'm afraid but if you go to a site like MSN and go to Music Downlaods you can buy single tracks for 79p or albums for about £5.99.  However, if you have no MP3's on your computer already, its not really worth your while at the moment, unless you are going to spend a lot of money on MP3 downloads to fill a CD to play in your car.  If you fancy a couple of albums at £5.99 and putting them all on to one CD then maybe, otherwise I would build up a collection first (ask friends and family!).

However!  What you can do is dig out all your favourite CD's at home, and copy the files on to your computer, and then copy all the MP3 files (whcih they will then be once you've copied them to pc) on to a single disc and you can listen to a load of favourite albums at once on one single disc in the car, so you may find it useful in this respect.

Hmmm, I seem to have written an awful lot, I hope I haven't confused it further myself!  But your question was actually a compilation of many different questions....MP3's, players, car stereos, downloading, Ipod's....that it all needed breaking down.  Hope it helps somehow!

Jessthepest wrote:

"However!  What you can do is dig out all your favourite CD's at home, and copy the files on to your computer, and then copy all the MP3 files (whcih they will then be once you've copied them to pc) on to a single disc and you can listen to a load of favourite albums at once on one single disc in the car, so you may find it useful in this respect."

If you are using Windoze Mediaplayer the above is not stictly correct.  You need version 10 (you can get this from the MS website if you don't already have it).  You then need to go to the "tools/options" option then select "rip music" and set the format to mp3.  You can also select the quality (the better audio quality the bigger the file).

To actually rip the music just put a cd in and select "rip" from the main menu, if you have broadband MediaPlayer will connect to the net and download all the track info (artist, track name etc) and associate it with the file. Select the tracks you want and sit back while they are copied to your hard disk, you can then copy these files onto a cd to play in the car.

Steve

Thank you both.  Cipying my current CD's onto one CD would be very useful.  I will give it a go.  I have version 9, so I will update it first.

Thanks
Sandra

Has nobody mentioned the iTrip yet?  :D  (Even tho it's illegal to use in this country!)

This natty little device plugs into the top of your iPod and allows you to play it through anything that has a radio as you tune it into an un-used radio frequency thingy (which is why it's illegal in this country as it is like setting up a pirate radio station), which makes it ideal for the car!

Version 9 still did it, the function was just called "copy music from CD" rather than "rip"

And get a little free  programme called Audiograbber, it names the album and the song for you so it comes up on the player.
You can get around 12 cds on one disc, if you like your music loud don't go for anything less then 120bt it sounds awful

ooh I've learnt something today, I've never changed the settings/audio quality when making CD's and I like my music loud so I will give that a go next time, ta :-D

How funny, I got an Ipod Nano as a treat when hubby got home from work today.  So now I can learn all about Ipod's too :-D