Why are hard-drive stereos not popular?

[low_bass_makker]

Originally Posted by navin

my wife leaves her ipod in the car. in the glove comaprtment. permantantly connected to her HU. She has a regular CD changer too so she can choose between a multiple of sources (FM, CD, Ipod, or Changer). Never had a problem with her ipod (it is a 4th gen ipod photo with barely 3MB of free space left) harddisk.


with 160GB ipods lossless on ipod even for large collections (400+ CDs) has become a reality however I never say impossible (solid state "hard disks" might make this possible).

Originally Posted by Venkatesh.C

. Your missus is lucky sir. I guess leaving it in cars that get to spend a good time of their day parked in the sun is not a healthy thing for an IPod right?

My iPod is permanently placed in the glove box. I never used it for Headphone use. And I am doing this since a long time. No problem faced.

[vebmetal]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

2 incorrect assumptions here.

1. HDD= lossless, iPod =Lossy. - The choice is yours, whether you use an iPod or an HDD, to rip your music from original CDs in lossy or lossless. The iPod will also handle most lossless formats with ease.

Ok, I see where you are coming from. But the way I look at it - it's about power. Playing lossless formats on an iPod (AFAIK) would drain the battery in no time - which would mean you could only then use your iPod in your car, i.e. when connected with a cable to a compatible HU that would charge it while it plays. So lossless on an iPod is possible but not practical.
Edit: Using Google I found a couple of reports of people getting about 6 hrs. of audio play with some apple lossless format I am not familiar with. So that's not too bad, considering if you mainly keep your iPod in your car, it would be fully charged at all times.

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

2. HDD HU price = CD HU price - impossible, no matter how many years from now.

I wouldn't say impossible! Look at the way prices change for all things technology. Essentially, if HDD HUs gained mainstream popularity, there's nothing to stop them from being affordable. Perhaps it would take Apple to come up with an "iStereo"!

[Sam Kapasi]

Originally Posted by vebmetal

Ok, I see where you are coming from. But the way I look at it - it's about power. Playing lossless formats on an iPod (AFAIK) would drain the battery in no time - which would mean you could only then use your iPod in your car, i.e. when connected with a cable to a compatible HU that would charge it while it plays. So lossless on an iPod is possible but not practical.

I don't think the format of the file has any role to play in the battery drainage at all!! How can that be possible? In any case, even if there is a difference (in the RPM of the disk spin, duration of the disk read (in case the data is transferred from the HDD to a flash bank, to allow a spin down of the HDD)
iPods are mostly HDD based and the smaller ones are flash based.
A HDD will spin, read the data and the accompanying circuit will decode it into analogue audio - how does it matter if the format of the digital data is AAC, MP3 or FLAC? The only difference would be the space occupied on the HDD.

I could be wrong, merely using my logic in this case.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh.C

I guess leaving it in cars that get to spend a good time of their day parked in the sun is not a healthy thing for an IPod right?

Even when parked in the sun, the glove compartment does not heat up to unbearable levels. The "unbearable" is relevant more for humans than electronics. Most electronics can be *stored* upto 70 degC. If operated at that temperature, one can expect a speedy demise!

However, consider the following:
1. At 70 degC, occupants of the car would have fainted, no matter whether the windows were open or closed
2. If the AC is on or the windows are down, the max temperature of the cabin is unlikely to be more than 50 degC even in the hottest regions (same as temperature in shade and outside air temperature)
3. The glove box would be a few degC lower than that (even in a shirt-pocket, an iPod would be at 38-40 degC if one is in the sun)
4. All manufacturers warn not to keep an electronic unit directly in sunlight, since then the temp would reach more than 70 degC (plastics start deteriorating). In shade is it unlikely to reach that temperature

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

how does it matter if the format of the digital data is AAC, MP3 or FLAC? The only difference would be the space occupied on the HDD.
I could be wrong, merely using my logic in this case.

At a high-level your logic is correct, Sam.

However, if one "takes out the skin of hair", power consumption does (at the micro/milli-watt level) vary based on the processor / chip and the audio format. That is due to the number of instructions required to decode one compression format or the other.

Another factor is the HDDs inherent power consumption.

Of course, at that level one has to consider that higher the volume one listens music to, greater is the power consumption.

[vebmetal]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

I don't think the format of the file has any role to play in the battery drainage at all!! How can that be possible? In any case, even if there is a difference (in the RPM of the disk spin, duration of the disk read (in case the data is transferred from the HDD to a flash bank, to allow a spin down of the HDD)
iPods are mostly HDD based and the smaller ones are flash based.
A HDD will spin, read the data and the accompanying circuit will decode it into analogue audio - how does it matter if the format of the digital data is AAC, MP3 or FLAC? The only difference would be the space occupied on the HDD.

I could be wrong, merely using my logic in this case.

Well I know for sure that bitrates make a huge difference when it comes to battery life (general knowledge and experience). Which is why if you ever notice in the fine print of most mp3 player ads / specifications, you will see that they use 128kbps mp3s to inflate their battery life figures. I can only assume then, using logic , that lossless formats have much much higher bitrates than standard mp3s etc. which necessarily implies that battery life suffers significantly!
(AFAIK all this has to do with hard disk spinnage - so not sure what happens in case of solid state memory).

[d.kiran]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

I don't think the format of the file has any role to play in the battery drainage at all!! How can that be possible? In any case, even if there is a difference (in the RPM of the disk spin, duration of the disk read (in case the data is transferred from the HDD to a flash bank, to allow a spin down of the HDD)
iPods are mostly HDD based and the smaller ones are flash based.
A HDD will spin, read the data and the accompanying circuit will decode it into analogue audio - how does it matter if the format of the digital data is AAC, MP3 or FLAC? The only difference would be the space occupied on the HDD.

I could be wrong, merely using my logic in this case.

You answered the question yourself :-).

Actually the highest powerdrain in most portable players is caused because of hard disk read (to be really anal about it, it is because of the spinup/spindown cycles). So most portable players in order to extract the maximum battery life do write to a flash based cache.

In most cases, if it is a low bitrate file, the portable player transfers the entire file to the hard disk and plays from the cache. This means that the player will read the file only once. In case of higher bitrate (and lossless files) what will happen is that the cache gets filled up pretty quickly and the player has to keep reading from the hard disk and filling up the cache. This is what causes the battery drain.

[navin]

Originally Posted by vebmetal

Playing lossless formats on an iPod (AFAIK) would drain the battery in no time...some apple lossless format I am not familiar with.

lossless on an ipod using foopod etc... can drain the battery a little faster but not that much. you still get 3 hours+. apple lossless is not really that good as lossless formats go. flac, wavpack etc. are far superior.

Originally Posted by DerAlte

Another factor is the HDDs inherent power consumption.

40% of the power consumption is this. another 30-40% is the headphone amp. so the processor, display, etc is only about 20-30% of the total power consumption.

[rocksterraghu]

If the hard disk has to read more sectors/tracks for one song, there should be more battery consumption. I am not sure about how much of a difference that means.

[Sam Kapasi]

I'm pretty sure that the data is read from the spinning HDD into a flash bank (cache, if you will) and then is played from there. By d.Kirans reasoning, the number of spin ups and spin downs will be more if the file size is larger. I agree.

This will cause a greater drain. I agree.

What about flash based iPods? Like the nano? Logically the file size should make no difference to the nano. Not that we would be able to fit too many lossless songs on an 8GB nano.

[esteem_lover]

Originally Posted by deepakvrao

Upload - easiest IMO would be wifi. Just park in your basement and connect to your home network

MP3 DVDs make a lot of sense.

I seriously do not think that upload from home thru wi fi is an easy task. I would rather use your second option, MP3 DVDs. The problem i have faced with MP3 DVDs is that they take a long time to read & sometimes not very reliable too.

Originally Posted by DerAlte

2. If the AC is on or the windows are down, the max temperature of the cabin is unlikely to be more than 50 degC even in the hottest regions (same as temperature in shade and outside air temperature)

I have seen mid pitch ourdoor temperatures in a cricket match, to be above 58 deg C, in that case the temp inside a car parked out in the sun could go much much higher. come to madras.

[gunbir]

Originally Posted by esteem_lover

I seriously do not think that upload from home thru wi fi is an easy task. I would rather use your second option, MP3 DVDs. The problem i have faced with MP3 DVDs is that they take a long time to read & sometimes not very reliable too.

True for Sony DVD HUs... Not so with Alpine, JVC etc that we have tested.

[navin]

Originally Posted by esteem_lover

I have seen mid pitch ourdoor temperatures in a cricket match, to be above 58 deg C..come to madras.

Delhi can get hot too. One time in the late 70s I was playing tennis at the NSCI club there and after 7 games when i sat down I noticed that the soles of my shoes had become noticeably softer. Part of that might be due to friction but I think a lot of it was due to the heat of the court.

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

What about flash based iPods? Like the nano? Logically the file size should make no difference to the nano. Not that we would be able to fit too many lossless songs on an 8GB nano.

Yes.

[govigov]

I personally thing that a HU with an USB attachment is the best. you can connect your ipod or a pen drive. memory stick on to it and play it from there.

this for example has got an USB port, a 3.5mm connector and the std CD player. plays wma as well.

There are 2 types of HDD, once that has got moving parts and the others are solid state devices like the pen drives, if its has got moving parts it wll go kaput. I dont know what is in the HU with built in HDD's

The other advantage of pen drive is easy trasnfer of songs as you can just unplug it from your car and then plug it onto your comp to transfer songs. secondly, they are cheap and their capacities are ever increasing.

Regards,
govigov

[vebmetal]

^ pen drives still have really bad storage capacity in terms of being able to store your music. Not to mention they are very awkward to use in a HU - one wrong flick of the hand and bye-bye pen drive (or HU).

Is there any HU that reads (and by reads I mean reads fast) and charges any other mp3 player than iPods? Unfortunately, most HU manufacturers are too busy kissing Steve Job's bottom and haven't really bothered to provide solutions for other brands.

Why are HU manufacturers soooo slow to innovate?