Category: Jeep
March 3, 2006
USB Car Stereos
Maybe one of these will be better than my unfortunate MegaSound VRCD300USB. ;)
Akihabara News - New USB enabled car stereos by Kenwood
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(0)October 3, 2005
MegaSound VRCD300-USB Follow-Up: Front Auxiliary Input
So, I finally got a good chance to use the front input of the VRCD300-USB. I used a custom cable to pipe sound from my VX9800 into it. I had the volume up all the way on the phone and I had to turn the unit up to about 25-30 to hear it well. Volume was a bit quieter than from other sources.
However, that probably means they are attenuating the input, which is good since some devices can probably drive a fair amount of power out of the headphone jacks. This also means it probably wouldn't work very well with a line-level output.
The sound quality was fine. It seems a bit "muddier" than playing the same stuff from MP3 off of a CD and a bit muddier than listening to the audio through the 9800 with headphones. It might be that I need to turn the handset's volume down the the headunit's volume up. However, it was perfectly acceptable, too. What, with all the road noise and such, you can hardly tell, really.
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: More MegaSound VRCD300-USB Data: Radio Performance
September 27, 2005
More MegaSound VRCD300-USB Data: Radio Performance
So, due to a strange iTunes goof-up when burning a .m4a file with chapters, I ended up with only about 15 minutes of podcasts coming in to work today. That was boring. So I had to switch over to the radio.
Unfortunately, it would seem that the issues with the radio not working had nothing to do with the solar flares. :(
The stations that are normally strange and static free (88.5 FM on the San Jose side and 90.3 FM on the Santa Cruz side of Hiway 17) are riddled with static, fade outs, and other issues. This is most dissapointing.
I still believe that the head unit is worth the $99 bucks I paid for it. However, I think that's a rationalization, too. Due to issues in installing it in the Jeep and past issues with installing radios in the Miata, we had it professionally installed -- and they (Lott's in Santa Cruz) did a great job; very profiessional -- but that added to the overall cost, too. Not only that, but replacing it is thus costly.
Oh well. It's working pretty well for podcast CDs. I can either use normal CD burning software to burn an MP3 CD-RW that works great or use iTunes to burn an audio CD-RW that also works great. One of these days I'll get around to trying to get support for the USB key issues. There may be some simple trick to it.
I should also make sure the antenna was hooked up the radio properly. For some reason, the head unit only gets power when the car is on -- not when the accessories are on.
Another issue with the MegaSound VRCD300-USB I have is that it has to be on for the eject button to work. That's annoying. Our other unit allows for eject even with the key out of the ignition.
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: MegaSound VRCD300-USB Update -- Again
September 14, 2005
MegaSound VRCD300-USB Update -- Again
A couple of updates, this time. First, because my commute is only about 35-40 minutes long I have been normally only burning Audio CDs (to the Ultra Speed CD-RWs, so it's a fast burn). This means I can burn directly from iTunes and the unit can read the disks fine.
But wait, you ask, why don't you burn an MP3 CD from iTunes? Wouldn't that be even faster? Well, yes, for the burn part it would be faster. And I did try that -- a couple of times. Unfortunately, the VRCD300-USB doesn't seem to want to read MP3 disks burned by iTunes 5.0. I don't know what it could be doing wrong. The unit reads the same content fine when it's burned with other software.
On another update, I want to take back some of what I said about the radio reception until the solar flare issues completely go away. This article at Discovery Channel explains that the last week has had one of the worst solar flare events in a couple of decades.
A rowdy sunspot cluster hurled a record-breaking flare into space on Wednesday, blacking out all high- and low-frequency radio communications on both American continents, causing power surges, blinding satellites and lighting up aurorae, and more trouble is likely on the way, say experts.
Given my tests were during this period, I don't want to knock the radio for the wrong reasons. I'll pick this up again in a couple of weeks. This is one of those things I would know if I kept on my amateur radio news. *sigh*
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: More Info on the MegaSound VRCD300-USB
September 9, 2005
More Info on the MegaSound VRCD300-USB
I haven't spent any more time trying to get the USB reader to work better. In the past, I've tried USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 keys and card readers, all with the same results: the playback will hit a point where it will just skip to the next audio file. Since playing off the USB key also doesn't provide the fast forward function like playing MP3s off of CD, I've basically decided it's not very useful. Maybe the MegaSound guys can change my mind with a good support response when I get around to mailing them.
So, I decided to go down the route of using MP3 CDs. My first attempt was with a CD-R. That actually worked just fine. Of course, with a CD-R, it's basically a one-time use thing, especially if you throw on podcasts or something as opposed to some music you'll listen to a bunch.
So, next, I tried an old CD-RW, not knowing if it would even be able to read CD-RWs. The disc burned fine, but when put into the VRCD300-USB it completely flopped. The playback was all skipping, but not like from the USB key -- just normal audio skipping. That was a bit of a let down.
However, I decided it was probably just the disc -- and this was confirmed when I tried to read it in another MP3 CD player with no luck. So, after some searching at the local Fry's, I finally found some new Ultra Speed CD-RWs to try out. Just about every CD-RW for sale at Fry's was either that old style that only burn at 1-4x or the High Speed one's that only burn at 12x. I finally found some Memorex ones, though, that would burn at the full 24x of "new" CD-RW drives (which have been around for years). These were the only ones I could find there, and weren't cheap. But a 5 pack was only around 6 bucks, so I grabbed them -- I really only needed one or two.
In any case, I burned both an audio CD straight from iTunes (an m4a, so I didn't have to bother transcoding it) and a few MP3 files. Both of these discs worked fine. The only problem I have had so far is with one of the data discs I burned I have to keep pressing the button to switch from radio to CD a few times before it detects the disc, but then it works fine. Another data one I burned doesn't have this problem and neither does the audio disc I burned.
August 31, 2005
MegaSound VRCD300-USB Follow-Up
In my last review I hadn't yet tried the CD player part of this head-unit. Over the weekend, we had a chance to give it a shot. I prepared a bunch of podcasts on a CD. I transcoded all of the audio files into MP3 at either 56 Kbps or 64 Kbps mono and stereo. Some of them had to be transcoded since they were in .m4a format and the rest I did because of the playback problems with the USB keys.
We had no technical problems using the CD player with MP3s. We did have some problems, though. However, first on to the good stuff. With the CD player, MP3s can be fast forwarded and rewound. It only skips about 15 seconds at time, so it still takes a while to move forward a half an hour in a podcast, but it works. This moves into some of the bad stuff.
The lack of keeping its spot where it was playing is a problem for doing simple tasks like stopping the car to get fuel. If I switch to using MP3 CDs only I may still break up the podcasts into 10 segments or something (then the +10 track button will still move forward a whole file and be useful).
The sound on many podcasts is not very professional. Different people would be at drastically different levels. For a normal podcast, sending the audio through a sound compressor would probably work fine to limit the range, but that's yet another annoying step -- and it's not the problem of the player. Professional podcasts or broadcast recordings are usually fine.
Another annoying thing with the volume that we discovered also had nothing to do with the head unit but to do with the Jeep. We have the overhead sound bar. As it turns out, it pipes much more sound to the rear passengers than the front. Spoken word needs to be louder in many cases due to road noise than music does. When we couldn't hear the sound the rear passenger complained of it being painfully loud. Part of this was the constantly changing volume in some of the podcasts. However, part was just a lack of good front speakers in the Jeep. I could fade it forward some but it just caused a good loss of volume -- and turning it back up defeated the point.
In daily commuting, the CD has been working well. I wish the unit would tell me duration left of an MP3 file and I wish there was a way to manually cycle through the information displayed -- and I wish it wouldn't display information when all it's going to do is say "unknown."
In any case, I still haven't tried any non-USB 2.0 memory keys yet. Now that I know the MP3 playback does work fairly well I know that it has something to do with the USB connection or the memory keys themselves. More to come...
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: MegaSound VRCD300-USB Review
August 26, 2005
MegaSound VRCD300-USB Review
So, our Jeep, being the ancient 1997 model that it is, only had a tape player in it. This wasn't terrible as we had a tape adapter for using MP3 players or whatnot -- until that got stuck in the unit and wouldn't work or come out, even with force and wrenches.
Clearly that meant we had to get a new head unit. I really wanted one with front auxilary mini-jack input, just like the one in our Miata. Our Miata has a JVC 990 (something or another). The only one I could find this time around that hand the headphone style input that I wanted was the JVC G510. Well, it was basically the same as the one in the Miata, but newer.
Some problems with it: It does not display the time when off, although you can push a button to turn it on long enough to display the time -- but that causes the antenna to go up briefly. It has no pause button, for CD playing or otherwise. It only has auto scan for the radio, which is nice for strong signals but bad if you're trying to get a channel you know is about to come in -- or can come in good enough (a lot of public radio stations are like this). You have to flip it down to insert a CD, which disables all controls while doing this.
So, we weren't entirely too happy with it, but it has been working out just fine. However, all of the local places that sell the G510 have it for $180 with free installation (compare to cardomain). That's not too bad for the features we wanted. When shopping, I had seen a higher end unit with USB input (the Audiobahn A1200N). That intruiged me, but it had not front input and was more expensive.
Then along comes a Kragen ad with a no-name headunit with both front input and front USB input for a mere hundred bucks. So what's the catch? Well, it's a no name. That means Google searches return almost nothing about it. Although it did return a sparse manual from their website (VR3 -- Roadmaster -- their only CD player).
The only review I found was someone putting it on a bench and determining it didn't have that great of sound. Precisely what I would expect from a hundred buck no name unit.
So we bought it.
March 5, 2005
Murphy Did Ring Today
I've been picking up a coworker to take him to work while his car is being worked on. Just after I picked him up yesterday, a light went off (and the car beeped) on the Jeep console saying, "Check Guages." Well, from what I could tell, it was the only guage saying anything. But then it beeped again, so I checked closer.
Sure enough, the temperature was at about 250 degrees and the voltmeter wasn't reading anything. It was raining quite hard, so I thought maybe some water got into the sensors. I pulled over, let the car cool down (it was clearly over heating) and then went on. This time, the voltmeter was reading normal and the temperature was a little high.
But then the tempurature jumped again and the "Check Guages" light and bell went off. We pulled over at the next pull out. This time, it was really over heating. We opened up the hood again and heard it hissing out the bottom of the radiotor and losing a lot of coolant. *sigh*
I called AAA. Luckily, another coworker who has to go over the hill hadn't gone in yet and he was able to stop by and pick up my passenger. His new ride and the tow truck came at about the same time.
In to the shop the Jeep went. At this point, I had zero cars that ran.
In conclusion, the Jeep came back with a new water pump, hoses, radiator cap, and a new serpentine belt (not sure how this was related, actually). This was all done before the end of the day, but not before I got the Miata back!
December 13, 2004
December 7, 2004
Well, we did it.
We got a car. It's been about 9 months that we've been on one car.
The piece about only have one car hasn't been so bad. Laurie can do all of her work from home and we are walking distance from a number of grocery stores, the Capitola Mall, and OSH. We often walk to those places anyway because they are so close.
The piece about giving one car, a car that we like a lot, all of the miles is what hurts. We've put something like 40,000 miles on our Miata since last summer. Not an insignificant portion of those miles have been on very rough dirt roads with signs that say "high clearance vehicle recommended."
So we got a 1997 Jeep Wrangler Sport. It came with both a hard top and soft top. It also has the locking "trunk" area, side steps, AC, ABS, a bra (not on it yet -- but given to us), center console, tilt wheel, and cruise control. The front seats recline back far enough to sleep and the rear seat can be removed for more road trip room.
About the only problem with it is a rip in the drivers seat vinyl. Some tape and a couple of seat covers should solve that problem.
Oh... the other problem. Laurie won't let me drive it until tomorrow! Doh!
Pictures will come later. And I still need to get pictures of our holiday tree up, too.
