Bragging about my new stereo: 95,000 miles of music

[Grolar]

I had been thinking about updating my already aftermarket but not really top notch car stereo. I finally did it last summer. Here's my setup: Blaupunkt Kingston HU, radio, CD, iPod and USB input. I plugged my Nano and a Western Digital 120 GB Hard Drive (the box with a blue led underneath the HU) as a music bank, which according to my calculations amounts to 95,000+ miles of music @ 70 mph. I managed to keep the wires inside the dashboard and it looks quite good IMHO. Sorry for the crappy pic, the sun sets earlier and earlier those days and the light wasn't great.

 

[Montana Cruiser]

I had been thinking about updating my already aftermarket but not really top notch car stereo. I finally did it last summer. Here's my setup: Blaupunkt Kingston HU, radio, CD, iPod and USB input. I plugged my Nano and a Western Digital 120 GB Hard Drive (the box with a blue led underneath the HU) as a music bank, which according to my calculations amounts to 95,000+ miles of music @ 70 mph. I managed to keep the wires inside the dashboard and it looks quite good IMHO. Sorry for the crappy pic, the sun sets earlier and earlier those days and the light wasn't great.

The HU is able to control the Hard Drive?

 

[Grolar]

The HU is able to control the Hard Drive?

Yes indeed as it's an USB socket, good for 100 directories of 1,000 files. It can also read USB flash drives.

 

[Montana Cruiser]

Yes indeed as it's an USB socket, good for 100 directories of 1,000 files. It can also read USB flash drives.

Thats a sweet set up. Is this a common thing for newer HU's to be able to do? How much for the HD? How did you power the HD? If I could find a HU that had built in Sirius AND could run a HD like yours, that would make me consider ditching my OEM unit.

 

[Grolar]

Thats a sweet set up. Is this a common thing for newer HU's to be able to do? How much for the HD? How did you power the HD? If I could find a HU that had built in Sirius AND could run a HD like yours, that would make me consider ditching my OEM unit.

Yes, it's quite common now to have HUs with an USB socket. The HD I have is currently $85 @amazion. You can go to Crutchfield (no affiliation) and filter out the results with Sirius and USB features in the car stereo section.

Edit: the HD is powered through the USB wire. No add'l power source.

 

[PKP80]

I once calculated how long I could listen to my music without hearing a song twice.....and it came out to just over 1 years time.

 

[BOUNDER]

Hmmmmm

Nice to look at, cool to play with but once some 'tard tries to steal it, you'll be singing a new tune. And remember, the tards travel to good neighborhoods to get the good stuff.

 

[Grolar]

Thanks for being so supportive ;p
Don't worry for me, all of that can be removed fast and I never leave them in sight.
EDIT: and whad makes ya think I live in a good hood, homie?

 

[Marc311]

Just a note on satellite-ready radios . . .
When we bought the wife's car, we got Sirius as an option (through the factory stereo). We have since bought sirius receivers for our other cars. If I was to do it over again, I would not have gotten the factory set up as it misses a lot of the advantages of the add-on units. On the wife's car, it only has ten presets and you have to scroll to see the title/artist. My Sportster has 30 presets and the artist and title are right there to see. Plus, it is a 1000x easier to navigate/search through the 200 or so channels. And I can move it from car to car.

Granted, it's not as clean of a set up but the pluses outweigh the minuses in my book. My $.02

 

[concretejungle]

my first aftermarket stereo in my first car was a blaupunkt unit. I really liked it. IT was plain looking but had a ton of features.

What's the general consensus for blaupunkt?

 

[JB740i]

I once calculated how long I could listen to my music without hearing a song twice.....and it came out to just over 1 years time.

So the question in my mind would be how many of those songs have you never heard once?

 

[PKP80]

So the question in my mind would be how many of those songs have you never heard once?

Good question, but I'm guessing that since they have been collected over the past 8 years that I have heard most of them at one time or another. I'm sure there are a handful that have not been played.

 

[Grolar]

my first aftermarket stereo in my first car was a blaupunkt unit. I really liked it. IT was plain looking but had a ton of features.

What's the general consensus for blaupunkt?

I have owned 5 or 6 of them over the years (the first one a tape and needle HU) and they've been insanely reliable. I had a Pioneer in my 80 when I bought it from the PO and hated the ergonomy. Maybe it's the German thing, but everything seems to be at the right place on my Blaupunkts. Plus they're quite cheap for the quality.

 

[uHu]

my first aftermarket stereo in my first car was a blaupunkt unit. I really liked it. IT was plain looking but had a ton of features.

What's the general consensus for blaupunkt?

They're generally stable, durable, value for money, userfriendly, technically advanced, but not with the most fancy bells & whistles.
I've had them in cars, boats and buses. They're just good.

 

[woytovich]

How is the music selection interface? I have been thinking about a new unit for my 60. I have a Kenwood with an iPod connector and the on screen controls suck. I have heard good things about the Alpine's iPod-like controls. I'd like to be able to access tracks, playlists, artists etc as easily as on the iPod. I had the ipod connected via an aux input and that left me controlling the ipod with the ipod... not bad but I'd prefer the ipod was out of site and out of harms way (in the Tuffy console for example.) I like the idea of the hard drive IF the HU's controlls are really good (they MUST be easy to see while driving as I'm old)

Mark

 

[sandcruiser]

I'm in the same boat as Mark... got the Kenwood adapter and was really excited about it until I realized that I can't actually control the darn iPod more than to scroll up/down from playlist to playlist.

In a word, it bites a little.

A buddy has an Alpine HU in two vehicles, and it works better.... but still takes a long time to scroll vs. using the iPod interface directly.

So.... How do you like the Blaupunkt interface? Does it control the iPod, or just run an Aux jack? And how do you select tunes from the HDD?

 

[Grolar]

What you have to do is create folders in the HD root, and then you can navigate either from file to file, or from folder to folder, just as if you had a CD changer. The difference is, I have 100 CDs with 1000 songs on each. I acknowledge it's less handy than an iPod, but I can live with that, especially as I also have an iPod input.
The USB is controlled from the HU, not the iPod although it can be done with more pricey cords. I went for low price bling

 

[Volcano cruiser]

Great ideas

I'm not to this stage of the rebuild yet but man you guys have some great ideas.