Playing music off of SD card (Mixing)

[DocLee]

Quick question.

 

I'm coming from a carPC (running Streetdeck...I develop for it so hopefully I can develop for the Avic as well) and just ordered an F90BT today. I don't have an ipod and I don't really have a need for one so I plan to play music off of a USB drive or an SD card. I read the owner's manual on Pioneer's site and noticed that it said that volume for navigation and the SD card are mixed. Does that mean that the music won't be muted when a navigation direction is given? If so, is it the same when playing music off of a USB device? Does playing music through an ipod mute the music when a direction is given?

 

Thanks,

Doc

[DocLee]

Anybody know the answer to this? I've got a couple of days before I receive the unit and I need to know whether to get an ipod or just go with a larger SD card or USB thumbdrive.

 

Doc

[timothyr1014]

it will still mute, but if you have your music cranked you will also get your directions cranked. also directions will come through all 4 speakers when listening to usb or sd, any other source it only comes through the front left. also, the navigation through songs sucks...it will only play in the order you copy them to the stick; id3 tags are not utilized for anything

[etnpnys]

Tim's right... mostly. He's right in that the music will still mute (unless you have the nav set to "ATT" - then the music will just get quieter). Here's how it works: you can specify how loud you want the nav voice to be in Settings. So when you are listening to AM, FM, iPod, disc, or sat radio, the nav voice will operate at the volume that you told it to be. ...but when you are listening to USB or SD, the volume of the nav voice is tied directly to the volume of the music you are listening to from the USB or SD. I have heard this best explained because the AVIC is running WinCE, these two 'devices' are essentially being played from the native Windows functionality instead of a standalone application - and so is the nav voice.

 

Where I disagree with him is where he says that the nav through USB/SD sucks. Sure, it could definitely be better, but somebody on this board said it best when they said that "there's no VR control over SD or USB or CDRW because the AVIC has no idea how you sort your music" - so when you want Linkin Park, the AVIC has no idea how deep in YOUR CUSTOM folder structure the artist's name is. Personally, I do everything through Windows Media Player and Vista's Media Center, and my music is all sorted in nested folders much like they exist on an iPod anyway: Artist, then Album, then song title. I took the 'data' that is in the "My Music" folder in Vista and just burned it to a CDRW, retaining the entire folder structure. So when I want to hear Blink 182, I go to the 'B's. When I want to hear Linkin Park, I go to the 'L's. Once I'm in the artist's folder, I just select the album and then play the entire folder. (Or you have the option to play random throughout the entire disc).

 

Things that I wish the AVIC did for USB/SD:

1. Ability to play from a parent folder. If I have 3 Weezer albums and I want to shuffle all of them together, I can't do this with my current folder structure. I would have to eliminate the album branch altogether to get all of my Weezer songs in the same folder.

2. Easily get to the next SHUFFLED song. If you've enabled shuffle and it takes you to a song you really wish you had forgotten about, you can only hit "Next" or manually specify a new song altogether. But when you press "Next", it just goes to song right after the one that was already being played - it DOES NOT pick the next random song.

 

I hope this helps you out. Personally, I'm not a developer (I actually work in QA) but if I know developers at all, you'll like this unit. Being from a QA background, I *do* find that they perhaps let this thing out of the box a little early. If you need any further information, just lemme know.

[timothyr1014]

that was more or less my reason for saying it sucks...also coming from a carpc background, i really miss being able to either selsct a specific artist, or specific playlist, or even genre. As it stands right now I am running a 250gb usb disk so that I can have my music sorted they way I may want to play it back...every song ends up on there at least once, but some of my tunes are in 6 different locations (as in 6 copies of the same file so I can pull it by artist, playlist, etc), and that seems totally insane.

 

I am thinking about doing the ipod hard disk mod as I have an old 4gb mini sitting around, if I swap the 250 into it i can free up about half the space and have the better song navigation.

 

While we are on the subject, is there a fast way to get to a specific letter when going by artist...I seriously have about 120 artists, and pounding the down (or up) arrow 10 times to get to M is really annoying.

[DocLee]

Thanks for the in-depth explanation. I mainly listen to the radio (luckily, I have a short commute in the morning...quite long in the evening with traffic though). I just have no real reason to get an ipod just so it can sit in the car though. I'm on Sprint so an iPhone is out of the question and I have my eye on the Palm Pre coming out (hopefully) in May. I've got a couple of unused USB flash drives just sitting here and a couple of 16 GB SD cards on order.

 

I'm looking forward to doing some development for the unit. As I said, I've been quite active in developing for the StreetDeck community and although I'll still mainly be developing for them due to commitments to several new digimods and native radio drivers, I'm going to try to bring some of that over to the Avic. Priority #1 is getting a bluetooth dialup connection established. From there, the options are virtually limitless.

 

Oh, and for those of you interested in carPCs, I'm also working with Hiinfo (Wuhan Bluestar) in developing a new double din VGA touch screen monitor and a double din monitor/carPC combination.

 

Thanks again.

 

Doc

[pedro77]

...also directions will come through all 4 speakers when listening to usb or sd, any other source it only comes through the front left.

 

Is it possible to set it up to comes out throught the right speaker ?

 

or both side ...because Im living in canada (US unit) but ... I dont see the point of having the sound on my passenger side ...

[etnpnys]

I have to question this... I listen A LOT to just regular old FM, and I swear that the nav voice is coming out of all of my speakers... Can somebody confirm or deny that the nav is supposed to only come out of the driver's speaker?

 

And I agree with the above poster - what if you live in an area that is right-wheel-drive? A LOT of these units were sold in Europe... I can't imagine they would hardwire this thing to come of of the US location.

[DocLee]

On radio, it comes out of all speakers as well.

[etnpnys]

On radio, it comes out of all speakers as well.

So which input does it come out of only one? iPod? AV? The front AUX jack?

[timothyr1014]

I stand corrected....from playing with mine tonight I get nav instructions from both front speakers unless I am listening to sd or usb, then I get it from the rears as well...sorry for the confusion

[beans]

...also coming from a carpc background, i really miss being able to either selsct a specific artist, or specific playlist, or even genre.

 

One of the main advantages to having an ipod (for me) is that you to select an artist or album via voice commands. Not sure about the genre - I'll have to try that out.