Monday, February 3, 2003

MP3 Mania -- 12:18 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been enjoying my birthday present which I got for myself last week, a Kenwood KDC-MPV619 CD/MP3 car stereo. I've been keeping my eye on this one for a while, but couldn't justify the $300 plus installation for it. Last week, Best Buy (no affiliation, yadda, yadda) had it on sale for $199 installed. Sold! They even offered a free Sirius radio receiver, but I passed on it. Unfortunately I have to go back in today because they didn't install it quite right. The dash wasn't put back properly and it doesn't dim itself when the lights go on.

Other than that problem, the deck itself is great. It reads and displays ID3 tags. It is very easy to navigate from directory to directory which you can do while an MP3 is playing. It starts playing tracks quickly when a disc is inserted and moves quickly between directories. For that "ooh, aah" factor, you can choose any of 67 colors on the display or have it cycle through them all. If you are looking to replace your car stereo, snag this one. I assume a newer model is coming out, so you should be able to get a screaming deal on these.

By the by, I've been using the very excellent Grip to rip my CDs which then calls Lame to compress the tracks into MP3s. That's the very best program that I've ever found for doing this. If you like MP3s and use Linux, you owe it to yourself to try Grip. One of these days, I'm going to review it for The Haus.

News for 02/03/2003

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