G37sPhoton

I have snow '11 sport sedan with the music drive and until a few days ago pretty much played music bus xm, radio or just off my phone. Music sounds ok etc, but while messing around with playlists set up, I found some songs that the previous owner left on the music box. Well decided to fire them up and wow, what a difference between the sound of those songs and anything else I've played. Btw whomever it was, they were a Katy perry fan...in spite of it all, the music just sounded crisp subs clear and when crancked up(daughter likes kp) it was actually quite the enjoyable spin we both had. Im starting to move music over at the highest setting, but in no way is it close to this 7 songs on there...so does anyone have any advice on how to get other songs on there and have them sound excellent at any sound range? Is it the cd they used possibly or something else? Any ideas are appreciated.

qmantran

Sorry I don't have a answer to your question, but I have a question that's related.

I also have a 2011 with 10gb music box. How do you transfer songs to the music box? I couldn't figure out how to save the songs from my USB to the music box.

blazeplacid

iTrader: (1)

pop music has a ton of loudness turn way up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

XM sounds terrible. I don't know what bitrate they stream but im sure its terrible.

USB/ipod/CD will sound the best

flyng_fool

iTrader: (1)

It could be the format it was recorded in. FLAC files are a lossless codec and sound way better than mp3's.

Rochester

iTrader: (9)

It doesn't load off the USB connection. It only rips songs off of audio CD's.

So if you have compressed digital music that you want on the car's Music Box, you're going to have to burn it to decompressed Audio CD, then let the car rip it into the hard drive off the CD player. As for song ID properties... it uses GraceNote to identify the album, so yes, that means whole albums at a time, if you want to benefit from auto-recognition for your music. If you're going to try and import one-off songs that aren't in an established album, then you will have to manually enter in the song title & artist info.

If this seems clunky and lame, that's because it is. Welcome to 2011, when these decisions were made at the dying end of the Audio CD market.

In hindsight, it kind of makes the old CF slot seem pretty cool.

qmantran

Thanks for the info. Would you suggest for me to purchase a ipod instead and plug it into the USB port? Will it display album art on the display and other info?

It's a lot easier navigating music through a device.

Rochester

iTrader: (9)

On my 2011, I have about 120 albums (CD's) ripped into the Music Box. But I also have an old 8 gig iPod Nano connected to the USB port. The iPod interface looks virtually identical to the Music Box, but it also displays album art, which is kind of nice. And when you scroll through things at a sustained rate, it flips into Alphabet mode, so you can quickly get where you want to go.

Yes, absolutely plug an iPod into the car. You're going to be pleasantly surprised. It won't mirror your iPod display, but it will give you full access to the music on that device, and do so in a way that's as organized as your music is.

You know, it also reads music off USB thumb drives.

And if you stick a DVD into the CD slot, you can watch movies (but only while in Park, or when the p-Brake is engaged, as in the case of the 6MT.)

G37sPhoton

I agree with the xm sound, sounds like they are in a metal bean can with the lid still on, but I will check on the FLAC option for future tunes and see if I can get my songs with that level of loud/clarity combo. I would understand sound degradation if I had ripped these off from a torrent type site or something similar, but I went legit and bought from iTunes/prime etc presumably expecting some high level type of digital sound clarity.

hopefully buying a cd is not the only option, as that would defeat this whole going "digital" era...buy the cd, copy the files to PC at some ubber high level bit rate, then burn said files to another digital medium/ thumb drive or ironically to ....voila! Another freaking CD!...then maneuver that bad boy to my car and get them ripped by my car...and then store my now new CD's ...this is my definition of ambling technology at its lowest /loosest state....
Or upgrade my speakers....he heheheh

FlyIce

I discovered this too. The FM radio sounds pretty boring in my 2010 G37x, but when I tested music files left by the previous owner in music box the sound quality is way way better.

Yeah you can watch DVDs, but car must be parked with parking brake engaged.

socketz67

CDs sound much better than anything else. The fidelity is unmatched. Add a moderately powered 10 inch sub in the trunk and you will be more impressed.

XM and iPOD sound pretty bad when compared to CDs, but they are the future, so you need to tweak and find something reasonable. For some reason, I think youtube sounds better than XM.

Victory

The music in the music box is ripped from the CD in a non-compressed, lossless format. That's why it sounds better.

If you copy poor quality music to a cd then rip it to the music box, it's not going to sound any better.

An ipod will sound great if you are using a lossless format like flac or alac