In my last post, in which I removed a lot of the dash trim to "repair" the heater controls, I left the piece above off because I knew I wanted to replace the semi-broken stereo that was in there. I also noted that this is a great design for doing that, because you can do all the installation and wiring on the bench and then reinstall the center dash. I just needed to do some research on what to install.
My research actually started not with the stereo, but with a solution for bluetooth phone connectivity. Way back in May of 2013, I detailed a similar stereo project for my Z3 Coupe. That system has worked well, except for the bluetooth hands-free phone connection. Every time I called Mary Ellen from that car, she would complain that the sound had a bad echo. I tried various settings on the stereo to no avail, and decided to buy a stand-alone bluetooth device that I could switch from car to car. I simply "un-paired" my phone from the Z3 stereo so it wouldn't go through that connection anymore.
I decided on a Jabra Freeway bluetooth speakerphone, which attaches to the sun visor with a clip. It works great! Really great, with loud, clear sound on the receiving end, and perfectly fine audio on my end. It also has an easy way to use the voice dialing feature on my phone, so I can say, "Call Mary Ellen Cell" and it will do it. Here's a manufacturer's photo showing the device in place:
With that issue solved, I could research stereos, and I could stick with really cheap ones since I didn't need bluetooth in the stereo. I knew I wanted the ability to put a bunch of mp3 files on a thumb drive and play from that collection. I also knew, from reading Internet complaints, that there were a lot of stereos that did a really bad job of that!
I have a specific way I like to listen: I select "random mode" to play tracks at random on the device. If I happen to hear an album that I want to continue, I want to easily take the player out of random mode, and stay in the album that is currently playing. That's where a lot of players fall down - either it's hard to switch modes, or the player reverts to playing in some other order. On our older BMW's, it would play the tracks alphabetically, which is pretty much what you never want to happen, especially if you're a classical musician and have 50 tracks titled "Allegro" on the thumb drive.
So, I went to Best Buy to do research. I prepared a thumb drive (I'll tell you how in a minute) and took it along. They had a bunch of car stereos on a display, and nobody bugged me while I tried playing tracks from my thumb drive on various stereos. I had every intent of buying the stereo there, but the one I chose wasn't in stock, and the salesperson who was going to see if they could have one shipped never came back. Another salesperson was too busy to help me, so after waiting about 15 minutes I came home and bought it on Amazon: the JVC KDR660
Since Ringo already had an aftermarket stereo, and they all use a standard color scheme for the wires, I just had to use the existing plug adapter and wire it to the new stereo's harness. The old one was put together with crimp connectors, but I used the old school solder and shrink-wrap technique. Here's the work in progress - that clippy device holding the wires is called a "third hand":
Once done, I had a neat harness,ready to install. The silver tube was part of the old installation, and I was glad to reuse it - it's an inline adapter and amplifier for the radio antenna. It makes the radio really good at picking up far-away stations like WRTI, the classical station in Philly.
As I mentioned, there's a specific way to set up a music collection for the player to use it effectively. You want each album's tracks to be in a separate folder, and then you want an industry-standard playlist file (filename.m3u) in the root directory. I use iTunes to manage my mp3 collection, and its default is NOT to store tracks by album name, but by performer. That means that a single album can be in multiple folders.
You can force iTunes to store albums by folder by declaring that all your tracks are part of a "compilation." Unfortunately, I hadn't done that, but it turns out that iTunes will do the heavy lifting to change it. To do so, go to your music collection and click one track, and then press "CTRL-A". That is, hold down the CTRL key and press the A key. That will select all tracks.
Then, right click any track, and choose "Get Info." You'll see something like the following (it varies by iTunes version). Make sure the check box next to "Album is a compilation" is checked, and then click OK.
Depending on the size of your library, this will take a long time - in my case, 12 or 14 hours. I'm a professional musician, and have been buying CDs for 30+ years, and have the great majority of them ripped into iTunes now. I noticed this track count when I selected all tracks - I could listen 24 hours a day for 49+ days without repeats!
When it's done, you'll have each album in a separate folder named the same as the album, more or less. Then you can use the regular Windows drag-and-drop to copy them to your thumb drive. The bigger the better!
You need a program to create that playlist, and I recommend the aptly named Playlist Creator, which is free and easy to use. You can download it HERE. Select all the folders on your thumb drive (again using CTRL-A) and drag them into the Playlist Creator window. The tracks will appear as individual lines, not as folders, but that's OK - the playlist will keep track of it. Store the playlist in the root directory of the thumb drive, and give it any name you like. Here's a sample configuration:
Then you just plug the thumb drive into the slot on the front panel of the stereo, and voila! You have tunes!
I'll document one more thing here, the last step in making Ringo a solid winter driver. I've chosen the Nokian WR G3 XL as the tire to take me safely through the winter. Nokian is a Finnish company that actually invented the snow tire, and their Hakkapeliitta snow tires are still one of the top rated. The tire I chose is a winter tire, but it also is suitable for summer use. Call it an all-season tire that it biased toward winter. I'll have them installed this week or next. Here's a review I found compelling:
Living in New England, I see pretty drastic changes in weather throughout the year.(20+ Inch snowstorms, ice, torrential rain and flooding, and even some 90 plus sunny days) the WRG3s handle whatever Mother Nature throws at them with confidence and ease. I initially got these in the winter because my previous all-season mud and snow tires made my car feel like a death trap. Once I switched to the Nokians I felt extremely safe driving these tire even in the most icy and snowy conditions. I can also say that I have driven these on 80 plus degree days and while they are louder than a normal tire they don't excessively wear or feel obnoxiously spongy. With that said I'll trade turning up the radio a bit in the summer for feeling completely confident in the winter any day.
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