Another Car Stereo: Blaupunkt MP3000 MP3/WMA player, What'cha Think? (Linked)

[Thegonagle]

Link | Picture

This Blaupunkt has some serious features and specs, a good price, and a serious reputation behind the name (Right?).

I, for one, admire simplicity in design and operation. I think I've finally found an MP3 player that I can live with. I'd rather not have to pull over just to change the treble.

Does anyone have any experience with the MP3000?

Link | Picture

 

[Spoooon]

From a review at Sounddomain: Receiver works well, except glitches in MP3 and WMA playback are troublesome. MP3's have chirps and squeeks. WMAs have glitches at song start. Its too bad because the navigation is quite good and songs start up quickly, unlike some other MP3 players. All the songs(many different disks and albums) that have problems work fine on my Rio Volt player.

You should get this one: link

edit: BTW, Sounddomain has that Blau for about 40 dollars cheaper than Crutchfield.

 

[Phunktion]

I suggest you check out the JVC SX980

 

[LordJezo]

For any questions about car mp3 players go here:

http://pub56.ezboard.com/bhighwaymp3

Its where I did all my question asking last summer when I bought one and I came out very happy.

 

[OS]

I've owned two blaus and I was pretty happy with both. First one was rock solid and played everything I burned (minus cdrws) for 2 years flawlessly. No glitches, no problems. I could count on one hand how many times it skipped in it's entire life. Then I wrecked the car it was in. Ooops.

Second one I've had for a month or two. It's alot flashier than the old one, impresses most of my passengers. Works pretty good, but doesn't read CDRWs. It seems to skip more easily than the old one, but not to the point of it being problematic. I'd say it skips about once a week. I wish I had kept the old one, but the car was a death trap after the wreck. Considering the price I paid, I'm pretty happy.

As for Blau's rep, they used to be high end stuff, but like alot of audio manufacturers, they 'sold out' over the years and quality is about average these days. Even my beloved Onkyo has sold out and is putting out barely above mainstream stuff these days. I hear occasional complaints about blau hus, but no more than say pioneer and they make good stuff. Even alpine's lower end stuff I hear complaints about. Basically, you get what you pay for.

Being specific to your model, it has problems with making chirp sounds during playback. Blau hasn't fixed the issues yet. If you are dead set on getting an MP3 player now, I'd look at another brand, I think the problem affects all of the lower end blau mp3 decks. The JVCs are pretty highly regarded for MP3s. If you are getting just a CD player, blaus are great for the money.

check out this one

My friend has one of those and he's pretty happy with it. Yeah I know the buttons are tiny and stuff, but I don't think the perfect mp3 hu exists yet. The technology is new so no one has a perfect recipe and implementation yet. I had this problem a couple months ago and I figured that I'd just buy a cd player for now.

 

[Thegonagle]

Originally posted by: Spoooon
From a review at Sounddomain: Receiver works well, except glitches in MP3 and WMA playback are troublesome. MP3's have chirps and squeeks. WMAs have glitches at song start. Its too bad because the navigation is quite good and songs start up quickly, unlike some other MP3 players. All the songs(many different disks and albums) that have problems work fine on my Rio Volt player.

You should get this one: link

edit: BTW, Sounddomain has that Blau for about 40 dollars cheaper than Crutchfield.

Yeah, I read that single customer review at Sound Domain. I haven?t found any others yet, but I will try. I was hoping I wouldn't have that problem with the MP3 playback since I want to rip my own files. A lot of MP3s that I download (and then burn to CD) sound just horrendous over my speakers. I don?t even notice the low quality over my computer speakers, but my car speakers are great, just great at bringing the worst out of a crummy MP3.

That 10 gig Pioneer looks great, but it would be worth more than my next 4 cars put together! That's just against the rules, kind of like the 2 LCD screens I once saw in one of those old boxy Caprices.

Actually, Crutchfield is cheaper.

Crutchfield includes everything I will need for installation at no charge. Sound Domain doesn?t. The difference in price for the deck is actually only $20 as I type this. Add in the dashboard kit required for the car I will be installing this in for $7, and the wiring harness for $5. The difference shrinks to $8. Sound Domain charges $1 less for shipping, so it looks like I?d save $9 with Sound Domain. But, Crutchfield is including a $25 remote for free. Advantage: Crutchfield.

OuterSquare, Thanks for your post also. Your experience with car stereo equipment never fails to enlighten. Unfortunately, that JVC is roughly $100 more than I?m willing to spend. I might just have to fall back to the $200 Alpine CDM-7874 I had previously decided on if the Blaupunkt turns out to be a no-go.

Phunktion, in that description, they mention looks before function. I don?t care I value function over looks, oh say, by a factor of 10. The Blau has a more favorable RMS rating and 4 volt pre-outs (I?m gonna get an amp and a sub someday, though I?ve been saying that for years). The Blau also looks so well laid out that a child, or even my mother, could use it. Easy operation definitely matters to me.

LordJezo, thanks for that link, I will be checking them out.

 

[OS]

In regards to power rating on head units in general, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on it as long as all the units are in the same league. Supposedly almost all the manufacturers overrate the power output on their head units and they all put out roughly the same usable power. You can read a bit more below;

here
here

However, I've never independently verified that with test equipment.


But let's say even if the published specs were completely accurate, the differences are so small, that it wouldn't produce a significant difference in loudness. Take the 23W on the blau and the 19W on the JVC. If you grind the math, the difference between the two is only .8 dB, which is basically impercetible to human hearing.

All else constant, you need to deliver ten times the power to increase the loudness 10 dB. It's a very very steep uphill climb to make things alot louder.

If you are interested in grinding the math yourself, the equation is (# of dB) = 10 * log (Po/Pi), where Pi is the reference or input power and Po is the comparison or output power. It's an easy equation that you can pull out of any EE textbook.

Finally, I'm just a straight B EE student so take my advice for what it's worth. Plus it's really really late over here. But I figure writing all this out helps me learn the stuff. I too got caught up in the watts marketing game, I bought the 'highest' rated hu that I could find, 25W RMS. But then someone briefly mentioned this idea to me and the more I read around, the more I realized that I had been had.

Just focus on the other stuff you already have on your list like usability, functionality and quality.

 

[OS]

Also, I should make it clear that loudness is not necessarily synonymous with sound quality. Clubs often have super loud systems, but man they sound like ass.

 

[Nemesis77]

What I want is mp3-player that is equipped with a hard-disk! Something like Empeg. No more stupic CD-swapping. That Pioneer with HD looked promising, but I noticed that the HD uses ATRAC-compression. So I first turn my songs in to mp3, and then they get turned in to ATRAC. What does that do to sound-quality? It doesn't improve it, that much is certain...

and it costs about 2,000 dollars :Q!!

 

[Spoooon]

4 volt pre-outs

I don't think 4 volt pre-outs vs. a deck with smaller pre-outs should be a deal breaker. I bet you couldn't tell the difference either way. And remember, we're talking about a car, not your living room. How clean could the sound possibly be unless you're driving a Bentley or something? You'll have road noise and all sorts of other distractions to contend with. As you say, you don't want to spend thousands of dollars on your stereo, so why be finicky about something that you probably wouldn't notice unless you were willing to spend thousands?

 

[phatcow]

how much is it?