2012 Prius v - I miss the CD changer

time to go itunes.

 

Yep, time to go iTunes and iPod. I almost never use the CD changer in my Prius anymore.

For me, it's listening to music and podcasts using my 6th gen iPod Classic or podcasts and streaming music and news via my iPhone 4.

 

I keep eyeing that usb port..and am wondering if a memory stick filled with my music library would work instead of mp3 cd's. Anyone know?

 

My ancient Ipod Shuffle (from 2006) won't work in the Prius and I don't like buying new Apple products.

This must be what it felt like when manufacturers stopped equipping vehicles with 8-tracks. lol

 

Why not? What's wrong w/running something from the headphone jack to the aux in?

I used to use a much older 4th gen (black and white) iPod click wheel w/my Prius. I have a 2nd gen so it has no USB port (didn't exist until the 3rd gen).

 

Because I truly have no idea what that means but
Sorry OP to thread jack...

After some research I find my Shuffle is a Gen 1. The tall white stick I purchased in '06.
What is this thing I can run from my headphone jack?
I read in the manual, or online, the old shuffle is not compatable with the Gen III interface.
I'm not very tekkie; I just upgraded my TRACFONE to another one this weekend and had no idea what the blue squiggly symbol was on my phone...only to figure it's bluetooth. I *think* I linked it correctly..we'll see.

 

What I'm saying is that you can run a 3.5 mm male to male cable (like For only $0.55 each when QTY 50+ purchased - 6ft 3.5mm Stereo Plug/Plug M/M Cable - Black | 3.5mm Audio M/M Cables) from the headphone out of your iPod Shuffle into the aux input jack on your Prius. I'd imagine they made it green on yours.

The iPod click wheel I had shows up as iPod (Click Wheel) on Identifying iPod models and came out in 2004.

Yes, you can see the Bluetooth logo at The Official Bluetooth® Technology Web Site.

 

An MP3* player reduces power consumption by avoiding spinning CDs to play them. Of course, if it's a one-shot deal, ripping them would consume more.

* Or your favorite compressed audio format.

 

That's so minimal compared to the rest of the car that it won't show up as making any difference. Just turning up the HVAC fan or using your headlights will consume more power than spinning a CD player.

 

Yes it will, but there's a big caveat: The car has to re-index your music every time it starts, which takes time. I bought a gigantic thumb drive, and can now carry my 70+ GB collection with me... but it takes 5 minutes to index. Before the thumb drive is indexed, you just get the first song in the first folder (alphabetically, I think). Next time you start the car (same thumb drive), it will restart in the last folder you were in, but you still have to index.

I also have a 2GB drive that I load podcasts on, the radio indexes it in maybe 10 seconds. I'd suggest you stick to small drives.

Alternately (and what I do), listen to a track or two off the CD while your huge drive indexes.

 

^^^
Yet another reason not to use USB flash drives and to carry an iPod or iPhone. If you use the aux jack, there's no indexing.

If you use an iDevice, iTunes can automatically retrieve new podcast eps, purge old ones (if you wish), keep track of last listened to position within the podcast will sync them when you connect w/your PC/Mac.

For music, I also depend on smart playlists, star ratings (that I've applied to songs), last played date and to a lesser extend, playlists. Again, all of these are synced between the iDevices and iTunes.

 

No argument here, although there is some challenge in controlling the device. I don't know where you'd mount the phone/player such that you could easily control it.

As a side note (I'm just a customer, not an employee), there's a company called RAM Mount that sells a ton of different components for mounting devices. I used some of their stuff to mount my phone in my old truck. They're worth a look.

 

Ugh, mp3s suck when it comes to sound quality.

 

It all depends on the listening environment, and quality. Personally, I can hear compression noise below 320kbps encoding in headphones, so I rip my stuff high quality. However, in a noisy environment, even the comparatively quiet Prius, the compression sounds are masked by road noise, wind, etc. I find that I can't hear any quality issues down at 192kbps, which would drive me bonkers in headphones.

It's an old argument, I know, but it's too complex to simply say "format X is bad".

 

Never have mounted mine in any car, even though I started w/a 4th gen black and white click wheel iPod. Mine just in one of these places: passenger seat (usually), one of the cupholders or the pocket on my 2nd gen.

I use a 6th gen iPod Classic primarily for music listening and almost never control it much while driving. If I'm moving, it'll just be either a push of FF or REW (left side or right side of click wheel). I have a whole bunch of smart playlists that I use.

The click wheel UI IMHO is a lot better than having to muck w/a touchscreen.

 

Wow, surely it would have been trivial to add a place in memory for storing the index information of at least the most recent flash drive. Since you can dump your phone book via Bluetooth to the car, there must be memory available. Disappointing to hear that wasn't considered in design, a firmware update would be nice.

 

I had the same thought, and did some math. Even my monster 128GB drive would only consume a few tens of megabytes, so that memory is cheap.

But, and this is a big one, it's removable media, which means it has to get re-indexed whenever it is re-inserted. And the car can't tell whether the drive has been removed while it is shut down, or if a single song, out of thousands, has been changed/deleted. Re-indexing is the only real way to go.

 

Are you talking about controlling an i-device or some other kind of music player, like a portable CD player?

I keep my iPod Touch in the little well just below the USB port and control it through the Audio screen in the Prius vee. The audio screen controls also worked with my friend's iPod classic and his iPhone. I haven't had to control the Touch from its own screen since I got the vee.