Probably a stupid question; however if you have the music box settings on "auto record" or whatever it is, will a CD that you have already loaded be reloaded if you insert it again. Or will you get a message stating the CD is already "loaded"?

Forgive my ignorance, but I lost track with technology back when turntables were becoming obsolete! By the way; I still use my turntable.

 

Hi there,

It's actually a good question, one I hadn't thought of. My suggestion is to simply test this out and see what it does after inserting the same CD twice. My guess is that it won't re-record as the CD should have some identifying information, but if it does, you can simply erase the duplicate album.

Good luck.

 

It won't record a second time! It will just play the cd.

 

thanks

 

yeah you wouldnt be able to press the record button again. I didnt know we had an auto record on there

 

I think the 10gb hard drive a bit too small to justify its use as a music box. You can easily burn a DVD with 8gb of MP3s which will play nicely in the dash. This nearly equals the hard drive capacity.

Has anyone replaced their hard drive with a larger one? I've also used large capacity thumb drives loaded with MP3s in the console USB port, but shutting off the engine makes it lose its place. I haven't used this means very much, but the radio could not locate the thumb drive the next day until I unplugged it and reinserted the drive.

 

That's strange because I don't have that problem. I almost exclusively use a thumb drive in the console and I never have to unplug and replug the drive and it always resumes where it left off. I don't have the tech package; I don't if that makes a difference but I would think not.

 

here's another question. If I plug in my external HD or even a memory USB stick with all my downloaded music into the USB, is there anyway to save it to the music box memory? I have about 3GB worth of music on my laptop.

 

No, it says that somewhere in the manual about this.

 

Low budget/quality thumb drive maybe? I had a few cheapo's that behaved exactly the same way on my computer.

 

Thanks for the insight - That could be the problem.
I'll check with a better drive some time.

 

I have an issue with using a usb drive for music in our Maximas...when listening to music and a call comes in over bluetooth, the music is not paused or stopped but rather muted. So by the time I am done talking on the phone and the music comes back on, it is on to a different song. Is there any setting I can adjust so that it pauses whenever I get an incoming call?

 

This also happens when listening to MP3s playing in the dashboard DVD player. So far I haven't found any setting to make it pause instead of mute. If it could pause it would be logical to assume that should be the default setting since I can't imagine anyone preferring the mute and miss method. I too hope someone has a fix for this...

 

i get this too and find it annoying. Hope a fix in the future will help.

 

Thanks for mentioning the DVD option, EmeryH-- I love many things about my (new this week!) 2010 Maxima, but I am about ready to drive it off a cliff over its lame Music Box! I "only" paid $700 for the 2GB Music Box, but even the manual admits it only holds 800MB--barely more than a data CD. I guess the rest of the space is filled with the GraceNote database(?)

My '08 Max had the 6-CD changer, so I had access to 4.2GB all the time (6 discs x 700MB each). This DVD solution sounds better than the issues surrounding leaving a USB plugged in all the time & playing off of that. Still, I'd like to use the Artist and Genre search that apparently is only available for "recorded" Music Box songs.

 

Let me correct my previous post: since my Max doesn't have Nav, then it won't read DVD's. So it looks like I am screwed with a capital 'S'.

I was interested by your "replacement hard drive" suggestion, too. But am I right in thinking that all of my iTunes music will have to be burned onto Audio CD's then recorded slowly onto the car's drive? But then GraceNote won't recognize the homemade CD's, so the songs will never have titles or other info??

Even my '08 Max showed the song title, artist, etc from the internal file data off the data CD, but the Music Box system playing from the USB seems to show only the mp3 filename. Am I missing something? Anyone's input is appreciated.

 

If you rip MP3s off a commercial CD your software generally will check online and automatically download title, artist, genre, etc. and include that info in each MP3 file. This allows sorting like you mention and will display cover art (which is usually available as a separate JPG file in the same directory as the music) when playing from CD, DVD, or thumb drive/MP3 player.

 

Seriously?! I have read the manual 3 times, and I cannot figure out how to sort songs from my thumb drive -- or even how to view the "internal" title, artist, genre that they all have. Please tell me!

I agree with the situation you describe of ripping from a commercial CD-- I was talking about having single songs purchased via iTunes and not being able to get GraceNote to ever recognize them; but one could get the song into Music Box by first burning it onto an audio CD (it would just wind up as "Title 01" and stay thay way, the best I can tell).

 

OOps - you're right. I've been using a Cowon MP3 player plugged into the AUX port and selecting artist or genre that way. With DVD or thumb drive the car only allows you to select folder or song title.

I've never used iTunes but someone else may be able to confirm its lack of MP3 info.

I'm still learning about this ride - the odometer just hit 1,000 miles this week

 

yeah, me too. still around 300 miles myself.

thanks.

 

two questions..

1. is there a way to raise the very low default bit rate when ripping CDs to the music box hard drive?

2. will the in dash DVD player read dual layer DVDs for MP3 playback?

 

Not sure about #1, but for #2: You can burn a dual layer DVD with 8 GBs of high bit rate MP3s and it will play just fine. If you also copy the JPGs from your CD-ripped directories the cover art will also be displayed along with the song titles.

The 8GB per DVD nearly equals available Music Box storage capacity rendering the Music Box unnecessary.

 

Yes, there is an option in Settings that lets you choose low, normal, and high quality - though as I recall the "High" isn't so very high..

 

I tried the Music box thing and I'm not interested. I do not want to listen to all my CDs just to add them to my Music box. I tried the thumb drive and it was a little better, but I prefer to just hook up an iPod and go from there. I have 3 of my kids older iPod so I have a spare to leave in the car all the time. Most of my music is electronic now anyway. If I get around to it I may just place a couple of my favorite tunes in the music box, just to have quick access. (If I can even find the CDs)

 

haha - true!

 

How do you delete the album?

 

Is there any other way to get music into the music box besides just sitting in your car listening to the disc play each song to have it record it to the HD?There must be another way? I have read the books in hopes to find another way but no dice.

 

I don't believe so.

 

I've been doing it when I go somewhere. Not worth sitting in the car doing it.

 

Same here. Just pop the CD in, hit 'REC', and have the volume totally off unless you are interested in hearing the music. The whole CD will have been moved to the Music Box by the time the first song or two has played.

The little numbers near the 'REC' button let you know how the recording is doing. If there are twelve tracks on the CD, it will cycle '1 of 12' thru '12 of 12' in fairly short order.

This system takes LESS THAN TEN MINUTES TO MOVE AN HOUR OF MUSIC FROM A CD TO THE MUSIC BOX. I loaded around 44 CDs on one round trip from Atlanta to Mobile and back. I could have loaded many more than that, but only had that many CDs I wanted to load.

Anyone who finds that to be an onerous burden has lived far too easy a life.

 

but will this raise the time it takes to copy to the music box?

 

Does anyone know how many songs the 2 GB Music Box® will hold?

 

According to Nissan's website, the 2GB Music Box has about 800Mb of true music storage. I believe at about 128kbps bitrate you can fit about 200 songs on 800Mb of storage.

 

Thanks Ricko!

 

THe following info is from the owners manual:

MUSIC BOX™ HARD DRIVE AUDIO
SYSTEM WITHOUT NAVIGATION
SYSTEM (if so equipped)
The Music Box Hard Drive audio system can
store songs from CDs being played. The system
has an 800 megabyte (MB) storage capacity and
can record up to 24 hours (approximately 360
songs).

MUSIC BOX™ HARD DRIVE AUDIO
SYSTEM WITH NAVIGATION
SYSTEM (if so equipped)
The Music Box Hard Drive audio system can
store songs from CDs being played. The system
has a 9.3 gigabyte (GB) storage capacity and
can recordup to 200 hours (approximately 2,900
songs).

 

Nice first post, Tech400.

So Music Box WITHOUT NAVI holds around 360 songs

Music Box WITH NAVI hold around 2,900 songs

That is a huge difference, and something folks looking to buy a Maxima need to be very aware of.

 

Originally Posted by Rixtur
Seriously?! I have read the manual 3 times, and I cannot figure out how to sort songs from my thumb drive -- or even how to view the "internal" title, artist, genre that they all have. Please tell me!

I agree with the situation you describe of ripping from a commercial CD-- I was talking about having single songs purchased via iTunes and not being able to get GraceNote to ever recognize them; but one could get the song into Music Box by first burning it onto an audio CD (it would just wind up as "Title 01" and stay thay way, the best I can tell

There is a way to find titles on Gracenote that aren't in the original software. You can download a program from Nissan USA, i believe, that lets you update the software program via flash drive. You simply put the flash in the usb port, follow the directions then it will find the titles for you. I stumbled on this after searching gracenote in the help section of Nissan USA.

 

At least on my 2010 it records the CD independent of what listen to or display on the screen. I listened to XM and in the lower left it indicated it was recording. Sort of easier than doing the same thing on a PC!

 

Well Im glad Im got the tech package, I was gonna just settle for the monitor package.

 

Cool - I was about to ask about this and luckily found this. I was afraid I have to listen to the CD while it records and cannot listen to anything else!