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[Denti]

So I'm getting a new car with USB input and don't know what to do with all my music. I have about 100,000 songs in FLAC which takes up about 2.8TB.

I don't necessarily need all, or even as much as 1/10 of my collection in the car with me. It would be fine to have a drive to which I could add things and remove things as needed. But I do not want to have to convert anything to mp3 in order to save space.

So what are my options? If I simply copy a bunch of album folders to a HD and plug it in it would get pretty unwieldy in terms of navigating, no? I don't have an LCD screen in the car. What options are available to me and might some configuration of MC be one of them?

[kensn]

Does the car audio system support playing Flac files? Do you know how the files will be displayed as far as tag reading, or by folder display? I have seen different scenerios when it comes to how the audio files are presented.

Ken

[glynor]

iOS device and JRemote or Android device and Gizmo.

Stream it.

This will, of course, require you to have a PC always-on at home, and decent outbound bandwidth.  But then you CAN bring your entire collection with you everywhere you go.

Aside from that, unless you found a fancy stereo that supports FLAC, you're probably looking at building a carputer.

[Denti]

Not sure if the car supports flac. I could of course use some device to output flac to the external in and bypass the USB.

Streaming sounds nice, but man, that's a lot of bandwidth. Too expensive.

[Denti]

Ok, if there were a relatively easy way to convert all my flac to mp3 (with one click, not manually loading each album folder), is there?, then I'd go for it.

Then I guess I could load everything onto an iPod or something. Still not ideal. I'd love to have JR interface.

[kensn]

You can set up MC to automaticaly convert your files when they are sent to your USB device.

[connersw]

Streaming sounds nice, but man, that's a lot of bandwidth. Too expensive.

It's actually not that much now that Matt fixed the cache issues.  I almost always stream Gizmo when driving.  I have conversion set at 320kbps, but could probably get away with 256kbps in the car.  Cache is set to one song.  Gizmo bandwidth usage is usually ~1GB/month.  Just keep an eye on your data usage; I learned the hard way.

Ok, if there were a relatively easy way to convert all my flac to mp3 (with one click, not manually loading each album folder), is there?, then I'd go for it.

Tools -> Options -> Handheld -> Add device.  You can set up a folder as a device and convert your whole library at once.  Then you can just pull what albums you want onto an iPod or USB stick.  You could go direct to a USB stick too, but I doubt you'd be able to fit that big of a library regardless. 

[pcstockton]

Not sure if the car supports flac. I could of course use some device to output flac to the external in and bypass the USB.

Streaming sounds nice, but man, that's a lot of bandwidth. Too expensive.

Note to anyone that still has an unlimited data plan, NEVER get rid of it.  I am taking mine to the grave.

-p

[marko]

If you're in the UK and a Virgin Media customer, you have to get on their sim-only £15/pm unlimited everything, 30 day rolling contract. This amount of bandwidth alone would have cost me £25 with Orange.

I've read many complaints about them, and yes, they do use, erm, off-shore call centres, but to be honest, I've never needed them in about a year or so since I switched, and the service is pretty good.

I have one of these clipped on the sun visor, battery lasts about 50 - 60 hours.
Phone mounted on the window, Gizmo loaded, music all the way with playstats and last.fm updated into the bargain.

The recent work on Gizmo has made this a much more solid experience too.

[nitephlight]

Note to anyone that still has an unlimited data plan, NEVER get rid of it.  I am taking mine to the grave.

-p

TO THE GRAVE. I stream 10gb a month easy. you *can* set up webgizmo to stream FLAC to a compatible music player, but as noted above its not practical for most and is much more inconvenient than just using gizmo itself.

[Micromecca]

If you're in the UK and a Virgin Media customer, you have to get on their sim-only £15/pm unlimited everything

Like most ISP Packages 'Unlimited' doesn't actually mean 'Unlimited' and in this case tucked away in their T&C's is a FUP which states that as soon as you go over 3.5GB (If memory serves me correctly) you will be limited to something like 350k downstream, still enough for Gizmo playing Audio, but not so much streaming a lot of Video via MC to a Laptop at a reasonable quality as a colleague recently discovered.
I would still recommend the tariff for the purpose of playing Music in the car just as Marco has  

[glynor]

Note to anyone that still has an unlimited data plan, NEVER get rid of it.  I am taking mine to the grave.

Like most ISP Packages 'Unlimited' doesn't actually mean 'Unlimited' and in this case tucked away in their T&C's is a FUP which states that as soon as you go over 3.5GB

Yeah, in the US, the grandfathered-in "unlimited" packages aren't really unlimited.  They limit your bandwidth after around 3.5-4.5GB per month (and, of course, you don't get tethering and other useful features).

[ivb]

What about also pointing (GooglePlay, Amazon Cloud Player, iTunes Match) at your music folder?  Yes it'll cost a small amount per year, but then you could just play what you want when you want.  Of course, with a collection that size I don't know how much it'll cost, I only have perhaps 10K songs. They won't send FLAC rather compressed so the data hit is a lot lower, but cars aren't typically critical listening locations.

[BryanC]

What about also pointing (GooglePlay, Amazon Cloud Player, iTunes Match) at your music folder?  Yes it'll cost a small amount per year, but then you could just play what you want when you want.  Of course, with a collection that size I don't know how much it'll cost, I only have perhaps 10K songs. They won't send FLAC rather compressed so the data hit is a lot lower, but cars aren't typically critical listening locations.

MC and Gizmo can already handle streaming without any of those limitations.

[pcstockton]

Yeah, in the US, the grandfathered-in "unlimited" packages aren't really unlimited.  They limit your bandwidth after around 3.5-4.5GB per month (and, of course, you don't get tethering and other useful features).

I have never run into any issues with AT&T throttling or limiting, fwiw.

I transcode to 320 with JRemote and use it for hours everyday.

-Patrick

[marko]

Like most ISP Packages 'Unlimited' doesn't actually mean 'Unlimited' and in this case tucked away in their T&C's is a FUP which states that as soon as you go over 3.5GB (If memory serves me correctly) you will be limited to something like 350k downstream, still enough for Gizmo playing Audio, but not so much streaming a lot of Video via MC to a Laptop at a reasonable quality as a colleague recently discovered.
I would still recommend the tariff for the purpose of playing Music in the car just as Marco has 

As far as I understand, the 'VIP' sim only for existing customers is truly unlimited, while newcomers do have fair use policies baked in. I certainly can't find any mention of it in the T&C's they sent me.

[Micromecca]

Hey Marco, my colleague is also an existing cutomer on the VIP package and still got hit with the throttling after 3.5GB data use, you are only limited to 350k (ish) though so it is still more than suitable for streaming using Gizmo  

[nitephlight]

I have never run into any issues with AT&T throttling or limiting, fwiw.

I transcode to 320 with JRemote and use it for hours everyday.

-Patrick

ditto on vzw lol

[glynor]

I have never run into any issues with AT&T throttling or limiting, fwiw.

I transcode to 320 with JRemote and use it for hours everyday.

Hey Marco, my colleague is also an existing cutomer on the VIP package and still got hit with the throttling after 3.5GB data use, you are only limited to 350k (ish) though so it is still more than suitable for streaming using Gizmo 

AT&T has officially announced their throttling limits:  3GB per month for HSPA+ (3G and 4G) phones, and 5GB per month for LTE phones (or, at least, the iPhone 5, but it almost certainly applies to other devices as well).  However, if you're just using it for JRemote, you probably wouldn't ever notice.  Reported throttled speeds vary, but it typically ranges from 500kbps - 1mbps on LTE, and a vaguely defined "2G speeds" for HSPA+ devices.

If you're on an iPhone 5, and you get throttled to ~700kbps, your music streaming would still work fine.  But if you tried to use it for other "heavy" tasks simultaneously, or things like video streaming, you could certainly see the difference.

Verizon is actually a bit worse in some ways and a bit better.  Their standards are a bit more vague, but reports are that it generally works out that users who consume more than 2GB in a month are subject to throttling, though Verizon supposedly uses an "intelligent system" to only throttle users when the local network is actually constrained.  So, your mileage may vary depending on your location.  Of course, recent reports are that many of Verizon's bigger markets are now suffering under the strain (as AT&T was widely criticized for in the past), so this may be much more common now than it was a few years ago when Verizon's LTE network was new and relatively unstrained.

I can't speak to plans across the pond.  If you're in Europe, you are almost certainly much better off with mobile data coverage, choice, and pricing than we are here, so I have limited sympathy.   

[Blaine78]

If your car doesn't support FLAC, I'd get a portable Digital Audio Player that supports FLAC. Plug the player into the car stereo's Line In, if your car has it.