I decided a while ago that I was tired of having no :CD: player in my truck, so I began doing research into stereo receivers: brands, prices, features, etc. Man, there’s a lot to go through. Luckily, I could narrow it down fairly quickly. I’m no audiophile, so as long as it sounds “good enough”, that’s fine by me. My factory-stock speakers sound good enough, so I had no need for new speakers, amp, etc. All I needed was the new receiver.
I decided pretty quickly that I wanted not only a CD player, but also one that would play :MP3:s so that I could more easily make mixed discs. I started my research at Active Buyer’s Guide for general comparisons, Crutchfield for more model specifics, and eOpinions and CarReview.com for customer opinions, along with various other places. I also visted my local Fry’s Electronics, Best Buy, and Circuit City to look at specific models and selection.
Eventually, I decided to go with a Blaupunkt San Jose at the Fry’s. They were out of stock, of course. The salesman offered me a rain check saying more should be in later in the week, but I decided to wait and look at other places in the meantime. Not finding anything, I went back to Fry’s last Friday to pick up the San Jose. Guess what… the price had been raised $50. Shoulda taken the rain check, I suppose.
I then settled on the San Jose’s “little brother”, the Blaupunkt MP3000. The main differences from what I’ve been able to find out are slightly less power, fewer preamp outputs, and no wireless remote included. None of those things really matter to me. So, now I was purchasing the receiver and necessary mounting unit and wire harness. Fry’s offers “free installation” with a purchase ("free", yet it costs $3 somehow), so I figured I’d go for that and just make things easy. Nope. They were all full that day and would be over the weekend, too. So the salesman gave me the number to set up an appointment with the installation folks.
Fast-forward to Sunday when I find some free time. I coerce my roommate into helping me install it. I have an engineering degree and he’s installed a stereo before, so how tough could it be? We have all the parts and all the tools except some specialized “keys” that you use to pull the factory stereo out and you’re supposed to just be able to use a coat-hanger for that, right? Right?
An hour and a half or so later after much cursing, grunting, wedging, head-scratching, and brute force, we finally have the factory stereo out and we’re starting to attach the wiring harness to the factory plugs. Uh-oh. It appears that I was sold the wrong harness since only one of the two parts fits. No big deal, right? Just take it back. Except that it’s already half-installed and Fry’s is closed (it being Sunday evening). So, we take off for Wal-mart to see if they have it. Nope. O’Reilly’s? “Wiring harness? I don’t think we carry those, feller.” Pep Boys? Closed.
By this point we’ve been driving around for way too long and I’m pretty much cursing constantly under my breath, so we call it a night. We clean up everything and just leave a gaping hole in my dash where the receiver and accompanying console section were. Next morning the drive into work was rather quiet and boring without even the radio.
So, yesterday (that would be Monday) my roommate finds the correct wiring harness after he gets off work and when I get home we finish installing everything. It’s now sitting correctly in my truck and everything seems to be working great. Radio works and CDs play, at least. I spent much of last night ripping a bunch of my CDs into VBR MP3s.
Small detour here: several months ago I got a new computer. Unlike in times past, I didn’t build it myself this time. Instead I got a slightly customized Dell Dimension 8300. It’s been a wonderful computer so far. Once I got it, I did immediately format the hard drive and start over from scratch, though, so that I could have things like I wanted them. That means that until last night I’d never bothered to reinstall the CD-burning software (Roxio’s Easy CD Creator 5 Basic).
When I had everything ready, I fired up Easy CD Creator and proceeded to burn my CD-RW full of about ten albums of MP3s. Except that I got an error. No worries, check the settings and try again. Error. Tweak some things and make a test run. Error.
I gave up in frustration last night and I still have no idea why it isn’t working. I’ll try using a regular CD-R this evening (instead of CD-RW) and see if it makes a difference. I’ll be seriously pissed if I can’t get the burner working.
Anyway, that’s my little story of trying to install a new car stereo.
Posted Tuesday September 30, 2003
in Real Life by Chris Curtis
This is an older entry and as such, it may be by a guest author or contain formatting problems / extraneous code. If you notice something wrong with the entry, please use the Contact page to let me know the entry title and issue.
Try using Nero for it and my dime is that it will work without a hitch.
My experience with Roxio is that Toast, their Mac product is fabulous and superior to other Mac solution (and many PC), but that their PC family is treated like an unwanted but necessary step child in their product family, and hence doesn’t work that great, and has mediocre compatibility.
By Derek Jones on September 30, 2003 at 04:25pm link