Help B&M noob

[Joseph500]

Hi All,

Next to my passion for Italian cars I am seriously into music especially from the time of my misspent youth. Now this means I love vinyl and analogue !! I begrudgingly accepted the CD – primarily due to its convenience and the fact that vinyl has died (nearly) a death. I have never been a fan of the new digital formats especially this iTunes and MP3 thingies. This is due to the lost of quality, listen to an analogue record and the MP3 and there is no comparison. Yes I can understand how handy it maybe by having a huge easily portable music collection - as evidenced by the 10+ iPods (dead and alive) in my household. Having said all that I do think that it maybe time that I should join the 21st century and get with the program, especially that I now have the Blue & Me system.

Now I have used the search function on here and few other forums and I think I have basics down pat, but appreciate some learned feedback. As far as I understand what I need to do is;

1. Buy a USB stick(s), but preferably no larger than 8G
2. Format the USB to 32FAT (I have handy on-line tutorial on this)
3. “Rip” the music into a compressed format using a Media Player (I have Windows Media Player 11)
4. I understand that MP3 will give me less issues – true ?? Is the Windows Media Audio Lossless a better option for music quality ??
5. Organise the Music Library using the media player functions
6. Then copy over to the USB, plug into the Blue & Me and hope for the best !!

Correct ?? Anything else i need to know ??

Understand the B&M may have some issues with filing – but you can get little programs that make that easier. Programs like this http://www.spoelstrait.nl/BluMeUSB/index.htm

Cheers

 

[Juggers2k]

The whole loss of sound quality issue arguably doesn't really apply with car audio. In a moving vehicle the sound quality is already significantly compromised by competing with engine noise, road noise, wind noise etc.
You're far less likely to notice any difference in the sound quality in a moving car than you are when listening in a house or on headphones, (unless you have a supremely soundproofed car like a Rolls Royce, but if you're posting on here - you don't ).

For the USB stick, I've always arranged the MP3s into a folder per album.
Then I use freeware tagging and playlist software to standardise the tags and create a playlist for each album. When creating playlists, ensure the software isn't specifying the path the folder they're stored in on your computer, or it won't work in the car