Features & more Thoughts cont'd
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| Essential controls on the left |
Also on the left side of the deck, we have the Power button on the top left corner. When keeping this button pushed down, this will turn the player on giving you a HELLO message or will turn off the player when already on leaving you will a GOODBYE message on the display. This button doubles as a Mute button. Since there is no Pause feature while playing CDs, this is a good means to cut the volume quickly if there is a need such as you have to pick up a cell phone, or you think you hear emergency vehicle sirens nearby. I have found this button most useful while travelling to work in the mornings. I usually listen to a news station, and with listening to the same station everyday, comes the annoyance of listening to the same radio commercials OVER and OVER again. If you commute in the morning or evening Im sure you can relate. You can change the station with your presets along the bottom of the face, but I usually stick to my news in the morning to find out whats up in the world. If you can understand what it is like to have to listen to the same radio commercials every morning... Believe me, youll find it a God sent.
Over to the very left side of the faceplate, youll find the SELECT button which allows you to scroll through Bass, Treble, Fade, H-Bass, DSSA, and then back to Volume control. Say you wanted to pump up the bass, you would first of all use the SELECT button until you hit BASS, and then adjust the level using the jog dial. The H-Bass in case you were wondering is the HIGH BASS control which outputs some lower bass frequencies for those great R&B/Hip-Hop/Rap tracks. You can toggle this feature between high, medium & low levels. DSSA stands for Drivers Sound Stage Adjustment. It is supposed to adjust the soundstage to either left for the Drivers case, and right for the passengers case. When I played with this feature, I only noticed a decrease in volume rather than the change in positioning. Moving back to those radio preset buttons across the bottom (long black ones)
Numbers 1 & 2 Double in CD Play as changing the disc in a CD changer (if youve got one) and in MP3 Play serves to change Album/Directory as I mentioned earlier. Button 3 can be used to Intro Play the first 10 seconds of each track of all the CDs in your changer or all the albums on your MP3 CD. To the right are the two presets which double as Repeat buttons. Number 3 (REP) allows you to repeat the CD or Album (MP3) when it has completed. REP1 repeats the track you are listening to. To cancel these all you have to do is push the appropriate button again to disable it. To the right is the RANDOM feature which works to pick Random tracks from the CD you are listening to in your changer or random tracks from the Album you are in on an MP3 CD. Unfortunately, as a lot of people have mentioned in the past on the boards that they are peeved that you cannot play Random tracks from an entire MP3 CD unless all of your tracks are in that one Album/Directory. (Laying out your CD this way is not recommended) Here's why... once you select to listen to tracks from your MP3 CD, you will see the text displayed stating NOW READING. In the Manual, it says that it can take 2mins or more for the system to read through your directory structure for the first available track. This is why you wouldnt want to stash all of your 115+ tracks into one Directory. The system would take forever to read the disc when selected. I usually have a directory per real album almost like you have a CD changer in one CD alone. This way the system will take the first directory that was burnt to the CD and read that directory for the first track. This will be a whole lot quicker
Generally it only takes about 20 seconds for the first track to start playing when I want to listen to my MP3s.
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| Open lever, DISP, and AUX Port |
Moving along... next to the REP1 button there is an Auxiliary Jack for all of you MiniDisc fanatics. It can also be used to play many portable devices such as MP3 players which use Flash memory/Zip Discs, Cassette players, CD players, and more. To the right again, youll notice the reddish pink sensor for the Wireless Steering wheel remote, and then we get to the right side. Here we can find to the very top right hand corner, the OPEN lever which allows you to fold down the faceplate to access the mouth of the CD player or in order to remove the faceplate when leaving the car. (Safety precaution) With the plate removed, there is a red LED that flashes as a not so real alarm system to detract potential car thieves.
Below the open lever, there is a blue PS button which stands for Pre Set (Auto Memory). This has to do with your radio presets. The best example I can think of for this feature is if you go on vacation with your vehicle, and you want to listen to the local radio stations and you dont know which are the strongest signals out there. When you hold down on the PS button, the deck will find the 6 strongest signals and put them into memory as presets 1-6. To the lower left of the PS button, you will find the DISP (Display) button. This allows one to scroll between viewing the Track title, Album name, Artist name, and the elapsed time, and the clock. The LO button on the right lets you tune in to only the stronger LOCAL stations when tuning the radio. When using DX mode (LO turned off) you are using Distance mode where you can try & locate stations from farther away i.e. weaker signals. The last button on the faceplate is the INFO button, which allows you to set two different programs. These programs will tell the player to turn to the appropriate radio station at the pre-programmed time & turn off when the program is complete. If you dont want to miss a regular radio program, for example a news broadcast or perhaps a daily music countdown, you can set the player so that it will always turn on when its time.
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