Between Laptop and Car's audio.

[Cyrus]

Hi all, I suddenly had an idea to use a notebook to play musics or movies in my car.

At first I needed to change my old Denon DCR-630 player and its CD-changer (forgot its model) because they could only playback cassette and CD audio, besides some of its buttons didn't work well anymore. What I wanted were an LCD screen and a player that AT LEAST played MP3, WMA, VCD, DVD, and MPEG4, plus support DD and DTS.

I was confused to choose which brand and model, they're all pricey. Kinda afraid to invest my peny into it too since there're gonna be 2 other type of DVD formats (Toshiba's HD-DVD and Sony's Blu-ray DVD).

After reading THG article about 5 external sound cards (http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20040223/index.html) I had this idea to use laptop on my car's audio paired with one of them. I also found another option, that's the PCMCIA "Audigy 2 ZS Notebook". Actually Creative DDTS-100 is an interesting option too, but unfortunately it can't receive USB input and my notebook doesn't have digital output natively (is there any that does anyway?).

In your opinion, which one of them is the best for this purpose? Are there other better external sound processors in the market perhaps?

IMO this is a very flexible solution, yet the laptop can be use for other uses besides playing multimedia. But how do you think it's gonna perform? Pretty much the same with ordinary car audio or far worse? (guess it's not gonna be better)

Another situation, my car has 4 channels Orion 620 GT power amplifier with SQ set now. Therefore I need to add another 2 channels power amp for the center speaker and the subwoofer. I plan to set the subwoofer to have SPL characteristic, so - in my mind - it'll be good for any kind of musics and movies. Will the mixture do well?

Any suggestion is very welcome too.

 

[Crashman]

Tom's did a review a long time ago on a PCMCIA slot sound card. You don't need a center or sub channel. You can run an amp for your subs from the front channels with a crossover.

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[umheint0]

I have an alternate idea, if you want. A common idea is to buy an X-Box, mod it, mount that in the trunk, and put an LCD display in the dash. Then, get a wireless keyboard and mouse, and use that. Then you can use the X-Box's built-in equipment, and streamline everything. Might be a lot cheaper too. You can also possibly get a wireless remote and use that to interact with the X-Box. I'm considering fabricating such a setup sometime soon.

umheint0's phat setup --> <A HREF="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html" target="_new">http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html</A><--

 

[Cyrus]

2 Crashman : I've already read the review (http://www.tomshardware.com/game/200302081/index right?). Does it support DD or DTS? I couldn't find any statement mentioning that, but I guess it only supports surround stereo.

Since both of them cost quite similar, which one's better in term of sound quality?

Btw, I've mistaken. My amp isn't a 4 channels but a 6 channels one (20W each). Will the power still sufficient enough by adding another 2 channels crossovered?

2 umheint0 : Because I don't have an XBox, that would cost me more. But playing XBox in car is quite tempting me. I'll consider that for sure. ^^

Anyway, can we install Windows XP on XBox?