Pandora Hd Enclosure Add-on

[chris_merris]

Part of the reason I plan on buying the pandora is the possibility to carry around my entire music collection in lossless flac format, via connecting a usb hard drive.

How hard would it be to design a 2.5" enclosure to add on to the pandora - with some sort of snap-on or slide in plastic form?

I would definitely purchase something like this. If it's not a possibility, I might just velcro a Western Digital Passport to the bottom.

(P.S. - My library of 300 cd's would not fit on 2 SD cards, and I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy codecs - I'm looking at 320 gb here.)

 

[jmetal88]

(P.S. - My library of 300 cd's would not fit on 2 SD cards, and I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy codecs - I'm looking at 320 gb here.)

I know how that goes... I dislike MP3s. CD audio is better, but really my favorite sound quality is that of a new, clean vinyl record.

Well... Depending on the turntable and phono cartridge, obviously.

 

[KRH]

It's a Good DIY Project, a member of the community might actualy make these on request(Like the DaveC Mod for the 2X).

Unlikely for actual production though.

 

[icurafu]

I've got a 4GB SD card that can fit all of the 1.2GB of my favourite music collection.

How many GB are you looking at? 30, 60?

The Pandora is very fat already. Imagine if it has a HDD case on the back. It'll be a near cube.

 

[jmetal88]

I've got a 4GB SD card that can fit all of the 1.2GB of my favourite music collection.

How many GB are you looking at? 30, 60?

The Pandora is very fat already. Imagine if it has a HDD case on the back. It'll be a near cube.

Take a look at the first post. 320gb.

 

[Vimacs]

usb hdd + double sided tape?

 

[icurafu]

oh.

Goodluck with that. The 2.5" version of that will be cheap by the time the Pandora is released. A duct tape mod would be adequte.

 

[gruso]

Definitely a DIY job.

(Having just bought an Xbox 360 on sale, special HDD attachments are a bit of a sore point! Working on that little problem though.)

 

[imbored]

(P.S. - My library of 300 cd's would not fit on 2 SD cards, and I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy codecs - I'm looking at 320 gb here.)

Really? I've got 188 CDs in lossless and they take up 55GB. Unless you have your music is in WAV or AIFF format it shouldn't take up that much space. I see it would still be a hassle carrying around a few extra SD cards, but you could potentially make a case for that.

 

[jmetal88]

I should be the one reading more carefully here. :lol:

Post deleted.

 

[chris_merris]

(P.S. - My library of 300 cd's would not fit on 2 SD cards, and I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy codecs - I'm looking at 320 gb here.)

Really? I've got 188 CDs in lossless and they take up 55GB. Unless you have your music is in WAV or AIFF format it shouldn't take up that much space. I see it would still be a hassle carrying around a few extra SD cards, but you could potentially make a case for that.


What lossless format do you use? With FLAC I've averaged around 400 megs per cd. My collection is going on 400 cd's though - which probably puts me out of the range for SD.

You got the wheels turning in my head, though... if we can add anything usb, what's to say we couldn't add extra SD slots? That might be kinda neat - some sort of sd-card reader add-on which could give an extra slot or 2... that would eliminate the larger size of an extra hard drive.

I've got a 4GB SD card that can fit all of the 1.2GB of my favourite music collection.

How many GB are you looking at? 30, 60?

The Pandora is very fat already. Imagine if it has a HDD case on the back. It'll be a near cube.

I'm okay with having a little extra size - I wouldn't keep the hd attached all the time - only when listening to music and watching movies. I've shopped around a bunch for high capacity players - and there are very few with the capacity that a slightly fattened pandora could achieve.

I haven't done much hardware stuff yet - but I am willing to put some effort into it to help move the pandora scene along.

If I'm unsuccessful, a duct tape mod will probably do.

Pandora is going to kick the a$$es of a lot of different devices with multiple different uses - when's the last time you saw a portable media player with 320gb, let alone a 4" touch screen and the ability to play any major video type? Crazy.

 

[Kings]

Just wait for 256GB SD cards...
And then wait for them to drop in price.

It also sounds like you want a USB sound card for better quality than the Pandora DACs.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Off topic for a sec:

I know how that goes... I dislike MP3s. CD audio is better, but really my favorite sound quality is that of a new, clean vinyl record.

Well... Depending on the turntable and phono cartridge, obviously.

My boyfriend is a very keen vinyl enthusiast and has been employing different cleaning techniques for ages now. You may laugh at this but members of the forum he's on suggested cleaning vinyl with glue, specifically PVA. What he does is he coats one side of the vinyl then lets it set, then he peels off the glue and amazingly enough it pulls the dirt out of the grooves and he's left with a clear sheet of glue that's an imprint of the record. I was amazed the first time he showed it to me. It cleans much deeper into the grooves than most other methods, he says with his cartridge (Which sits deeper in the grooves missing surface scratches) it makes the records sound amazing, especially one record which he had tried every other technique to clean it .

Addition: Phil said that this is usually to be used in extreme circumstances, i.e. when the vinyl is in really bad shape. He did revive a record that was totally unplayable before that had a all other cleaning methods applied to it. I will have to get him to take pictures of his next PVA session.

 

[hessiess]

QUOTE
I know how that goes... I dislike MP3s. CD audio is better, but really my favorite sound quality is that of a new, clean vinyl record. biggrin.gif

Well... Depending on the turntable and phono cartridge, obviously.


that gives me an idea, Pandora record player add on :rolleyes:

 

[bboyneko]

+

Duct tape
solving your chimera needs since 1942!

 

[jmetal88]

QUOTE
I know how that goes... I dislike MP3s. CD audio is better, but really my favorite sound quality is that of a new, clean vinyl record. biggrin.gif

Well... Depending on the turntable and phono cartridge, obviously.

that gives me an idea, Pandora record player add on :rolleyes:


Really all we'd need is a driver for this:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/mp3/90a0/

Though personally, I'd rather hook up my own turntable to an audio input.

For portable listening, I can just take along my Columbia GP-3!

 

[Kayday]

This is possible with a skin case that is modified to also hold the hard drive. Since the size is almost like the ds, we can start looking at some of the skin cases for the ds. Also, does anyone know if they make very short usb cables and ones that don't stick out that much? Would work great for this mod.

 

[Karel Jansens]

Part of the reason I plan on buying the pandora is the possibility to carry around my entire music collection in lossless flac format, via connecting a usb hard drive.

How hard would it be to design a 2.5" enclosure to add on to the pandora - with some sort of snap-on or slide in plastic form?

I would definitely purchase something like this. If it's not a possibility, I might just velcro a Western Digital Passport to the bottom.

(P.S. - My library of 300 cd's would not fit on 2 SD cards, and I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy codecs - I'm looking at 320 gb here.)


If you're that concerned about music quality, why would you even consider using the Pandora for playback? It'll never even approach the quality of a dedicated music center; it's a friggin' iPod, forgossakes.

So either buy a portable drive and plug it into something that can play back your flacs, or recode your music for playback on the Pandora, where you won't even hear the difference between flac and mp3.

 

[Sandman]

I say, you gotta have some premium earphones if you want to distinguish lossy from lossless. By lossy I mean the highest setting of course; anyone can hear that a 96kbps mp3 is shit.
Of course you don't have to use earphones with the Pandora, but I take it that's what it was for. But then again, like mentioned, the sound quality of the Pandora itself can come into question.

 

[KRH]

the sound quality of the Pandora itself can come into question.

QUOTE

- headphone output up to 150mW/channel into 16 ohms, 99dB SNR (up to 24 bit/48KHz)