need help with eclipse cd7000

///ME

i wanted to try out using this unit's atrac3 capability, so i downloaded sonic stage and converted an album to 132K atrac format, loaded the songs to the memory stick, and tried to play them, but the deck just stayed at MS INFO 2 when i selected the source.

i put the music in the root of the memory stick. i know the deck can read this memory stick because i have transferred wallpaper and other stuff from it. i also use it for esn.

looked all over and tried to find if there was a folder the songs need to be in, but can't find info.

does anyone know what's happening here ? manual is poorly written, doesn't say anything about this.

1996blackmax

I know the feeling, I have yet to be able to do this with my HU. Mine says MSINFO7.

Were you able to load the songs through the Sonic Stage program? I have not been able to do that thorugh the program, I have to manually put them in there. The program does not recognize the Memory Stick drive. It recongnizes the DVD/CD drives, but not the MS .

I am going to give Eclispe a call to aks them if there needs to be a folder where the songs need to be in.

///ME

i found that in the manual MS INFO 2 means incorrectly formatted stick. that's funny because i had esn, wallpaper and audio settings on it and it was able to be read thru the deck. i had a folder called MSFTEN, and it worked.

i tried to reformat the stick on the deck. FUNC-->MS FORMAT-->OK?, the book says hold the ENTER button for more than 5 seconds. tried this, and i was greeted by something familiar: IT DIDN'T WORK.

so i wrote a nasty-gram to eclipse tech support AND warranty support. i am sick of dealing with this deck and it's 'qirks' i do not care anymore if i pull it out of my dash and throw it in a dumpster. bad enough that the deck had to be installed at an angle so that the faceplate can open. that alone cost me 2 days worth of work on my car because of extensive mods behind the dash area. you can't even turn off the internal amp and in the summer it cooks. already melted some plastic it was touching behind the dash.

///ME

i used sonic stage to create 132K atrac3's on my hd, then i put them in root on the ms.
i even tried different bitrates and even different formats like wma, mp3, etc...

MS INFO 2

1996blackmax

Sounds like you've had a tough time with this HU...

My CD8455 actually let you rip the song(s) you wanted right onto the memory stick.

The music on the MS is not a necessity, but does come in handy. I used to load some songs that my little one liked on there, that way they were always available. To be honest though, it is not that big of a deal for me. The sound tuning options that this HU provides is what made me get it. I will be taking a very close look at the Alpine CDA-9887 when it comes out. Has all of the Bass Engine Pro stuff (time alignment, x-overs, 7band graphic EQ or 5 band Parametric EQ), as well as 24Bit Burr Brown DAC's. I think of all the different HU's I've owned in recent times (Alpine, Eclipse, Pioneer), the Alpine HU's have always been the easiest to use.

1996blackmax

Would have been nice for Alpine to have used BBE on this HU instead of the MediaXpander. While playing wma's or mp3's, the Eclipse Harmonizer does a nice job with the music. This was something the MediaXpander function could not do consistently with my two CDA-7998's, CDA-9835, or CDA-7894.

This would be the only thing I see at the moment that I do not like on the CDA-9887.

///ME

i went to a circuit city to put my memory stick in the cd7000 and see. it wasn't formatting it either. i figured i'll buy a new stick and see what happens. but it took a little hunting to get one of the right size since ms mg is almost extinct.

i wound up at a best buy and found a sony ms mg @ 128 MB, which is the max i think that's supported. when i got in the car i put it in and it formatted it. so i tossed my old stick since i don't really have a use for ms mg except for the hu. now the real test will be if my pc will recognize it, so that i can try this feature out and see if it really works.

i'll report back with my findings.

1996blackmax

Hopefully it will so you can let me know how you got the music to play from it.


By the way I just finished tuning a little bit in the car. This HU may not be the easiest HU to use while driving (mainly due to the controls inside the volume knob), but man does it help my system sound nice. I bought a Type-X 12" sub and a Kicker amp a few weeks ago and was trying to get the system dialed in a little more. Things are coming together... I may end up keeping the Alpine sub.

///ME

i had to buy a new ms to find out that when the HU formats it, it formats it as FAT. i had formatted mine as FAT32. i think that's why the memory stick wasn't able to format in the deck. anyway....i have tried various bitrates of encoded ATRAC music. the sonic stage software i am using was a free download and it imports the songs into .oma files (there are also atrac3plus, wav, aac, etc...to choose from). for the most part i isolated importing music to the ATRAC format that had the ATRAC3 shown next to it on the 132k bitrate. still nothing.

what i do it write them to my hd, then transfer them to the ms, so i also tried importing them directly onto the ms, but it wasn't letting me put them in root, it had to create a folder. and still would not play. if i can get sonic stage to just drop the atrac's in the root folder that would be worth a try.

i wish they weren't so vauge in the manual, this is a real neat feature that i can use for when i don't want to go looking thru the ipod's lists to get what i want to listen to.

then again, i don't know anything about ATRAC3 or how it works. does it encode with a protection thing that won't allow it to play if it's been copied to a different media ?

in the audio adjustments department, the cd7000 is king. i found that working the crossovers, time alignment and peq let me squeeze more juice out of my system without worrying about blowing anything. but i would worry alot less if all my amps could deliver more rms than my speakers can handle. this is in the works.

if you're tuning, i suggest first zero out all your custom audio settings. i would then begin at the crossover. turn off the sub, and adjust your hi pass filter so that you can crank it to as loud as you'd possibly want it without getting any distortion. then turn off your comps and do the same thing for your sub and the lo pass filter.

after that, mess with the time alignment, and lastly, fine tune the peq with as little adjustments as possible until you get the audio to sound the way you like. remember that you have 3 selectable freq. in each band, and also have Q adjust.

if it wasn't for it's audio capabilities and ipod integration, i would have never known the hell i'd get dealing with an eclipse deck....:eek:

1996blackmax

Good advice there . I actually have done all those things, just needed a little fine tuning, mainly the x-over points and slopes. I mainly use the PEQ to tame the peaks in my system.

1996blackmax

Just remembered.... Sonic Stage does not show the MS as one of the options to record on. This really sucks as that would be the way to go. I have put the songs created in Atrac3 in the root folder of the MS, but still no go. I will call Eclipse to see if I need to make a folder, and if I do, what to name it.

///ME

i think they go right into root...but the question would be what exactly is an atrac3, and is it protected ? also, what format is the cd7000 designed to play ? will protected play ? is there a specific software required to do this ? guess this would be some questions for eclipse. but remember me too as you give them the royal salute....
if i have time tomorrow i will also call.

yeah it's amazing the amount of parameters that are available in the cd7000. but if clarion's top of the line drz9255 had better ipod navigation, i would have snagged that deck instead.

hopefully, some time before we all decompose, we'll be able to play an atrac3 song on the cd7000. this is truely sad....

///ME

they said you need to use sonicstage AND the Sony msac-us40 usb card reader in order for sonicstage to recognize the memory stick as a transfer source.

they also said that atrac3 132k is the only bitrate that's supported.

1996blackmax

Thanks for getting that information! Now to see how much that reader costs.

///ME

30 bucks. i decided to give up on this effort. if the deck was able to play back higher bitrate songs it would have been worth it, but @ only 132k, i think i would be better off just burning an mp3 cd of tunes that i want easy access to.

kind of stupid way of doing things on sony's part i guess.

1996blackmax

I think I am going to give it a shot. I think I loaded up 29 songs on it last time I did this on my CD8455 witht the 128MB MS. Nice to have a few songs ready to go.... pretty convinient....too bad they make it so darn difficult to do (no information whatsoever on it, and having to get a Sony reader).

1996blackmax

Just picked one up for $28 dollars shipped. Should be here later this week....

dolfan87

Would you two still recommend the 7000? The one I purchased off e bay, the stupid dealer didn't have it in stock. He refused a refund, so i am at the later stages of my Pay Pal claim to get my money back. Pay Pal told me that I am pretty much in the clear.

Still I have no HU now. So my options are once again wide open.

Having said all that, would you guys (if you had it to do all over again) still buy this HU? If not, what would you buy?

///ME

dolfan87 wrote:

Would you two still recommend the 7000? The one I purchased off e bay, the stupid dealer didn't have it in stock. He refused a refund, so i am at the later stages of my Pay Pal claim to get my money back. Pay Pal told me that I am pretty much in the clear.

Still I have no HU now. So my options are once again wide open.

Having said all that, would you guys (if you had it to do all over again) still buy this HU? If not, what would you buy?

it depends on what you're interested in....i have experiences with the Alpine CDA-9855 and the Eclipse CD7000. this is what i have to say about both:

Alpine CDA-9855:
very good deck overall
user manual easy to follow and descriptive

ipod interface pretty cool, but doesn't remember the last playlist/artist/album you were in when you try to search again.

parametric eq/time alignment/crossover (not as refined as the cd7000 but still good)

have the ability to turn on/off the built-in amplifier (off if you use external amps to reduce heat build-up in deck).

subwoofer on/off option, handy for tuning your system (similar option available in cd7000, but found in time alignment menu).

4V pre-outs for each (front/rear/sub).

Eclipse CD7000:
top of the line in the SQ dept.

more audio fine tuning options in parametric eq/time alignment/crossover. also can tune your system automatically by using that accessory mic they sell.

excellent e-iserve options online. can configure audio/wallpapers/motion pics/area maps/etc. and load onto cd-r or mem stick. this actually works well. atrac3 playback on mem stick not easy to do...

manual poorly written, hard to follow. some features you would expect to find in one section but are in another. tech support is knowledgeable and helpful.

ipod interface is better than alpine's (except the new iDA-X001 and Clarion MAX675VD, they have the ultimate ipod interfaces for car audio), remembers your last searched song, playlist, album, etc....no need to search from the beginning like on cda-9855. however if you turn off power, it resets to the beginning.

5V pre-out a little better than 4V pre-out but not by much. remember that your gain setting on the amplifiers need to be set to this number in order to get the max power out of your amps. for example, if an amplifier has an input gain of .2-5 volts, for the alpine you'd set the gain on your amps to 4V, for the eclipse you'd set your gain on the amps to 5V. the min-max on your amps does not mean volume, it means input sensitivity. say you have a cda-9855 and you set your amps gain to the max (5V) your amp won't generate as much power as it would if the gain was set to 4V. carefull if you set the gain below the volts of the inputs, your amp will reach clipping before max volume is reached on your deck.

cd7000 has many add-ons, which i like, and the gps thing is cool, lets you see your heading, vehicle speed, or the map if you use the area map feature. you can basically daisy chain all the options it will take and it works perfect. right now i have hd radio and ipod. will add gps soon and maybe sirius later on.

cannot turn off built-in amp. in summer months watch out for melting plastic if you r cranking near full power. this can be bad, need to keep ac running to make sure nothing breaks down.

i know this is like a thesis, but this is what i know, and overall sq is better in the cd7000. i would stick with this deck if i was given the option to go back to the 9855.

1996blackmax

Agreed... this HU is extremely flexible when it comes to tuning your system. I will have to say the most flexible one I've owned.

When the Alpine CDA-9887 comes out I will take a look at it.... like to see what the new stuff can do. From the looks of it though, I do not think that it will have as good of a processing section as the CD7000.

If you want a HU that can help you tweak your system out, I think there is no other one available that can do all that the CD7000 can do. If you need more than this processing power, you will have to step up to an outboard processor.

dolfan87

Thanks guys...I appreciate your input!

///ME

or look into the clarion drz9255

1996blackmax

I received the Sony MS reader today. The HU reads music from the MS now! Always nice to have one more source of tunes .

///ME

oh cool....so how do atrac 132k sound on the hu ? do you have to set harmonizer ?

typically i listen to aac @ 320k from the ipod, but if atrac3 sounds pretty good, i wouldn't mind snagging a sony reader myself just for on the fly stuff.

got my amp rack re-done today....
http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=428017

dolfan87

Looks great "Me!"

Well guys, I went with the Alpine DVA 9860. Just have to find a decent deal on the H701 processor.

MacLeod

$500 shipped

1996blackmax

///ME wrote:

oh cool....so how do atrac 132k sound on the hu ? do you have to set harmonizer ?

typically i listen to aac @ 320k from the ipod, but if atrac3 sounds pretty good, i wouldn't mind snagging a sony reader myself just for on the fly stuff.

got my amp rack re-done today....
http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=428017

I think it sounds pretty good. Specially for having some songs always available. For me, this is a worthwhile addition. I do have the harmonizer on, and it's set on the low setting.

Your install looks nice and clean, can't beat that.

///ME

thanks !

i think i'll snag me one of those card readers as well....

thanks for helping out on my questions about it. i guess we disected the problem and posted the solution for ppl to have an answer when searching for it. because before i came to this forum, i couldn't find out anything about how it's supposed to work.....

i have seen a brochure @ my local car audio shop of Eclipse's new lineup for 07.....looks interesting. all the CDxxxx line of decks will basically look like the CD7000 (cd7100, 5100, etc....)

avn line will have a few cosmetics, 7" screen and live traffic info (of course you have to pay sirius for that).

1996blackmax

Yeah, I saw pictures of some of their uints on some boards from the CES. They upgraded the CD7000 to the CD7001. Only a couple of changes, now it has 8v preouts, and the ability to use USB drives. I'll stick with the CD7000 for now .

That is cool that we now know how to use this nice little feature on the CD7000. You did the digging, so thanks . I just got back from taking my little one to a cheerleading competition two hours away. I sure made use of it during the trip.

///ME

actually the 8V pre-out seems appealing for me.....

the audio shop i deal with said they put this unit on an oscilloscope and it does not produce 5V per pre-out. this is because Eclipse intentionally left the abbreviation "RMS" out after the "5V". As do most head unit manufacturers.

really the CD7000 is putting out 2-3 VRMS per pre-out. 8V pre-outs on the new CD7100 should provide closer to 4-5 VRMS per pre-out, which will be much better, stronger signal = better sound.

///ME

have you ever used area shot on this deck ? i'd like to know something about it. for example: if i put in a start and destination in e-iserv, will it show me the entire route on the deck ? or would i need to add interim points and view the route in sections ?

not sure about that....