MainStream

I've had my 460L for about a month now and absolutely love the car. Had a 2002 and then a 2005 LS-430 and while they were great cars, the 460 has a number of refinements that the 430 was lacking.

I have copied a number of CD's to the HD sound library but would like to be able to transfer directly from my IPOD. I understand how to listen to the IPOD, however, I haven't figured out how to do record or download. If anyone can provide insight or directions on how to do so I would appreciate it.

encore888

Welcome to ClubLexus, MainStream! Congratulations on your LS 460 L!

At this time, IIRC only CD's can be ripped to the HDD. I agree it would be great if the iPod transfer could occur through the AUX input, but I don't believe that feature is available as of yet. Besides, most iPods have more capacity than the HDD, which is 8 GB I believe, better suited to CDs.

One other option to consider is using your computer to create a CD of mp3 files, you can fit several hundred on there. However you still need to load the CD into the changer, but then you can access the folders like playlists, similar to an iPod. Or still keep your iPod with you.

supraguy

Can anyone recommend an iPod cable that has worked well for them? Price and where to buy would also be helpful. Thanks.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

i don't think there is a specific cable, just get the normal aux cable to go from the earpiece outlet and into the aux

MainStream

Radio Shack.

Astie

The hard disk drive on LS460 is 30GB and is shared between the navigation data and music. On my LS460 there's 18GB free for music - you can check the space available on one of the audio screens.

It's pretty annoying that you can only copy music from CDs onto the hard disk. You can't copy from an MP3-CD, an MP3-DVD, an audio-DVD, or a video-DVD filled with music. All these disk types can be played on the audio system, but you can't record from the media to the hard drive. I guess the Lexus engineers didn't have the imagination. It couldn't be a lack of time because this issue is present on both the 2007 and 2008 models.

I believe that Lexus and Mercedes are the only companies that support audio-DVD format. You can buy inexpensive programs to copy from your music library on a PC (or Mac) onto audio-DVDs and these give you about 6 times the storage of an MP3 formatted CD.

Personally, I copy my music files to DVDs recorded in video format. The car audio thinks it's playing a movie so you don't see the video while the car is moving but you do get to listen to the audio. This isn't problem because the video consists only of the song titles and the album data. I fit about 16 GB of music onto 3 DVDs, so I have all the music I want without using the car's hard disk.

I saw an announcement a couple of days ago that Toyota are making available an iPod interface kit and that it works "with all current model Toyota and Lexus vehicles". The price is $300 in the US, plus dealer installation costs. The press release was light on the technical details so I don't know whether this will allow you to copy your music to the car's hard disk - but if this new capability is well implemented you probably don't need to do that as you should be able to browse the data on the iPod as easily as if it was on the car's hard disk. Needless to say, my dealer knows nothing about this kit yet, so I have no other details beyond the press release.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

very interesting info there astie, can you elaborate more on the dvd with video format? do you use nero? i would love to explore that more

Astie

ok, I accidentally lied about a couple of things. The amount of free space for music on the LS460 hard disk is actually 13.3 GB and this value can be found in the navigation diagnostic menu that you get to through the display-top-bottom-top-bottom-top-bottom trick that I found described elsewhere in this forum. I should have walked out to the garage to check rather than just trusting my memory

I use a $40 program called "Audio DVD Creator" that is intended to make music DVDs that can be played on any DVD player. It creates DVDs that are in the same format as an ordinary movie DVD - except that the video data is just the album and track titles. The LS460 audio system will play a standard video DVD, so it has no trouble with these disks.

The program will accept tracks from a CD, MP3s or WAV files as input. You can copy 5 or 6 uncompressed CDs to a single DVD, but I find that I can get 40-50 MP3 compressed CDs to one DVD. To the audio system, each album looks like a separate chapter of a movie, and each track looks like a sub-chapter, so you can use the standard touch screen controls to select the album or tracks you want to play - provided you do this while the car is stopped. (Darn you, Lexus!) Then the audio system will just continue playing until the end of the disk. However, if you turn the audio off, the audio will start at the beginning of the track that was playing when you turn it on again, rather than the spot it was at.

I hope that helps a bit. Just shout if I can help more.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

awesome, i am sure that's great help to members here thanks!