And the thing is fantastic! I don't know how many of you are using the aux jack, but for a more integrated solution, the Vais kit is just awesome!

 

I've got one too and I like it. Where did you mount it? I put mine in the console compartment. Is it the medialinq USB unit? One thing I don't like about it is that if you want to use playlists, then any song you want to hear must be in a playlist. If you don't have any playlists, then all songs can be played. But if you have just 1 playlist, any song not in the playlist cannot be played. But if you have say 100 artists, then you need to make 100 playlists manually. That's a pain. I wrote a program to search the folders and automatically make the playlists. This software should be provided.

 

Just purchased a 2007 SWB 460 with ML and Nav. Interested in iPod intergration. Heard that only the VML device from Vias works with the ML system. Do you have ML stereo and what Vais product did you install?

 

no, the sl2i-up will work too, and it's cheaper

 

I bought the Sl2i-up and it is on sale as now, I paid 220.00 with two day shipping.

 

Xwakeboard:
Is this true about the playlists? How can you browse using the car controls?

 

for the playlist, the sl2i-up (and also the vml) will allow you to access the ipod through different methods, playlists, artists, albums, etc...

for me, i always go with albums, and it will sort all songs by albums and i have access to everything. same with artists, if you select that it will sort all songs by artists and everything is accessible.

wsteiner, why don't you just directly select to play off artists, seems like that's what you need

 

Well perhaps I'm not understanding this properly. I create a multimedialinq folder and in it I put an m3u and a music folder. In the music folder I have a folder for each artist and in each artist folder are the mp3's. I try to play this and I see no songs. If I remove the m3u folder all the artists folders appear. If I put a small playlist in the m3u folder, I only can play the songs in the playlist. I read the instructions on this and it seems to say the vml play will generate a list of artist and albums on its own. I called vais to get some help. They said this is the way it works. Maybe I got a tech who does not know anything. What do you people do?

 

ah ic, so maybe the vml is doing this a bit differently from the sl2i-up?

http://www.multimedialinq.com/vml.php

i saw the screen with the 6 buttons and i thought it should be pretty similar to sl2i-up. on the sl2i-up (which is just ipod integration), as long as i select 3, it will sort everything by albums (or 2 for artists).

maybe with the vml things are a bit different. in that case, then yeah, some way to help generate the correct list would be useful

 

Well the manual does say "VML player will create a list of ARTISTS based on M3U files with *.m3u extension located in folder "[ROOT]/multimedialinq/m3u.Artist/". I don't really know what exactly this means. Is a list of artists a playlist for each artist? Does "based on m3u files" mean playlists need to already exist? The manual for VML is really bad. I was close to sending this thing back.

P.S. Those six buttons, I think, are there to select 6 cd disks. The vml play makes the audio unit think there is another cd drive attached and that is how the audio integrates with the vml player. A usb drive only uses the first button. The manual says the player can read up to 4 partitions on the usb drive and I suppose each partition would correspond to a button. However you cannot partition removable media unless you have special software which resets the removable bit on the usb drive. You can google partitioning usb drives for more info.

 

very interesting, then it must be pretty different. when using sl2i-up setup, those 6 buttons correspond to 6 ways of loading the songs: playlist, artists, albums, genre, podcast, etc...

 

Just installed mine too and it's great!

 

awesome chris, welcome to the ipod world!

 

I must have had the old unit in my GS because it never allowed to select anything but play lists, which was fine, but when you find out what your missing, whoa!

Also, I was talking to the parts girl at my local dealership and she said that, "I think you can the lexus ipod system after market but you loose the xm." So if I go with the lexus system it's either xm or ipod? Doesn't seem like much of a choice, Vais all the way!

 

do you know which unit you have? the sl2i-up is the latest one that works with gen5 system (the ones in 4ls and 3gs) to provide expanded menu browsing. otherwise it's just going by playlists i believe. does your unit have an extra aux input? if so, you have sli. sl2i-up will also charges iphone 3g/gs

the parts girl at your local dealership is right. toyota has an ipod kit for their cars (including lexus), but it's either xm or ipod. vaistech will allow you to retain your factory xm and have the ipod. not to mention the factory ipod kit isn't that good, i have played with both, the factory ipod kit is not as intuitive and flexible. price wise they are about the same and in some cases vaistech is even cheaper