How do you load music onto hard drive?

[chlohop]

We picked our Touring Elite on Saturday and I don't know how to load music. It appears that you can only store music from CDs. Can I load music from my IPhone or a flash drive? Nowadays I rarely buy CDs.

[dvpatel]

It has to be done the hard way, 1CD at a time.

2011 Hdd

[chlohop]

Thanks for answering my question. I was afraid that was the answer. I love the van, but what a backwards way of downloading music. I am far from a computer whiz, but I was wondering if it was that hard for Honda to design it to download the music from an IPod.

[Gstom1]

Yes, due to copyright issues, Honda will not allow you to directly copy digital music files onto the hard drive. You can only copy CDs which Honda assumes you bought and own, but it doesn't mean you can't copy a friend's CD or a CD from the library. Imagine it as a hard drive version of a large CD changer.

Anyway, I posted on another tread a work around for copying mp3 albums onto your hard drive. It's time consuming and a pain in the ass, but it works and you only have to do it once per album.

If your Odyssey has an HDD and you're looking to load (copy) mp3 (digital) albums onto it, you can do it, but you have to burn them to a CD-Rom first as an audio CD. Many programs such as Roxio can do this. Of course you will be limited to a maximum of 80 minutes per CD.

I've found that the CD player can read CD-RW discs, so you can use these discs over and over instead of wasting CD-Rs each time you want to burn an audio disc from your mp3 (digital) files.

Also, if your mp3 (digital) files are properly tagged when you burn the audio CD, the Odyssey will be able to load the artist and track information and tag them for you on your HDD. I'm not sure if it's loading from the track itself or the Gracenote database? However, for some reason, it won't load the album name from the album track/Gracenote database. After the CD is copied, the album field shows up as blank in the HDD album search, which I then have to manually enter.

I have loaded several mp3 (digital) albums onto my HDD without any issue.

So basically you are converting a digital music file back into an audio track on a CD-Rom. Then you load the CD-Rom into the Honda system which then re-rips the audio tracks onto the HDD as a digital file. Kind of counter intuitive if you ask me. I believe the system copies at 4X so a full 80 minute CD will take about 20 minutes.

[AyrborneVeteran]

Once loaded can you play the songs in any order or do you have ply them like they are still on the CD? Thanks

[Gstom1]

Once loaded can you play the songs in any order or do you have ply them like they are still on the CD? Thanks

You can play the HDD like an iPod. It will play by artist or album or genre or you can make your own playlists. You can also play in regular mode, random shuffle mode or repeat mode.

[AyrborneVeteran]

You can play the HDD like an iPod. It will play by artist or album or genre or you can make your own playlists. You can also play in regular mode, random shuffle mode or repeat mode.

Thanks for the great answer

[chlohop]

Thanks again for the answer. I just love this forum for Odyssey Q and A. Thanks to everybody for their contributions.

[T.C.]

yeah, be aware you have no access to that hard drive in any way other than via CD. in other words, you can't copy FROM it either, or side-load movies onto it, or anything else.

just FYI.

[lwolf]

yeah, be aware you have no access to that hard drive in any way other than via CD. in other words, you can't copy FROM it either, or side-load movies onto it, or anything else.

just FYI.

Is there any way to "upgrade" the HDD or Flash drive whatever it has? 2 GB seems puny.

[Gstom1]

Is there any way to "upgrade" the HDD or Flash drive whatever it has? 2 GB seems puny.

No, probably not as the hard drive also contains firmware and is used as storage for other stuff.

I've been loading lots of CDs on my hard drive (I have 15 GB) and I have been surprised as how little hard drive space each CD takes up. I'm not sure what bit rate Honda is using to compress the music files, but I think you can fit upwards of 30 CDs or so on 2 GB.

You best bet is to plug in an external source (flash drive, iPod, etc.) into the USB and get a lot more music storage space that way.

[OdyDudy]

I know the Apple detractors won't like it but I would suggest you buy an iPod to store our music, especially since you have an Elite, its got song by voice which works incredibly well, but works only with an iPod not a USB drive. Use your natural voice to find songs, artists, genres, whatever. Its like being on Star Trek.

[Gstom1]

I know the Apple detractors won't like it but I would suggest you buy an iPod to store our music, especially since you have an Elite, its got song by voice which works incredibly well, but works only with an iPod not a USB drive. Use your natural voice to find songs, artists, genres, whatever. Its like being on Star Trek.

I would have to second the iPod recommendation as it integrates very well with the Odyssey's sound system and also displays album art, which the HDD does not do.

[6spdtl]

You can rip about 20 or more CD's to the 15G hard drive. The drive rips them fairly quickly (a few minutes) and they can be played and riped at the same time. The sound quality is indistinguishable from the original. All in all a pretty good system. It does suck that you cant load data from your usb but that is lawyers for you

[PhilZJ]

I also bought a new iPod classic for the van. 160GB sits nicely in the glove box. Integration is pretty good, not perfect, but good.
I seriously wish you could play the movies from the iPod though. So I don't have to carry my DVDs which I guarantee I will scratch big time one day, and then my daughter will learn all sorts of new words.