rickhuizinga

It does require finding a place to get power from. I was able to solder the power cable to the power & ground pins on the connector that goes into the back of the NAV drive.

The optical connections are very straight-forward, and the kit comes with two optical cables and the appropriate couplers to join the cables together.

rickhuizinga

I haven't had much time to play with it, but the unit is configurable on how to handle long playlists. The default method uses something called "paging". From my short experience (so far), here's how it works:

Suppose you have a playlist with 300 songs, it will divide the playlist into 6 pages. From the point of view of the PCM, it sees a CD with 50 songs. The first song is "Prev Page", and the last song is "Next page". When you finish playing song 49, the PCM then begins to play song 50 which is called "Next page" and the Gateway 500 immediately changes the "CD" (as seen by the head unit) to a CD that contains the next 50 songs in your playlist and begins playing the first song on that CD.

All of this happens instantaneously, so when playing music you don't realize that it is even happening. When you are in the track list, it shows 50 songs, and if you select the last song (next page), the Gateway 500 changes the "CD" and the next 50 songs are displayed in the track list.

I thought this part was pretty smart and just seems to work right. You can definately tell that they put some thought into the UI.

And so far, there are no bugs. I'm keeping my fingers crossed as I've only used it for one day so far. The song titles do update when changing tracks. The song title is displayed on the PCM, but not in the instrument cluster. I.e. The same way that the PCM works with a CD with text information: the intrument cluster just shows track #, and the PCM shows the CD text.

larrytrk

What about power from the extra plug that is for a changer on the left side ?

gravedgr

So when you choose Shuffle, does it randomize between the 50 songs on the "CD" or all 300 songs?

mudman2

Not if he has any remaining sense from the" other side"

rickhuizinga

I didn't see that - I wish I did as that may have been easier.

rickhuizinga

Quote: "So when you choose Shuffle, does it randomize between the 50 songs on the "CD" or all 300 songs?"

From the 300. Selecting shuffle causes the iPod to generate a new radomized 300 song list which is then played in sequence. This is the same as how the iPod would shuffle a playlist if you selected the shuffle option from the iPod. You can experiment with this by observing the track list from the PCM - select shuffle, and watch the order of all the songs in the track list change. Deselect shuffle, then reselect and the order changes again.

The PCM itself does not do the random song selection (thankfully as its random song selection is not random!).

MyEmily

What about the battery right above the unit? Isn't much easier to attach a y clip and inline fuse to get direct power?

I don't know if this may help on organizing MP3 cd.- Before burning a MP3 cd. Organize the music into an individual folderand naming it like Fast, slow, jazz etc.... Than burn than the cd. The pcm treat the individual folder as a separate cd. Listener can be jump from one folder to another by selecting folders within the sub-menu. or letting it play continously. I think it's basically the same as playing an Ipod. Ipod catergorize the tunes by gener, musician etc... The denision is treating each catergory as a CD and sending the signal to the PCM to play it as a CD changer. The fundamental is similar to playing MP3 folders... I hope I make some senses here....

MyEmily

Can you try this. If my assumptions are correct. Set the IPOD to play in random mode on the select a playlist. If the playist is the whole libary. It should treat the libary as a single CD and playback the tunes in random.

rickhuizinga

Yes, selecting CD 5 is equivalent to playing back all songs on the iPod. Selecting random play will send a command to the iPod to randomize playback. I already tried this last night as I always shuffle play my favorites playlist.

rickhuizinga

I didn't want to connect right to the battery as this would have gotten in the way if the battery ever needed to be replaced.

On another board, I posted a description of the operation of the Gateway 500 on the CDR24 - the operation on the PCM is the same except you will be using the PCM menus to control the Gateway 500 using the CD changer menu and commands:

"To tell you the truth, I think it would be more intuitive on the CDR23/24 without the PCM display as you don't need to mentally shift user interface paridigms when using the unit.

Operation is quite simple:
CD 1-4 correspond to the first four playlists on your iPod. You can name the playlists with the first character as '1' - '4' to guarantee a match. This is a quick way to access your favorite playlists
CD 5 corresponds to playing all tracks on your iPod.
CD 6 corresponds to accessing the menu.

In the menu >| (skip next) and |< (skip prev) send a command to the CD changer to switch to the next track/prev track. In response the gateway 500 displays a track name on your 1 line display corresponding to the menu item (i.e. playlists, artists, podcasts, albums, etc.). On a given menu item (cd track - as your head unit would see it), pressing >> (fast forward) selects the menu item and << (rewind) exits up one menu level.

So, suppose you wanted to play a playlist called "My Playlist", assuming this is not one of the first four playlists, this is how you would do it:

1. Select CD 6
2. Press >| until you get to the [Playlists] menu option (this happens to be the first option). Press >> to select this menu option. (On the PCM, you need to hold down >| to perform a fast forward)
3. Press >| until you get to the Playlist "My Playlist". Press >> to select.
4. At this point I get a little confused as I've only been on one drive with the unit. I believe it then shows the name of the first song in the playlist. Pressing >| will display the next song, and so on. Pressing >> will select the song in the playlist to begin playback."


Now, on the PCM you can use the "Track List" function to use the scroll wheel to scroll between the different options in the menu, whereby the menu options correspond to songs, and the menu corresponds to CD 6. For example, to access the menu on the PCM, switch to CD 6. Then press "Track List" and you can use the scroll wheel to scroll the menu options: [Playlists], [Artists], [Albums], [Podcasts], etc... Alternatively, the other method mentioned above also works.

The key limitation is that they had to find a method to perform all of these operations using only commands that are normally sent between a head unit & a CD changer. Creating a new PCM screen for controlling the iPod would have been ideal, but only Porsche could do this.

Rick

larrytrk

[QUOTE=MyEmily]What about the battery right above the unit? Isn't much easier to attach a y clip and inline fuse to get direct power?[QUOTE]

Better to have an ignition switched connection than a direct battery conection or drain may be increased when sitting off. We already have enough drain at rest!!

Hartley

Does it remember the last song played when you turn/off on the ignition.

MyEmily

Larry, Thanks for reminding me about that. I forgot, it's not an amp where it require a trigger wire to turn it on. To wire an amp, it's best to wire direct and not thru tap. Ground loops etc....

Rick thanks for your inputs. I guess you have been playing around w/ the DICE. Just to let you know, I was not a fan of hooking up an IPOD to the PCM. After reading your posts, I'm just waiting for the group buy to get a better discount. I had bought a lot of songs thru itunes. Too lazy to rip it to MP3. The DICE will do the trick. Those FM transmitter sucks. Do PCM have Cassette? AAC sound alot better than MP3..

gravedgr

Rick said he had a unit from Dension (EU), not DICE.