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PhatNoise: Car
A music player you can talk to
April 5, 2004
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Kenwood KHD-CX910 Excelon Music Keg
In-car unit stores thousands of MP3 files |
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In the car, the PhatBox unit itself is out of the way, in a trunk or under a seat, though somewhere you can reach to click in your cartridge of tunes. You navigate your music archive via your in-dash receiver.
The most common way to use PhatNoise in the car is with its talking user interface, which requires a receiver that can control a standard six-disc CD changer. Basically, the system reads out loud to you as you navigate, and the disc-select buttons intended for a changer now become mode-select buttons (i.e. pushing Disc 2 lets takes you to Playlist mode, where it reads you the playlists you've stored on the cartridge; pushing Disc 4 takes you to Artist mode, where it reads the list of artists, and can skip through the alphabet letter by letter). If your receiver supports text but not six-disc changers, there are ways to install a text-only interface.
Major brands have taken notice of the PhatNoise system. Volkswagen and Audi offer installation of a PhatBox system at the dealership. More importantly, one of the biggest car-audio hardware makers, Kenwood, sells two fully compatible PhatNoise products, the KHD-C710 and CX910 Music Kegs ($600 and $700 with, respectfully, 10GB and 20GB cartridges). Many of Kenwood's receivers, all the way up to the KVT-915DVD head unit ($2,800), are built to support the system with both talking and text interface.
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