CompTrac.com

L.David Taylor:

There are so many reviews going over the routing features, I thought I would take a moment and talk to you about the music playback feature, and how that integrates into the routing experience. First off let me say that I love the Garmin 780 with MSN Direct service. I subscribed right away before even using the free three month trial period. I need navigation. My mind is on other things while I am driving, and I don’t want to be staring at a direction print out while I am looking for a street name. The MSN direct, which is far as I am concerned, is free when you buy the 780, as compared to the 760 for the same price, because the $100 power cord, which is where the MSN Direct resides, is already included in the 780. So paying for a lifetime subscription (guaranteed by Microsoft until at least 2014) charge is only making up the difference between the two units. Grab a 780 before they are gone. Ok, onto the music playback feature.

The dream for me is to ride down the road, enjoy a premium music system, and not have to worry about hearing the Garmin, clearly spoken directions. Garmin speaks clearly, but is drowned out by a high end, crystal clear system, that can play at upscale levels without distortion. So we are not talking about a blaring radio here. The solution; buy a Transcend 16 GB SDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card with Card Reader TS16GSDHC6-S5W and copy all of your MP3′s onto it. The Garmin has an SD slot, that will accept the latest Class 6 SDHC cards in the largest size that they make, as long as you have the latest free firmware update. Then attach the audio out that is gain adjustable from within the Garmin screens, into your Aux input on your radio. (If you do not have one, they sell cassette deck plug in adapters, that actually connect to a specially designed cassette.) So with the Garmin plugged into your cars player/radio you will enjoy going down the highway, hearing your music, and when Garmin wants to give you directions, it instantly mutes the music, gives you the spoken directions, and immediately goes back to playing your music again without missing a beat. The other option is to use the Garmin FM transmitter option. The only problem with that is the directions instruct you to tune to a snowy channel, and set the Garmin to that same channel. So much of playing music and listening to the Garmin. If they had a strong FM transmitter that would over ride the local station, then it would be a viable alternative. I can understand why that would be a challenge, considering there is no way of knowing just how close or powerful the radio station is transmitting. The solution is to go with the audio out jack, that I just mentioned, which is a standard computer audio out jack, the same one that is also used on the iPods.

By the way, don’t get the 16GB card alone without the USB stick reader. For only 5 more bucks, get the one with the USB stick. I was copying 1,523 songs over to the Transcend 16GB SDHC through the Garmin, and after watching the songs slowly copying, with an estimated 5 hours wait time provided in the read out, I decided I didn’t want to heat up my Garmin, and use up the electronics, so I stopped the copying, and plugged the SDHC into the included USB stick, and restarted the copying. This time, the copying flew like a fighter jet, copying all 8 Gigs in only 17 minutes. Plus if you are visiting a friend, and want to swap files, you can use your universal USB stick to copy them directly to your 16GB SDHC. Imagine getting that much space on a little tiny card that is about the size of a postage stamp.

So how is the quality of the audio coming out of the Garmin? At first I thought it was not iPod level, or the level of the premium stereo you may have in your car, playing a CD, but with I little tweaking, I realize it is outstanding. It is clear, undistorted, and has good highs, and sufficient bass. Be sure and adjust the settings by clicking on the speaker icon, and set your master gain, and source gain to the maximum level without any strain or distortion, and then adjust your cars stereo to the ideal volume, and you will be hard pressed to find a better sound. When comparing it to a CD in my car, actually the best sounding CD that I have, the Garmin comes real, real close. Good enough to want to use it all of the time. The dream is to be able to crank up the stereo, and never miss a turn.

By the way, I have my entire CD collection copied over in the MP3 format at 192Kbps which is absolutely indistinguishable from the original .wav file the CD comes in, and that takes up a little over 8 Gigs. Since I copied every tune I ever wanted to hear out of over 900 CD’s to create that collection, I know that I have a large library, of all great songs, and what took up a huge wall, now is reduced to a SDHC card, the size of a postage stamp. By the way, the Garmin scans the SDHC and knows from the MP3 information, just what songs, there are and also gives you the selection by artist, album, etc. So you can custom pick your artist to fit the mood, even though you, like I, may have your MP3′s in just one big list of songs; Garmin organizes all of that for you. What can I say? Life is good, snatch up one of these babies before they are gone. This 780 garnered “Best Buy” awards from the leading consumer reporting magazine, and it was in the group with the big daddies as a full featured, premium device. In the lower strata were devices that normally go for what this 780 is bringing right now, while it is still available. This thing is a 700 dollar list price item. Highly recommended.