You would expect any car entertainment system to play music, and our computers oblige by offering a host of class-leading features. Music playback is controlled using the Centrafuse software interface, providing an easy way of controlling music playback using the touch sensitive display.

Music interface

Using one of our computers as the car's music player has several advantages over traditional mp3 players or head units. For a start, the amount of storage available is practically unlimited. Our computers' primary hard drives can store up to 750 GB, which in itself puts all portable mp3 players to shame, but we can always add extra drives if more space is required.

Then there's the ability to play almost any format of music file out there, like the popular MP3 and WMA file formats, but also Apple's AAC* format, as used on the iPod.  And, by virtue of being a computer, if a new audio codec appears in the future it is likely that the car computer will require only a quick update before being able to play the latest formats.

The range of media devices that our computers can play music from is unsurpassed by any traditional car music system - music can be played from:

  • The computer's large capacity hard drive(s)
  • CDs (CD-R, CD-RW)
  • DVDs (DVD±R, DVD±RW, DVD-RAM, including dual-layer discs)
  • 52 different types of memory card (including SD and CF)
  • USB flash drives
  • USB external hard drives
  • Apple iPods ( Centrafuse includes a dedicated iPod mode)
  • Any other USB mp3 player that Windows recognises as a drive
  • The internet (if 3G internet connectivity is chosen)

Other features include:

  • Easily find music - browse by artist, album, genre or folder
  • Browse the music library by looking at album art
  • Find a particular song by searching for text in the artist, album, track or filename fields
  • Create playlists, have several playlists open at once, and easily switch between them without losing the place in the music
  • Shuffle and repeat function
  • Display album art or visualisation when playing music (includes full-screen option)
  • Treble, bass and balance adjustment
  • 10-band equaliser
  • Centrafuse always remembers the place in the music when the computer powers down so that music resumes from the same place when the PC is powered back on (this includes music played from CDs)
  • When manually changing track or playlist the music can rapidly fade in and out, rather than producing an abrupt change in the music
  • Automatically looks up CD track information from the internet (if connected) and displays track titles instead of "track 1", "track 2", etc
  • Automatically scans inserted media (CDs, DVDs, memory cards, USB devices) for music tracks making it easy to choose what to play
  • Major music controls (play/pause, previous & next track, track title, increase & decrease volume) can be visible from within other modes (e.g. media playback can be controlled from within navigation mode)

 

 


*Centrafuse can currently only play AAC files that are not copy protected.