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My test 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS in "rally red" was equipped with a magnificent 650-watt Rockford-Fosgate Punch sound system. It gets instant "street cred" with its 10-inch in-trunk woofer blasting out bass to shake house foundations. There are nine speakers connected to an eight-channel amplifier.
The upgraded stereo is part of a $1,500 "Sun and Sound" package that also includes a sunroof and auxiliary audio inputs for an iPod or another music player. Most intriguing, the system includes a 30-gig hard drive that can rip CDs as they are played. In my tests, it took about 10 minutes to do the job. Controls allow riders to automatically rip every CD inserted (probably not a great idea), choose songs manually or simply have the first song on each disc automatically saved — but what’s the point of that?
The system was not without its challenges. For one, it uses the well-established Gracenote software to identify artists and tracks, but in practice, it found the titles only about a quarter of the time. And without a keyboard, there’s no way to input that information. People are going to end up with many "Track Ones" by "Unknown Artists." How would you find a favorite track or album? Since Gracenote is nearly flawless when connected to iTunes, I have to assume the problem is with a mobile connection to the company’s servers.
Loading and ejecting CDs also is somewhat tedious, because the screen has to fold out of the way first. I find multiple-CD changers annoying to use, though mounting them in the dashboard is a big improvement over the trunk. Once music is loaded on the hard drive, the playback sounds very good indeed. You’d have to be an audiophile to tell the ripped tracks from the originals.
My guess is 5,000 to 6,000 songs could be easily stored on that 30-gig hard drive, more than enough for most people (though not enough for a music hound like me, since I have 12,000 tunes on my iPod). An added feature is an RCA video input that allows passengers to watch movies on the navigation screen, though only when the car is stopped. Who would actually sit in their car and watch TV? I couldn’t get my iPod to play through the system, but I was probably just doing it wrong.
Mitsubishi is not the first manufacturer to offer a hard-drive system. The Lancer is based on the Dodge Caliber and earlier this year Chrysler rolled out MyGIG, a digital music system built around a "ruggedized" 20-gigabyte hard drive (which also stores data for the car’s navigational system). First seen on the Chrysler Sebring, MyGIG has space for 1,600 songs in about six gigabytes of dedicated space.
But it’s Ford, in partnership with Microsoft, that has the killer ap. Its Sync system, shown off at this year’s New York Auto Show and available in 2008 models, has the virtue of wide connectivity options. For instance, you can plug in a 100-gig portable hard drive and Sync will identify and organize the songs and even respond to voice commands. Just say, "Play ‘Paint it Black’ by the Rolling Stones," and it will find the recording. It also can play the audio from cell phones. Frankly, I see this system as triumphing over the intriguing but ultimately limiting hard drive.
