Flay

Credit goes to someone else. I ripped this out of a thread at Teamxbox:

Everything You Have Always Wanted To Know About The XBox And Music Storage.

It's finished. I'm done. I hope.

After weeks of ripping, naming, copying, and editing, and promising all of you that I'd finish this one day, I have put all of my musical favorites into the XBox hard drive.

I ended up with 19 different soundtracks to designate the music, and a whopping 981 songs. And as you'll see, I could have added far more.

1.How many blocks are in the Xbox hard-drive?

312,415 blocks.

2.How many hours of music can I record into the Xbox before I tap into the 50,000 blocks?

You can record up to 73 HOURS and 15 MINUTES of music before ever reaching the 50,000 blocks. You will tap into them SOON after, though.

3.How many blocks does 1 MINUTE of music take up?

59.08 blocks or 60 blocks.

4.How many blocks does 1 HOUR of music take up?

About 3600 Blocks.

5.Does the Xbox start messing up or work slower when I load it up with so much music?

Absolutely not. I've been copying, pasting, editing, and of course, playing games, and I've had no problems of any kind AT ALL.

6.How many hours of music is your 981 songs?

It's 71 HOURS and 10 MINUTES total.

7.How many more HOURS of music could you have put in?

I would guess that I'd be able to put in 12 to 13 HOURS MORE music in, but I'd like to keep the 50,000 free for game-related stuff.

8.Do you use your XBox for a jukebox often?

With this many hours of songs that I love, how could I not use it as often as possible? I've completely stopped using CD's altogether.

9.Did you record MP3's from your computer onto the Xbox? Did it change anything?

Yes, I did, and no, it didn't. Same recording time, and same block usage. Of course the quality of the sound coming from lesser-quality MP3's is noticable, but that is to be expected.

10.What types of CD-R's and CD-RW's work on the Xbox?

There's a couple of sites that show you what works and what doesn't. They are:

http://xboxpower.vg-network.com/
and:
http://xbox.aimx.net/

11.So can I store music in MP3 format in the XBOX?

NO, you must first transfer it to .cda format for the xbox to read the music.

Mattalos

Damn, that's a lotta blocks...

Now if I only owned a game where I could use my own soundtrack I might take the time to put my own songs on the HD.

Flay

You don't even need the games.

I just like to throw on some tunes and turn on the full screen Giess-like visual effect.

WOWZY

Thanks for the info Flay!!

A friend of mine has alot of music ripped to the HD and almost 20 games with multiple saves each on it and it still hasn't went below 50,000+ yet. We always wondered how much it would take to get it to show less than the 50,000.

Now we know.

jeffdsmith

Sorry. NM.

TheVelvetRope

Thanks for the post and the links, Flay. I was about to start a thread yesterday about the CD-R issue, after doing an unsuccessful search on the topic, as some of the discs I attempted to use could not be read. They weren't listed on the compatibility list, but I found I have some that do work, so I can rip all the obscure stuff that's not available commercially on CD that I like.

Flay

Yah, you just have to find the right cd-r.

Aghama

So is there a way to install a larger HD yet?

Flay

I haven't seen anything yet. But the first people to figure it out will probably be:

http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.asp

Centurion

I use a Memorex CD-RW to transfer all my mp3's into the Xbox. So far, it has worked without any flaws.
The best thing about it is I can finally listen to my tunes using my home theater speakers instead of the puny Altec Lansing speakers for my PC.

Tuan Jim

So this 50,000+ block section that you're talking about (what it mentions when you go into the memory, is generally used just for games, or is that just recommended to be kept free?

thanks,
Tuan Jim

RoQuEr

only problem is that it is such a pain in the ass to name each track

Flay

No, you don't have too and the entire drive is used for saves. I wouldn't worry unless you got down to a few thousand blocks. Game saves themselves are very small.

Tuan Jim

I've been ripping a bunch of songs and sticking them into "Tuan Jim's Mix". If I choose this as an option while playing Amped or PGR will it automatically go into random play? I just ask since I stuck several complete albums on and I prefer to hear a variety of songs rather than the same band continuously.

Thanks,
Tuan Jim

Flay

Well, I know Amped randomly chooses songs out of the albums you select. It won't just play songs in 1 album then go to the next album.

It's like random selection on a 5 disc cd player. Any song from any cd. Plus you can switch songs during gameplay if you want to.

PGR is a different story. You have to do what you said and stick all the songs you want in 1 album. Then you select that album during gameplay and it randomly selects songs from it.

WOWZY

^
^
For those new to Xbox.

Centurion

I've already used my XBOX as a source for music on numerous occasions. I think I've loaded over 200+ tracks and the thing still reads 50,000+ blocks available.

Xanager

I'm putting some music on my box tonight to use in PGR and have a quick question.

I noticed Flay says you have to transfer files to the .cda format to put them on the Xbox. Does this mean, you have to create an Audio CD instead of an ISO. In other words, if I have 250 songs, am I going to have to make a load of CDs with only 15-20 tracks on each, or can I make just one in mp3 format?

darkside

Thats correct. They have to be in the audio CD format.

Xanager

dang, this may take awhile

btw, thanks for the quick answer.

Xanager

ah, one other question. Does the Xbox compress the audio when they put it on the hard drive. Flay has 981 songs, but the Xbox only has an 8 gig hard drive. If they are putting them in .wav, wouldn't you be limited to maybe 200-250 songs?

darkside

The Xbox compresses the songs to windows media files. You can pack a lot of music into 8 gigs with wma files. It compresses much better than regular mp3s.

Xanager

Okay, cool. What a coincidence, compresses to windows media format

menaz

Yup, there is a way to add a larger hard drive (like 80gigs) but I think you need a mod chip.

MaDJoE

Sorry to bump this old post up but can someone please post any working links to the cdrw list? Thanks