[s-cars] Review: Dension Gateway 300 ipod/USB Music Link

[Sean Reifschneider]

When I got my 2005.0 S4, the previous owner had an IceLink installed to
allow connecting an iPod to the stock stereo (the non-navigation one,
Symphony I believe it's called).  I got an iPod and was reasonably happy,
though it had some issues.

Issues with the original IceLink:

    The iPod sometimes wouldn't resume playing when I started the car.
    About one time out of 3 I had to open up the ashtray and press the play
    button.  About one time out of 10 of those, I had to disconnect and
    reconnect the iPod before it would start working again.

    It wouldn't charge the new model iPods (I originally had a "fat" nano,
    the newer nano would work until the charge ran out).  This is because
    Apple switched from 12v firewire charging to 5v USB charging or
    somesuch.

    I could really only fit a nano in the ashtray, which seriously limited
    how much music I could have.  4GB is what I started with, and the new
    nano was only 8GB.  And besides, I'm paying a huge premium for 4, 8, or
    30GB of storage in the iPod form factor.

    This all becomes an issue because I really don't use the iPod outside
    of the car.  I don't use iTunes, loading music from my Linux computer
    into the iPod is painful (partly because Apple tries to prevent you from
    doing it with an obscuring encoding, which took me 3 hours to get
    working when I got the original Nano, it almost went back).

The biggest issue was that it was constantly requiring attention because of
the issue with not starting playing that I mentioned above.

I started thinking about putting together a "carputer" which I could put a
big ass SSD that would hold my entire music collection and also be able to
do many other things like navigation, wirelessly pull down new music,
whatever.

Then I had this idea to start searching for what was available that would
play music directly from USB.

I found the Dension products and the Gateway 300 seemed to be the best that
I could use.  The Gateway 500 sounded nice, but was not compatible with my
car.

So I got one.

It was an easy, EASY install.  It just uses a wedge between the head unit
and the in-trunk CD changer.  This head unit also has a in-dash 6 disc
changer, which continues to function with the Gateway in place.  I do not
have the in-trunk changer, nor XM, and no desire to use the iPod, so I
have not tested the external changer, nor did I get the options for using
the iPod or the satellite radio.

I got a 32GB USB stick, and encoded my music in the Ogg format (it supports
mp3 and other formats, but I like Ogg).  And off I went.

After some initial testing, I got some "panel mount USB cables", and had a
local stereo installer do the final mounting (using velcro, easy) of the
Dension, and also run the panel mount USB cable into a convenient location
(inside the arm rest).

So now I have my entire CD collection available in my car.

Pros:

    It integrates very nicely with the car.  You select modes, artists,
    random play, and other features from the CD buttons.

    The display shows up in the instrument panel with things like the song
    title.  It doesn't scroll most of the time, which is good because my
    wife finds that extremely distracting on the radio RDS stuff.

    You can ask it to tell you what the current artist is, and also can
    select to play all songs from this artist, or select a specific artist
    to play.

    It's never, in say 4 months, had an issue with failing to start or play.
    It has just worked.

Cons:

    You need to use a Windows-only program to update the music meta-data
    after you put new music on the USB stick.  If you don't do this you lose
    the ability to do some things like get the track title and play a
    particular artist, etc...  Probably not an issue for most, but of the 10
    computers I have none of them run Windows -- they're all Linux.

    It claims that the unit will build that database itself, given enough
    time, but I have not ever seen that happen, despite giving it an hour or
    longer.  It says it needs something like 10 minutes per GB, which on a
    30GB USB stick that's full is going to take a while.

    The random play, particularly within an artist, isn't very good.  It's
    truly random and not shuffle, so it will sometimes replay songs that it
    has recently played, even though the playlist still has songs that it
    has not played recently in it.

Other issues:

    The original Oggs I created had serious skipping issues.  In the end I
    think the issue was that I was generating them at too high a bit-rate.
    I had started with 192kbps, and I'm not sure if that rate was too high
    or if it was the VBR peaking above 320kbps.  I ended up encoding them
    with "oggenc -M 192 --bitrate=128", and that worked fine. To me, 128kbps
    Ogg sound better than 192kbps MP3s (way, way better), so this is fine.
    In fact, for car use 64kbps is probably fine for me.

    The first USB stick I got just sucked.  This isn't Dension's fault,
    obviously.  I finally ended up with a $80-ish SanDisk stick that has
    worked just great.  I'm about ready to take a hammer to the other USB
    stick I got.

I really wish I could have gotten the Gateway 500, particularly with it's
ability to do BlueTooth with a phone for calls and music from the phone.
But it wasn't compatible with my head unit (or any in the S4).

Over all, I really enjoy the Gateway 300 in my car.

I am, of course, not affiliated with Dension other than as a happy
customer.

Sean