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Luster of iPod Rubs Off in Car
Jan 24 2008 by Lori Hindman
1/24/08
Without a Built-In Jack, Listening Options Are Few
Santa sure was good to me this year; I found a brand-spanking new iPod Touch under the tree on Christmas morning. Yeah! This thing is so cool: music, podcasts, pictures, calendar, Wi-Fi — you name it, my iPod can do it. Naturally, I'd like to use it in the place where I spend the majority of my day: in my car, shuttling my kids/dogs/groceries around (cue screeching-halt sound effect). Suddenly, something that's supposedly so easy just got really complicated.
The iPod-in-the-car business is a challenge. There are a few options on the market that allow you to play an iPod or any other MP3 player through your car's stereo system. Some of them are great and others are, well — not so much. If you're lucky enough to have a car that was built in the last couple of years, chances are pretty good that you have an MP3 input jack somewhere in the dash or glove compartment of your vehicle. Check your owner's manual for details. If you've got that jack, all you need to connect your iPod is a cord that runs from your device's headphone jack to the car's input jack. These cords are inexpensive and available at any electronics store or mega-store, like Target or Wal-Mart. Now you can boogie on down the road.
If, however, you're like me and have a car without one of those nifty ports, it's not going to be that easy. Unless you want to buy and install a new stereo that comes with an input, you aren't going to get the best sound quality. There are two other ways to go: an FM transmitter or a cassette adapter. FM transmitters plug into your MP3 player and broadcast a weak FM signal on any open frequency you choose and is picked up by your car's radio. Sounds cool, right? It is, if you live in a rural area with no hills and no big cities within a hundred miles. I don't. I live in the hills outside L.A., where radio stations broadcast signals on nearly every channel at a strength that easily swamps the little transmitter plugged into my cigarette lighter. When I use an FM transmitter in my car, I spend most of my time switching between channels as I drive, trying to find one that's relatively static-free. This is tough, because every time I round a curve I pick up different radio signals from L.A., San Diego or Santa Barbara. Not only is my music messed up, I'm distracted on the road and not driving safely. Not good! I can't imagine the situation is any better in another metro area.
That leaves the cassette adapter. (You remember cassette tapes, right?) Well, now, as in days of yore, you can once again use your tape deck to listen to music. If your car has one, just buy one of those adapters like you used to use for portable CD players; insert the adapter tape, which has a cord attached, run the cord up to your iPod and you're all set. Sound quality suffers compared to CDs or other digital media, but at least there's no static or constant channel surfing. At under $20, the adapters are inexpensive, but they don't last forever. After a while, the tape part starts to wear out and makes odd clicking noises as it turns in the tape deck. I've replaced mine a few times over the past couple of years, but at least the sound is fairly consistent. And anyway, it's not like your kids need to hear "The Wheels on the Bus" in stereo, right?
I still love my new toy, even if some of the shine rubs off in the car. Maybe Santa will bring me an auxiliary port for my car next year. Or a new car. That should work, too.
User Comments
There is one other option - a hard wired FM adapter (also called an FM modulator). This is basically an adapter that joins with the antenna cable where it plugs into the back of your radio, and provides a headphone jack to plug your MP3 player into. It will broadcast onto a couple different frequencies, but the good thing is that because it is physically connected (not broadcasting to the antenna), it easily overrides any local station on that frequency. Installation is a litte more involved, because you have to pull the radio out of your dashboard, plug in the adapter, and splice into a power supply, but it is well worth the effort! For anyone who isn’t into that kind of work, most any electronics store that does car audio installation can do this for you! And it only should cost around $30-40 for the adapter, plus installation costs. (see http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Product/Item/Main.aspx?g=771&i=142FMMOD01&tp=121 for details)
I use the Griffin SmartDeck with my iPod. I think it sounds better than a regular cassette adapter; and you don’t have to adjust the volume on the iPod and you can use the controls on the radio to change the song and skip through (I don’t really use it since I am used to using my iPod). It’s a downside for those with an iPod Shuffle.