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Portable Music Storage for Your Car?
Randy J. Parker asks: "Why don't cars provide input jacks for devices like MP3 players? My car has spectacular audio quality, but forces me to feed it with a handful of CDs. Unless you have a 'CD Text' supporting CD player and a fairly recent CD from the right company, once the CDs disappear into the changer, they become anonymous numbers: 'Disk 1', 'Disk 2', and so on. Devices like the iPod solve the problem of locating and feeding music, but can't be hitched to the car. Is there an after-market solution that doesn't sacrifice as much fidelity as a crappy cassette emulator or FM near-casting? Are there some cars with input jacks? What mechanisms are available to lobby for audio input jacks? Car manufacturers could even sell detachable storage as part of the car, at a huge margin, just like they do with radios and CD changers. This enables customers to finance the purchase of the portable storage device along with the car, opening up another demographic segment of buyers. I don't really want permanent music storage built into the car, since that would just be another device to synchronize. Ideally, I'd just carry my device, and attach it to speakers at my house, my friend's house, or the car I'm in."
There are loads of car stereos with an input jack for your MP3 player. Some of them call this feature "MP3 ready" or some misleading thing like that, but that's what you want, so head down to your local car stereo store and go for it!
well, I have an AIWA that can play mp3 cd's, and has an input jack. got it for something like 230ish bucks @ circut city(yea, i'm to lazy to spell check). it's awsome. just be careful on having it installed. my only issue was that my car didn't have the amp in the trunk or under the seat, so I had to get it installed by a pro(vs the kids @ circut city).
There are many head units availible as aftermarket upgrades that provide inputs. Aiwa is one brand that's known to have them, and there are several others. Some have a headphone sized line in jack on the front, and some have full RCA jacks on the back. Personally, i've used a 5 year old Aiwa tape deck with an input on the front, hooked up to both an MP3 discman and my Pocket PC. Sounded great in either setup, and the deck was less than $100.
The Honda Element has a mp3 input, and I think the Toyota Matric and Mazda MP3 have some music related features as well.
)
Oterwise you will need to go out and buy a new head unit.
For the Civic Hybrid, made a simple holder for my Ipod in the civic in dash storage and picked up an iTrip (http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/itrip/
1. It could be connected to stereo via "Line In", RF modulator, or cassette -- can be used in anyone's car, with the right adapters
2. Uses standard 3.5" hard drive -- easily swap for another drive, uses USB 1.1 or EIDE for file transfers
3. Portable mass storage device.
Here's the link.
My Pioneer (Premier) DEH-P730 came with an ability to hook something up to the head via a box that took two RCA jacks and turned it into their proprietary connector that they use to connect CD players to mutli-CD players and even the satellite radio service XM receiver. The connector box is the CD-RD20 and looks like it conditions the signal (although I would not know either way). I know that the newer models support MP3 and WMA discs and probably support the file name, if not the ID3 tags. The one I have supports CD Text. It's MSRP was $400 at the time, but I got it from one of those eBay stores for $200, new. I'm not exactly sure, but it looks like only the lowest level Pioneer CD player does not come with CD text. I know that this is not exactly what you wanted, but I hope it's somewhat helpful none the less.
-Peapod
I recently went through a search for a car audio system that allowed my iPod to hook into it.
I tried a cassette adapter and FM broadcaster but they didn't sound too great and were a pain to deal with while driving. My situation was also special because I have a jeep CJ7 with a soft top (ie no door locks) and live in the city so I needed to have a theft-resistance system which meant not leaving random electronic components laying around.
My solution was to ditch the in-dash unit altogether and install a cheap amp under the center console. I then ran a 1/8"-to-RCA jack directly to the pre-amp input of the amplifier.
Now I can just jump in the car, plug the jack into the iPod and hit the road. It has great sound since the music goes straight from the iPod into the amp, and it is as theft-proof as you can get since the amp is tucked away and bolted down. If I want to play a CD (I never do), I can just take along an old discman and plug the line-out into the jack.
Read his post:
He wants something that doesn't sacrifice as much fidelity as a crappy cassette emulator or FM near-casting (emphasis mine).
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
I have a Holdem Commodore VR Acclaim, and am so lucky to have a line in input right on the front of my car stero!
:)
:(. So we have to burn mp3's to audio cds to listen in her car. It sucks :(. It won't play CD-RW cd's either :(
I just connect the ipod to it, and play away for hours as i drive
My GF's Holden Commodore VX S-Pack has an Cdplayer in her car, and no line-input
Why don't car manufactures make line-input standard???
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
ask your car insurance people about radio theft.
Sometimes you can get coverage for players
by telling them in advance that you use it.
Cheers, Joel
...that had an aux input.
Now I just have to get around to buying an MP3 jukebox...};^)
What were you expecting?
The Auto Industry's conspiracy department had so much success accepting payback from the oil industry to not make fuel efficient cars that they have branched out into getting money from the RIAA to not make cars MP3-compatable.
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
although it probably won't connect to your factory head unit (the radio itself), the the phatnoise music box is an mp3 player that runs linux, supports mp3 and ogg, and connects to many makes of head units through their cd changer controls presenting cd text information to the head unit from id3 tags or filenames. they've since sold the rights to the product to kenwood, who now sell it as the music keg in 10 and 20gb version. the hard drive comes in a removable cartidge, and the system includes a usb docking cradle. the thing looks like a typical car amp, so you just grab the hd from the unit and slap it into the cradle to transfer your songs back and forth.
Made by PhatNoise. It appears as a CD changer to your head unit, and has a removable drive with cradle for your pc.
All you need is a stereo that has an auxiliary jack. I have an Aiwa CDC X207 in my car, and that can be found on ebay for about $50, since it's about 2 years old. Plug your iPod or other sound-producing device into that. Blammo.
Don't bother with the cables and charging the batteries and all the rest of the hassle.
Just get an mp3 car unit
I bought a Pioneer DEH-7400MP MP3 CD player and I love it. It was about $300 and had free installation. It's a no-brainer to burn a ton of MP3 music onto a CD-R. I usually use fairly large VBR files and I can fit 100 tracks on a CD no sweat. It has an organic EL display with interesting little canned videos, but of more practical importance, it can display the directory name, file name, ID3 track or artist name in ascii.
I bought it about a year ago. Now the units are getting cheaper. Browse through crutchfield because you can easily see what is available and what it costs. Look under:
Car Audio and Video CD, MP3 & DVD Receivers CD/MP3 Receivers
You can probably get something installed in your car for under $200. You might want to double check that the unit you buy shows the id3 information because some don't.
Oh yeah, if your friend likes the music you're playing, you can just give away the CD and burn another one later.
Check out http://www.rcainput.com/
If you're lucky you'll have a late-model car that has the ability to plug in one of these adapters. It seems they plug into the wiring harness of factory units that have an option to add an OEM cd changer.
Check out PhatNoise. I just put the Kenwood eXcelon Music Keg into our new ride, and LOVE it. I might be getting another one for the other car. Post a reply if you're interested in seeing some pix of the install - I don't want to overload the servers at the forums where they're hosted.
You don't always have to look to an "mp3 ready" head unit.
:P ) So, I just popped the face off the center of the dash, popped the EQ, plugged the cord in and snaked the other end down to the lower storage compartment, and ta-da, I have a fixed input for the player in the Grand Am.
I kinda just went through this. I have two cars -- one is a 1999 Grand Am, and the other a stock 1969 Cadillac convertible. For a rather looong road trip I was taking, I recently purchased an Archos 20GB MP3 Jukebox. It has a few quirks, but it's a nice unit.
For the Cadillac, I bought Cendyne's Gruv-X wireless FM transmitter. The Caddy's still got the stock radio, and I do *not* want to rip it out. The Gruv-X was the perfect way to go. It was about $25 (Slightly higher at ThinkGeek.com.), runs off of one AAA battery for about 8 hours. Works well. I can tune it to any frequency, and play my tunes.
For the Grand Am, I kinda lucked out. I dropped a pretty nice stereo system when I bought it, including an in-dash EQ that has *two* sets of stereo RCA inputs. (I wish I could remember the make/model, but I don't, and it's raining, so I'm not running out to the car.
And, of course, the optional accessories, like a portable power invertor for the car, so that I can recharge the player on those loooooooooong road trips, like this last one. All in all, not a bad set-up.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
mine's got the input at the back. (cheapo Blaupunkt)
the newer/more expensive one should have too
front inputs rare.
audio-cassette converters also of course
but why should they bother when you can charge $£xxx for integration?
A blog I run for the wealth
Anyway, I ended up getting a Neo car jukebox. It mounts on your desktop computer as a hard disk, then you unplug it and plug it into yout car. The nifty thing is that they have adapter units for various head units to fool them into thinking it's a CD changer.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
http://www.neurosaudio.com/ Neuros HD 20GB MP3 Digital Audio Computer: spits out to your radio 10 hour rechargable battery the all important and rare OGG support ....screw it...cut and paste from this site below:
Intuitive navigation
Go anywhere size: 5.3" x 3.1" x 1.3", 9.4 oz.
20GB hard drive holds up to 5,000 songs (encoded at 128kbps)
Use as a portable hard drive to hold any file you want to take with you
Digitally enhanced FM tuner
Recording to MP3 format from internal microphone, FM tuner, and line input
High resolution, backlit LCD display and button controls
5 programmable preset buttons
10 hours of continuous playback with rechargeable Lithium Ion battery
Automatic firmware and software upgrades
Neuros comes with earphones, car power adapter, wall power adapter, USB cable and Neuros Synchronization Manager Software
I haven't checked their status, but when I saw this a few months ago, ogg and linux support was being heavily discussed, as they where building a relationship with http://www.xiph.org
The neuros forums hold the answers I'm sure.
There was actually a wonderful unit that used to be sold for a pretty cheap price ($399 for 10 gigs?) that was basically a mini computer that fit inside your stereo pannel. I forget who originally made it, but Rio bought it up and discontinued it. Wonderful, easy to use linux-based computer/stereo that had changeable faceplates and was easily upgradeable with extra laptop harddrives. Check ebay to see if you can still find one, if you can afford it. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =3018297447&category=1498
This auction's already finished, but there's the specs for ya.
sigs are dumb.
There's more than just those listed out there. Do some searching if yours isn't on that rcainput.com page.
Pacific Accessory Corporation makes several different adapters, as does Precision Interface Electronics.
Note that some of these require that you have a CD Changer or some other form of accessory slave device (like a factory XM receiever, perhaps) already in the vehicle. For an example, the Chevy Impala has the capability to have a CD Changer and the newer Impala's have the built in XM slave device. These use the same connection (a 12 pin connector) to talk to the radio. If you want to use PAC's AAI-GM12, you must have some form of slave. These don't emulate the CD Changer, they simply provide a switch to the audio signal inputs.
It's entirely possible for someone to make a device to interface with the radio as a slave unit in the same way the factory devices do. The advantage to this method would be that stuff like text could be put onto the Radio's display. Newer GM cars, for instance, use the Class 2 Serial Bus (J1850 VPW for those of you in the know) to talk between the radio and the radio's slave unit. The text you see on the screen is actually coming from that slave unit over the data network. That's why you see different things for the XM slave unit, the radio itself is identical, the data it's getting is not.
Nobody I've found makes a device to do specifically this task, but it actually wouldn't be difficult to roll your own. Devices to convert J1850 to RS232 Serial can be had for $75 or so, and usually have a "sniffer" type of mode so you can easily reverse engineer the protocol. If you're into this sort of thing, you could probably write some code to actually display song titles and such from a laptop playing MP3's without a heck of a lot of difficulty. And all your steering wheel controls (which are also on the bus) could work too.
Cars are getting more and more networked, and it's only a matter of time before some bright boy creates a portable MP3 player with an in-car docking station to let it:
a) get power from the car, and possibly recharge
b) send and receive serial type data to the car's network thus allowing in car controls to work and stuff like ID3 tags to be displayed on the radio.
Nearly all modern GM cars have this potential right now. Most Ford's do too. Probably many foreign cars as well, albeit I'm not familiar with their systems. If I could find a MP3 portable device with connections that could allow a docking station in car to be made, I'd roll my own.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I have a friend who has a 3.5mm jack that comes out next to the parking brake. it feeds right into his amp. he also has a regular cd player on the dash and a really good sound system, Im sorry I dont know more details, but I know its done.
I bought a relatively inexpensive Jensen MP3 CD player for $150...it has an aux/input jack on the faceplate. Nice sound quality for my mid-range speakers, too.
My car is fairly old (1985), and quite a common model around here. It only has a radio tuner, but I've noticed that some cars of the same model had a cassette player too.
So, I rang the manufacturer, who was kind enough to post me the wiring diagrams, bought a cable with a headphone plug on one end, and a DIN plug, and soldered them together. Now I can connect whatever I want (cd, mp3, anything) to my speakers without having to buy a separate car unit, and without having something in the dash that just screams 'steal me!' (a big concern in my area).
Might be worth a shot if you like to tinker.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
What I want too. Go to radio shack, get a clamp-down style cell phone holder. Get one of those FM modulators. Pipes directly into the antenna via wire. Or grab one of their head-end cd changer emulator units. Either should work. iPod heaven. :)
What hacks me off is the fact that the new iPod has a proprietary plug at the bottom now. :( In order to fully integrate the thing into my car I'll have to hack an iPod dock, or make a plug. Me hates it. Hates it me does...
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
The question to me really is not how to do it -- the poster just got a new car with a good audio system -- he doesn't want to throw away his radio and buy a new head unit. The question I would like to see answered is why in the heck is some kind of mini-jack line input not supplied by at least luxury car makers? It seems such a trivial addition to a car that would allow people to use alternate audio devices -- whatever the device is. They can take their favorite MP3 player or whatever with them in the car. Then, they dont have to go buy specific solutions (ie from phatnoise) when they already have equipment. The cassette & fm interfaces aren't great.
Some poster here said at least the honda element has a jack. Im just puzzled why at least luxury car makers dont add a jack, then try to sell marked up audio devices (like ipods) -- just like they do cd players (you could go to a car stereo store and get better cd changes for cheaper if you wanted, yet many people just take the "factory" one thats marked up so much).
Seems like there are plenty of rube goldberg solutions to make it work, but it seems that in this day and age of innovation -- why hasnt such a simple thing been added to car stereos by default in general.
I'd love to have one that I could just plug my USB key into. I can hold at least a CDs worth of songs on my little USB key and I can change the songs on a daily basis rather than having to burn a new CD. That's how I transport them to play at work. Now how about letting me play them in the car along the way?
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
If you have a Nissan Quest, there's adapters on that rcainput.com page. I think the Quest is actually a Ford though, judging from the adapters there.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Volkswagen and Audi dealers sell the PhatBox mentioned a couple other times here. You can get it with a new car, or put it in a 99 or newer VW/Audi. Oh, and yes, it plays Ogg and you can manage it from Linux with a couple Perl scripts.
actually, it does work with many factory headunits.
volkswagen and audi (at least in the US) now sell phatboxes in their dealerships as dealer-installed options. you can get them for bmw's, fords, toyota, nissan, honda, as well as kenwood and sony, and some others. check out their list of compatible products.
i have one and it totally kicks ass. haven't had to listen to clearchannel radio in over a year.
Unfortunately, it's an SUV but the Honda Element has an audio system with an AUX input for portable music players. Personally, I think it looks pretty sweet, but since I hate people who drive SUVs without a need for one, I'll have to wait until Honda adds it to a Civic or an Accord.
If you had a look around the open source scene you will have noticed that there are a number of projects to reverse engineer the protocols that the headunits use to 'talk' to CD autochangers etc.
The one that I'm involved with is for Sony headunits, can be found here:
http://gnunilink.sourceforge.net
This little hardware dongle fools the headunit into believing there is a CD changer attached and can be interfaced with a PC or other MP3 player to put track/disk names onto the headunit's display.
Simon.
Check out Kenwoods offering for an in-car 20gb rig with a USB docking station for the media...
The ideal device for this sort of things involves four components:
1) A holding mechanism for the player. In my view, this part is the bottleneck for the development process: There are lots of MP3 players on the market; aside from the iPod, none has the market size that would justify creating such a device. And you can't create a universal one, because no two MP3 devices have even remotely the same shape/size.
2) A method of transmitting sound to your car speakers. This could go through the radio/changer, either through a line input cable, an FM caster, or a cassette adapter; or it could be a replacement. Each of these has serious problems.
The *ideal* solution - indeed, the DREAM solution, for many reasons - is an 802.11b adapter in both the radio and the player, or less preferably, Bluetooth adapters. I probably don't need to elaborate, save saying that I'm just astounded that the MP3 market has fallen flat in this regard.
3) A power charging mechanism. Either adapt from the DC power/lighter jack, or wire directly to the car's electric system. Both solutions have issues.
4) A way of providing I/O without requiring the driver to futz with an MP3 player. This is real pie-in-the-sky stuff; but even when I take the time to hook my Jukebox to my car adapter and FM caster, I find this to be a serious problem.
- David Stein, Esq.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
There are actually a lot of solutions available for those who want MP3 capability in thier vehicle. Some newer vehicles come with line input jacks available(such as the Honda Element). Lots of older lower end aftermarket tape and cd decks came with line input jacks aimed at people with portable cd players and more recently portable MP3 players(see optimus, rampage, pyle, and similar brands). Pioneer and Kenwood, and (to some extent)Sony all offer line input devices that connect to their decks as CD changers(though sony's is rather difficult to find information on). Sony, Kenwood, and Alpine all offer MP3 cd changers, and some sort of solid state changer style MP3 player(Kenwood - music keg, Sony has a memory stick reader, and Alpine is about to release a Music keg style solid state device). Alpine, Pioneer, and Sony all offer indash HDD players. And of course there are the multitude of headunits out there that offer MP3 cd support. And as I've seen mentioned in several other posts there are many other HDD style players that are available(such as Phatnoise...poke around on google there's lots to be found). For those wanting MP3 with your factory headunit many vehicles targeted at younger audiences now have MP3 cd support and some O.E. manufacturers are offering O.E. style headunits for sale in the aftermarket that support MP3(visteon sells one for Ford). Be sure to check out PAC and other companies that make CD changer interfaces for your factory radio many of these now come with line in jacks, in addition to letting you add a CD changer to your factory headunit(see your local car audio shop for help on this one). And if nothing else has worked so far or you just want something cheap that should work on just about any car; you can always go FM-modulated, but don't by one of thos little transmitters. You can get a modulator that basically splices into your antenna line(it plugs into your radio and then your antenna plugs into it) this is much better quality that those portable transmitters and cassette adapters, but still not quite as good as CD(again see your local stereo shop for this).