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."

Comments

Uh, yeah.

[Tom7]

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!

Head units with inputs availible

[seinman]

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.

Pioneer

[Peapod]

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

My setup

[sreilly]

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.

It won't happen because...

[darthwader]

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.

Just get an mp3 car unit...

[Polo]

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.

RCA input for factory head units

[speleo]

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.

The solution need not be the head unit

[TrebleJunkie]

You don't always have to look to an "mp3 ready" head unit.

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. :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.

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.