Playing iPod in the car
If the iTrip is a waste of money that won’t work over your car radio, what is the best solution to playing music in your iPod over your car’s stereo system?
Here’s the catch: I don’t have a tape deck.
Is the only solution to upgrade my car’s system so I have a CD player AND tape deck?
31. December 2004 at 08:54
Augie, I just pick up the MOnster cable icarplay wireless car stero fm transmitter and it is great — very easy to use and the sound is near perfect. it is 50 bucks and well worth it.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00019068G/104-1014790-0911129?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
31. December 2004 at 09:24
Yes, the iTrip is AWFUL. I’m faced with a similar scenario, because my tape deck has one of those little lids that seals the deck shut after a tape is put in. All of those casette-based formats have those wires that snake out and plug into the Pod/CD player whatever – the tape deck lid won’t close if I use one of those, and ergo, won’t play the tape.
I have a Link radio transmitter thing that works quite well most of the time. The reason I think it works better than the iTrip is that the iTrip has no independent power source – it draws power from the Pod. Therefore, in order to minimize the power drain, the signal is quite weak and barely makes it to the radio. The Link, on the other hand, has it’s own batteries, so the signal is substantially stronger.
31. December 2004 at 10:36
How packed are you radio frequencies where you are? Down here we have 8 billion or so pirate radio stations, latin music channels, evangelical talk radio, etc. that there’s barely an open frequency. I used both an iTrip and a Belkin FM transmitter, and both were of no use. I ended up using a tape adapter and it works great.
However, on one road trip I tried the transmitter again and it worked great! Of course, I was smack dab in the middle of the Florida Turnpike amid nothing but orange groves as far as the eye can see, so that probably had something to do with it.
31. December 2004 at 11:10
Matt – living in your neighborhood (where in South Florida are you anyways, Miami proper or where?), I had the same problems. The Link has a sufficiently strong signal to generally push the others out of the way. It works about 95% of the time fairly well. There are just days, however, when I want to throw them both out the window. I’m thinking about that iCarPlay that Jeff mentioned…
31. December 2004 at 11:42
I never understood why car stereos don’t come with RCA in ports. Anyone know why that is?
31. December 2004 at 13:33
That’s a good question, Robblog. You’d think they’d be handy even going so far back as the Walkman. Weird.
31. December 2004 at 14:23
Patricia – I live in South Miami (near Sunset Place) but I work in Fort Lauderdale, so my commute is moderately hefty. When I used the FM transmitters I would generally get nothing but staticky noise packed inside the transmission. There are simply too many pirate “hip-hop” stations throughout the Miami-Dade area for me to get a good signal.
I have the built in adapter that holds the iPod upright, charges it, and also acts as a transmitter. However, my car has a tape deck so I still use the adapter. But given that satellite radio uses the tape deck as well, I’ve been thinking of some alternatives. There [b]are[/b] car steroes that feature RCA inputs; they’re just not stock features though. It looks like it might just be time for an upgrade.
31. December 2004 at 15:56
About 7 years ago I had a Sony car deck that played CDs, not tapes. However, it did have an RCA jack so I could plug in a walkman if I wanted to listen to a tape. I can’t recall ever seeing another car deck that had such a jack.
What was really cool was that the adapter was right on the face of the deck, in the lower left hand corner. It was easy as pie to simply plug the device in, then push the source button to allow the deck to receive the signal.
I wonder if any manufacturer offers such an option today?