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Music Media

Portable Music Storage for Your Car? 79

Posted by Cliff from the an-RCA-line-in-jack-would-be-fine dept.
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."
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Portable Music Storage for Your Car? More

Portable Music Storage for Your Car?

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  • Uh, yeah. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @07:59PM (#5849101) Homepage Journal

    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!

    • Are there any stereos that JUST have this aux in, or perhaps aux in plus radio? I've had two car tape players and one cd player die, and frankly, I'd rather save $10 and not have moving parts to break.
      • my 92 mazda's factory stereo has an aux input. whenever i tried the cassette adapters, they would work for awhile, then crap out on me after about a month. but the aux in works fine, and allowed me to easily unplug the mp3 cd player and throw it in my dash to hide 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).
    • Don't knock some of the Circuit City installers. Okay, well, any store but those in the Boston Area. :) My brother does installs at a CC up that way. He's built cars that have competed and placed very well in the SPL World Finals. And he's the best, too, when it comes to building quality-sounding and -looking installs, not just loud ones.

      Every so often, one of those "kids" knows his shit.

      • Re:my car (Score:1, Troll)

        by babbage ( 61057 )
        Oh, so he's the mofo that's helping soup up these hotrod stereo systems so that their disaffected college dropout testosterone fueled drivers can take them blaring back & forth down my street at all hours of the day & night. Next time you see that brother of yours, tell him Chris from Somerville said thanks a fuckin' lot.

        :-)

        It's okay, it's been a good 30 minutes since one of these guys has gone by, so I can laugh about it at the moment. Just don't ask 30 minutes from now, by which time another one

  • Head units with inputs availible (Score:4, Informative)

    by seinman ( 463076 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:01PM (#5849118) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • I have a Kenwood head unit from 2000, and it has RCA jacks on the back. Couple that with a headphone -> RCA cable that comes with most CD players and MP3 players, and you're all set. And it's not like it was the top of the line Kenwood at the time, either. It cost me about $180 installed. This was only because the previous owner of the car (my dad) had "accidentally" ripped out a bunch of the speaker wire when the old stereo died on him. You can probably get the same head unit (which has support for a CD
    • Lots of Blaupunkt [blaupunkt.com] receivers have an auxiliary input. It took a $15 adaptor to patch an MP3 player into my Blaupunkt Nevada.
      We just drove 1000 miles and never heard the same song twice. No fumbling with CDs, no nauseating ClearChannel.
      Plus you can get all kinds of stuff with your favorite P2P app -- audio books, Feynman lectures, old radio shows, etc.
  • 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/)

  • Pioneer (Score:4, Informative)

    by Peapod ( 568493 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:09PM (#5849184)
    My Pioneer (Premier) DEH-P730 [pioneerelectronics.com] 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 [pioneerelectronics.com] 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 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sreilly ( 5153 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:12PM (#5849194) Homepage
    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.
    • how well does the amp deal with the audio signal providing that weak/strong of a volume signal? did you use a specific amp type for this application, or would any cheap 30-100 watt amp work? did you have to upgrade your speakers for this?
  • 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!

    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 :(. 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 :(

    Why don't car manufactures make line-input standard???

    D.

    • Why don't car manufactures make line-input standard???

      Because car manufacturers are brain-dead? At least Holden has a clue.

      Now I want a Monaro :(

    • New Saab 9-3 (probably not a common marque in the US) is even neater. In one of the cubbyholes down the centre console, there's a line-in jack. The cubbyhole is a perfect size for an ipod or similar MP3 or MD player, and convenient for reaching the buttons.

      Very slick.

  • Car radio theft insurance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joelparker ( 586428 ) <joel@school.net> on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:28PM (#5849298) Homepage
    If you have a valuable portable MP3 car player,
    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

    • when my car got broken into the insurance only covered equipment that was mounted to the car "securely". in this case, the subs i had in the trunk we ok because i had them bolted in. if they'd been just laying in there or tied down or something though, it wouldn't have been covered.

  • Got a stereo in 1999... (Score:3, Funny)

    by NickFusion ( 456530 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:53PM (#5849459) Homepage
    ...that had an aux input.

    Now I just have to get around to buying an MP3 jukebox...};^)

  • It won't happen because... (Score:3, Funny)

    by darthwader ( 130012 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:06PM (#5849536) Homepage
    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.

  • phatnoise jukebox (now kenwood music keg) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aderusha ( 32235 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:07PM (#5849545) Homepage
    although it probably won't connect to your factory head unit (the radio itself), the the phatnoise music box [phatnoise.com] 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 [musickeg.com] 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.
    • oh yeah, and here's some compatibility info [phatnoise.com] on various head units that are supported. not suprisingly, the kenwood unit only supports kenwood heads. i can however highly recommend kenwood's in-dash mp3 players. just burn a cdr with your mp3s and hit the road. you're still left juggling cds, but with roughly 10-12 albums on each disc it's at least a little easier. the top of the line model (KDC-X959) [kenwoodusa.com] even allows you to upload your own mpgs and jpgs to the unit for display on the road. i like it so much
    • The PhatNoise Jukebox and Kenwood MusicKeg are the same product, but they're sold separately. Kenwood just licenses it from PhatNoise, they didn't buy it outright. I have a Kenwood, but I'd recommend the PhatNoise product because Kenwood changes the MusicKeg so it only works with Kenwood head units -- which mostly suck.

      It's a pretty nice unit, though. I only had minor problems which a BIOS upgrade fixed, and as long as you do your homework and pick a decent head unit, it works very transparently and does

    • 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 [phatnoise.com].
      i have one and it totally kicks ass. haven't had to listen to clearchannel radio in over a year.
  • Made by PhatNoise [phatnoise.com]. 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.

  • Just get an mp3 car unit... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Polo ( 30659 ) * on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:37PM (#5849684) Homepage
    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 [pioneerelectronics.com] 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 [crutchfield.com] 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 (Score:5, Informative)

    by speleo ( 61031 ) * on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:43PM (#5849712) Homepage
    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.
    • Holy cow! I was just looking through the GM section (only newer cars that I own...) and they want 100$ for the adapter!!! I wonder if it contains more than just a patch into the wiring... because if it didn't, I'd feel terribly ripped off...

      However, if it does have to emulate a "changer", I can see where the cost...*gulp*... might be justified...

      On the other hand, if I was building an MP3 player for the car, the stock head unit probably wouldn't have the amount of power I'd want... I like my music lou
    • You have just been promoted to a minor deity in my personal pantheon! I can put my OEM Tape/stereo back in and get rid of this stupid CD player that doesn't want to shut off with the car!
      • Sounds more like an installation problem. Every radio I've ever seen has a power lead and an ignition lead which tells the radio when the car is off. If anything, you could hook the power wire to any other ignition switched wire in the car, if you don't mind losing your radio presets and the clock all the time.

        Seriously, if you had your radio professionally installed and it doesn't turn off with the car, they screwed up!
        • Every radio I've ever seen has a power lead and an ignition lead which tells the radio when the car is off.

          Not anymore. Newer cars don't have leads to the radio that are key controlled. The radio is being integrated more and more into the rest of the system. GM, for instance, has a lot of cars that have the radio have power at all times. When it's time to shut the radio off, the Body Control Module sends a command over the Class 2 Serial Network (J1850 VPW in GM's case) to shut off the radio.

          One easy way
        • there were both leads in my last car as well, but after two-three years of owning this player, the radio simply refused to be turned off with ACC. I checked the wires individually, to be certain I wasn't doing something wrong. It's just a fused circut/relay.

    • There's more available! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Otto ( 17870 )
      There's more than just those listed out there. Do some searching if yours isn't on that rcainput.com page.

      Pacific Accessory Corporation [go2pac.com] makes several different adapters, as does Precision Interface Electronics [pie.net].

      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. T
      • Mod parent up! It is the most informative post in this topic.

        Too bad, nobody makes an adaptor for Nissan.
      • I just got an Infiniti G35, and it does have a "Sat" button on the head unit. (I've not yet dismantled the dashboard enough to see the available connectors on the back) Are you saying that the satellite radio interface incorporates both a 12-pin J1850 connector cable for data and control, and a RCA connector for audio? Or is digital music sent directly as J1850 Class C (1 Mbit/s)? Use of the in-dash and steering wheel switches to control the iPod is probably not possible anyway (or at least not simple).
        • I'm not totally familiar with the Infiniti, so I can't tell you exactly.

          However, the 12 pin connector I was describing isn't a "J1850 connector" as such. J1850 VPW is a one line serial protocol. Meaning it needs only one (sometimes two) wire(s) to do it's business. The audio inputs to the unit are decidedly not RCA, they are in that 12 pin connector.

          That 12 pin connector is not a standard, as such. Well, standard to the cars that have it, I suppose. I guess you could think of it as the radio accessory con
    • Rats! This looked pretty promising, but none of the sites seem to sell anything for the 2003 Accord. I hope they come out with one soon - I desperately want to hook up the iPod!
  • Check out PhatNoise [phatnoise.com]. 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.

    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.
    • We had one of those FM transmitters for my dad's 1983 Lincoln that we used to play CDs. It didn't work that well--it was always dropping out and just generally being annoying. Maybe the one you have is a better brand and works better (I think the one we had was a Radio Shack unit), but I'd rather have something with a wired connection.

      --RJ
  • 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?
  • Funny... I submitted a question very similar to this one and it was rejected. IMHO, Cliff shouldn't be the only one to approve Ask Slashdot questions.

    Anyway, I ended up getting a Neo car jukebox [ssiamerica.com]. 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.

    • 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&ite m

      • I forget who originally made it

        The company name was the same as the product name: Empeg. The were bought by Rio who was later bought by SONIC|blue.

        While I agree it is a very cool device, the problem with it is that if you replace your stock radio with it, then you have no radio since the Empeg unit didn't have a radio tuner (AFAIK).

        Check ebay to see if you can still find one

        Why are you telling me? I'm not in the market for such a device. You probably meant to reply to the original questione

    • the Neo looks interesting to say the least.

      two Questions for you, what is the "management software" does it run on linux ? (if you not sure thats cool, what i really wanna know is if it is written in something like java or C, then it should work.) and have you had any HDD issues with 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
    • It is important to realize that while the Neuros does still use FM nearcasting to do the job, it's not "crappy" like the cheap cellphone/CD player add-ons that do this.

      The FM transmitter is built in to the Neuros and has no analog conversion until the end of the trip to the transmitter. Most (if not all) crappy FM add-ons take analog input and then convert that to the FM signal. The Neuros' FM transmitter gets a digital signal that is digitally filtered to convert well to the FM signal.

      When the unit was f
  • 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 scre

  • 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 ca

  • USB? (Score:1)

    by hether ( 101201 )
    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?
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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, e
  • 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

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