question about ipod connections on car stereos

[jools182]

My old car stereo had a aux plug in the front panel that I could just plug a normal headphone jack straight into

I'm looking on ebay for a new car stereo and a lot seem to say ipod compatible but it looks like they need some kind of adaptor plugged in the back of the stereo. How does this work? Would I need to wire something that came out in my centre console? I don't want to be drilling any holes anywhere

[mike9009]

You are correct assuming that it will be connected with a lead. Dependent on what car you have you may be able to thread the cable nto an accessible position to connect the ipod.

I have an alfa 156, which i have an ipoid connected. I drilled a small hole in th side of the glovebox and keep the ipod in the glovebox out of harms way.

Mike

[Arun_D]

Lots have a cable that runs from the back of the unit that you can route to your glovebox and control what songs youplay from the unit itself.

However you might be interested in one of these Sony jobbies, that keeps the iPod in the unit itself.

http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/sony-dsxs300btx.ht...

[jools182]

Is there anything wrong with the aux socket on the front panel? Is the sound quality worse than one of these other ones with an ipod connector that plugs into the back?

[Ari]

It'll be analogue so there will be a quality loss compared to a digital link.

[NiceCupOfTea]

Ari said:

It'll be analogue so there will be a quality loss compared to a digital link.

In theory: in reality there's very little difference when listening in your average tin box!

The main difference is that with an iPod link you can control the iPod from the head unit, see the track title, search, etc. With an aux in you have to use the device itself to do any fiddling.

[GoodDoc]

Ari said:

It'll be analogue so there will be a quality loss compared to a digital link.

Very few portable music players output digital audio, and while I'm far from an expert on car stereos I suspect most don't support digital interconnects to external devices.

Do you perhaps mean 'line level' as opposed to a headphone output? Both are analogue but the line level is typically not adjustable from the playback device and is designed to be connected to an amplifier, the headphone output is variable and designed for, well, headphones.

While there will typically be a loss of quality when using analogue versus digital, by the time the music is playing in the car at 70mph with the engine, road and wind noise you would be doing very well to be able to tell the difference between a digital or analogue connection. When sat in a quiet room at home listening to the music I enjoy, it's high resolution audio files output to an external DAC using digital interconnects and played through silly headphones, and the digital difference is clear. But when in the car it's all basic 128 kbps MP3 files played through the aux-in on the car's standard stereo. The only change I made was to use an Dension ICE link so I could connect an iPod in place of the car's multidisc changer.

I've even had reasonable results using a tape converter. When it comes to music in normal cars don't get too worried about overall quality. An Aux-in will be fine for most purposes, and use a more advanced solution if you want track select functions.

[dockertrigger]

As you have already got a aux out on the front of your stereo then try one of these http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-5mm-3-5mm-GOLD-AUX-JACK-CA... and see how you get on with it, Just stick your ipod on random and just flick through the songs you don't like.