3 Ways to Connect an Mp3 Player in Your Car

Here in this article we will show you ways by which you can connect your mp3 player to your car stereo. There are very distinct advantages which mp3 players offer and a few disadvantages too. Lets have a look at the advantages first:

Advantages
Carry zillions of songs in a single tiny device
These days high volume mp3 players with capacities as much as 80GB with the Apple iPods are easily available. Even with a 8GB iPod Nano you can fit in your entire music collection. So if you are on a trip with your family, you don’t have to carry hundreds of CDs to cater to each one’s needs.

No more dealing with scratched CD’s
While driving, it is not possible to take extreme measures in protecting CDs, and as such music CDs in cars invariably get scratched. This leads to skipping of tracks. With an mp3 player, you will not be subject to the trauma of bad music, since tracks in the mp3 player are digitally stored. A track played in the mp3 player for the 100th time will play just as good as it did the first time.

Ease of Song navigation

An iPod Video screen displays seven lines of text as compared to two for this head-unit

Even though navigating through sound tracks in the car stereo has improved over the years, it’s much easier and better in mp3 players. High capacity mp3 players have a huge screen displaying at least 10 lines of text as compared to what is available in a car stereo. Besides many enhanced features such as sorting of songs by artists, genres etc. and a search option for finding songs—found on most creative hard drive based players and also in the updated fifth generation iPod—can be found in an mp3 player.

Disadvantages
Discharged mp3 player
Your mp3 player needs juice to run on, provided by the battery. So if you are out of charge, you are out of music! But, there are workarounds for that too. You can use a car charger powered by the car cigarette lighter slot. Besides mp3 players have really evolved, giving anything between 10 hours to as much as 35 to 40 hours (iAudio X5L) enough to last you even a long trip.

Inconvenient to use while driving
The car head unit is designed to let your control with minimum attention on it, so that you concentrate on driving. With the mp3 player it becomes difficult since you have to look straight into it. It would be much better if someone in the co-passenger seat is controlling it for you, else if you drive alone and still want to use your mp3 player, better make a play list before you start.

Now that you know its advantages and disadvantages and still want to use your mp3 player then read on to know how to go about it.
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There are two ways to attach your mp3 player to the head-unit. Either you connect the mp3 player to the head unit or you use the mp3 itself to serve the functionality of the head unit. Now for the latter you will need an amplifier to drive the speakers. It’s a different ball game altogether and we will explain that in another upcoming feature. So as of now, lets assume that you already have a car audio system with a head unit.

Almost all mp3 players have a 3.5mm port to which you connect the headphones. To play the audio from your mp3 player on your car speakers, you need to figure a way to connect the head unit to the 3.5 mm headphone port of the mp3 player. Below are the different methods by which you do that.

1) Auxiliary-In

Using this method you will get the best audio quality, almost or as good as CD quality. These days you have head units which have a front auxiliary input, popularly known as Aux-In. In fact Sony has this feature on all their entry level head units. The entry level models are CDX-GT250S, CDX-GT350S and the CDX-GT450S. All of these models are Mp3/CD players and cost around Rs. 4900, 5700 and 7300 respectively in the gray market. The official prices are a couple of thousand Rupees more.

**Pioneer DEH-P6850MP Head Unit
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Pioneer doesn’t have front aux-in on their entry level models. Front aux-in for Pioneer starts with the DEH-P6850MP that costs around Rs. 9300 in the gray market. Front aux-in, in this respect is basically a 3.5 mm port. You just need to buy a cable with 3.5 mm jack on both ends with one end going into the head unit and the other into the 3.5mm headphone port of the mp3 player. The cable is inexpensive and shouldn’t cost more than Rs. 100.

The latest generation of Pioneer head units starting from the DEH-P4850MP are iPod adapter ready. Now, Pioneer has an iPod adapter (CD-IB100II) where in you can control the iPod using the head unit and see information like song title, album name and track length on the head unit’s display.

iPod Adapter

It also charges your iPod at the same time. It costs $50 in the international market. That’s roughly about Rs. 2500 to 3000 in India.

For Pioneer head units—with the iPod adapter—you can only connect iPods. So if you don’t want that then you can buy a cable that has a header that connects to the IP bus socket at one end and a 3.5mm jack at the other end. These cables cost between Rs. 600-700.

iPod adapter slot at the back of Pioneer DEH-4850 entry-level Head-Unit, also called as the IP-Bus Slot

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2) Car Cassette adapter

**Car Cassette Adapter connected to an iPod
**

This is for those who have a cassette player. Put in the cassette of the cassette adapter—just as you would normally insert a cassette—and plug the other end of the cable into the headphone jack of the mp3 player. The audio quality is not as good as with aux-in but is definitely very good. You get cassette adapters starting from Rs. 250 to 300 at any imported goods shop.

3) FM transmitter
This is something which will need a little explaining to do. You car head unit or deck or stereo is also called as a car receiver. Its called a receiver because of its FM/AM radio playing capability and also because it receives the audio signals from the broadcasting or transmitting tower of the radio station in your city. Similarly an FM transmitter is a small transmitter which when connected to the mp3 player transmits the audio signal of the mp3 player on a particular radio frequency. You then tune into the same frequency on the head unit. Sounds like rocket science? Lets explain it with an example. Looking at the image simultaneously will also help.

1. You connect the FM transmitter to the mp3 player using the 3.5mm jack.
2. On the FM transmitter set a frequency from the FM spectrum. Make sure the frequency is unoccupied i.e. no other radio station is being broadcasted on the same frequency. For example say, 95.4 FM
3. Now on your Car Head Unit go to the FM mode and tune to the same FM frequency i.e. 95.4 FM
Now play a track on the mp3 player and turn up the volume on your head unit. You will be able to hear the song on your car speakers wirelessly from your mp3 player! .

The range of the FM transmitters is generally restricted to 10 meters. You can also use the FM transmitter at home by tuning it in to your home stereo system.

There are different types of FM transmitters. Since apple iPods are so big on popularity there are iPod specific transmitters like the iTrip whereas there are others with a 3.5 mm jack that will work with any mp3 player. Some are powered by batteries and a few others, by the car cigarette lighter slot.

iTrip FM transmitter specifically for iPods

Belkin Tunecast II, can be used with any mp3 player

This one fits into the car cigarette lighter slot and doesn’t need batteries. It also works with any mp3 player

The audio quality is not as good as the other two. One can experience static (noise disturbance) once in a while which can get irritating. But then it’s not in all the cases and most of the times its pretty ok. FM transmitters cost anything between Rs. 1500 to 2500 depending on the features.
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Convert your PSP into an In-Car Audio/Video Entertainment System

Concept
You have always drooled over those LCD screens in the car, haven’t you? Don’t be disappointed, if you own a PSP, you own a car LCD too! The PSP has a 4.3 inch screen with a 480 x 272 resolution making videos look very sharp and clear, besides the color reproduction is also very good, putting most in-car LCDs to shame. Now, the real thing, how do you hook it up to your car? Follow this… But before that, a word of caution: Refrain from watching movies while driving.

Implementation
There are two things to it—1) You need a reliable way to mount the PSP in your car 2) The tiny PSP speakers are not loud enough, so the best bet would be to play the audio from the PSP through the car speakers and if you have 4 speakers in your car, which people mostly do, you have surround sound while playing movies! Sounds complicated ? Lets go step by step to make it simple.

1) How to mount the PSP in the Car?
There are various car stands available in the market (mostly Musafir Khana in South Mumbai) but the problem with them is that they vibrate when the car is in motion and the problem becomes even more pronounced on bumpy roads.

In our quest for the ultimate PSP car stand we came across this company called Arkon , popular for making quality PDA and GPS car stands. They also have PSP stands, and these do NOT vibrate. The stand uses a suction mechanism to hold on to any flat surface and is very sturdy. Unfortunately they are not available in India, so you will have to order it online and get it shipped to you here. The stand comes up to $25 with taxes and the shipping is 30$, making it 55$ ….that’s about Rs. 2500, slightly expensive unless you ask some relative in US to get it for you.

2) Play PSP audio through the car speakers
For this you can use any of the above three methods described to connect a mp3 player to the car head unit.

Conclusion
The best option here would be to go for head units with front auxiliary-in. The reason being, the cable is inexpensive and the procedure is very simple and you don’t have a wire dangling from behind the dashboard. Though Sony has it on their entry level head-units costing as less as Rs. 5000, we recommend putting in more cash and going for the Pioneer DEH-P6850MP at around Rs. 9300. This is because Pioneer’s head units have better internal amplifiers that sound much better. Other head unit manufacturing companies like JVC and Kenwood also have models with front auxiliary-in.