SmartDeck iPod cassette adapter
Thursday, January 13th, 2005
SmartDeck
looks like the best alternative for iPod users who want to play through their car stereos but not use FM broadcast, buy a BMW, or mess with the underside of their dashes to find wires to splice for an auxiliary input. It allows you to control some iPod function from your car stereo. Gotta get me one of these.
I don’t have a BMW… but… I’ve been pretty happy with the iTrip FM transmitter. The important thing to making it work well in the car is finding a frequency that doesn’t have other stations broadcasting near it.
Charles, I beg to differ although your audio requirements may be less than folks who can hear more, I’m not sure, I’m just guessing.
The fidelity of FM broadcast is much too low for high fidelity sound, even when it’s perfect. Unless you rip stuff at a very high compression rate (making quality secondary to size) the fidelity of the iPod is much higher than any FM station. Because of this, the best solution is some kind of line out and in rather than FM. Until all this shit is bluetooth a direct line is the way to go.
I’ve re-ripped all of my stuff since the old Rio 500 128 meg smartmedia days when Apple’s 160 kbps mp3 seemed high end. I use 192 kbps AAC which is pretty high quality. Others use lossless for everything which is super high quaulity (and super big). So, anyway, not to knock your solution, whatever works… just that there are fidelity issues with FM.