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Are these any good? I'm thinking of getting one even though I have a 6 cd changer in my car. I've heard good and bad about them regarding sound quality.
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Auto Express did a review of these a few months ago, it will be on their website.
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Tried the belkin version with my Creative Zen. Useless even in a Berlingo where I could put ii in the roof tray right under the aerial. Reception week and hissy with poor stereo separation.
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If you'd posted this yesterday, you could have had mine - but it went in the bin. Best place for it!
I've now wired up both our cars to take a direct input. The Jazz was just a question of making up a lead which plugs in the back of the radio. The landcruiser worked fine using a little box from xcarlink (this gives a 3.5mm jack, and takes USB memory sticks). I now carry the equivalent of about 10 CDs per memory stick, and have 3 or 4 of them in the LC so I can choose what to listen to.
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Marlot, I'd not come across them before - do you lose the CD changer if you install the mp3 interface?
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Mine plugged into the CD changer socket. I think some of these adaptors allow a CD changer to be kept but you'd need to check out the ones available for your car.
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xcarlink came back to my emailed enquiry within 10 minutes. Apparently as my changer is internal to the head, it wlll be unaffected. So, I've just ordered the iPod link unit on next day delivery. Installation looks trivial but I'll let you know...
(as you may be able to guess, I've found iTrips to be pretty useless, but better than nothing in a foreign hire car if you have to cover some miles. Mine, a Belkin, is okay for music but auto switches off if it doesn't detect music, and it's set to be rather insensitive, so Podcasts are normally interpreted as silence and cut off).
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Strewth my head hurts, i've only just got the hang of writing (burning hey cool dude) CD's for my single, though very good player.
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I bought this one...
tinyurl.com/nm7z2h (links to Amazon.co.uk)
Just plug it into the ciggy lighter socket,insert a memory card(or usb,or direct line in from your mp3 player) and tune the radio to the correct frequency.
The sound is fantastic and the kids love it.
You even get a remote control for this price which means the kids can change the tracks from the back seat.
Highly recommended.
Edited by rtj70 on 18/07/2009 at 22:10
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Your Amazon buy is very similar to the one I mentioned in these forums some two or three years ago, after the then considered illegal use of such FM transmitters type equipment was waived.
IIRC one or two forum members bought one and were impressed at the time.
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I've got an earlier model of this one:
tinyurl.com/ljgkol
(SVP Website)
Plugs straight into the cigarette lighter socket and plays MP3's off a USB pen drive, or can connect to an MP3 player via an audio lead. Best of all it's less than a tenner!
Audio quality is pretty good too.
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Ive been using a Griffin itrip auto (the auto being relevant) for over a year. Fantastic - the equal of broadcast FM. No problems whatsoever. About £20 if I remember.
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I have a Belkin. Quality's acceptable, but the biggest annoyance (as Gordon mentioned above) is its habit of switching off.
By design, it's meant to switch off after a couple of minutes of silence, but instead it seems to take only about 30 seconds before it switches off with a very loud beep.
It also needs quite a loud signal to drive it, any quieter and it switches off much more frequently.
It's only really good as a stop gap before I can get a stereo with a 3.5mm jack on the front panel.
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I have tried a few. Where I live there is so much FM clutter that I never get a hiss free reception.
Why can't manufacturers add a line in jack to the car radio the cost must be minimal?
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The FM clutter was my big problem. As mentioned above, I used one of these www.xcarlink.co.uk/ There are other makers out there too - Dension etc.
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It depends wholly on how good your FM tuner front end is on the radio.
Works almost acceptably on some radios, most its rubbish - due as said to FM clutter
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>It depends wholly on how good your FM tuner front end is on the radio.
Not sure I agree, AE. I have a Griffin iTrip (the direct-attach one, without charger or smart seeking) and it's adequate for speech and pretty hopeless for music - muffled and bass-heavy. This is through the Volvo's HU-803 FM receiver, which is excellent with a good signal from the BBC.
But I do agree that the biggest problem is clutter - specifically at the moment the moronic output of Blink FM, which is currently polluting the usually free 87.9 frequency round High Wycombe. I'm seriously considering coughing up the necessary for a proper cable interface between the 'Pod and the HU-803.
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>It depends wholly on how good your FM tuner front end is on the radio. round High Wycombe. I'm seriously considering coughing up the necessary for a proper cable interface between the 'Pod and the HU-803.
I recently fitted one of these. It cost less than ten pounds and fitted in the Aux socket at rear of radio. It meant taking the radio out,but this was a doddle with the proper tools.
It works really well and gives excellent sound quality with no hums or extraneous noise.
Downsides are it means having one end of the cable hanging down behind the trim (can be hidden),it will not charge the MP3 and means hiding or removing the MP3/Ipod when the car is parked. Oh,also player does not turn off with radio.
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>>Ive been using a Griffin itrip auto (the auto being relevant) for over a year. Fantastic - the equal of broadcast FM. No problems whatsoever. About £20 if I remember.
I bought one of these on your recommendation Woodster - now about £13 delivered from Amazon. Works perfectly - thanks for the tip.
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I tried one of these in my Avensis and the quality was pretty poor, loads of hiss and the bass was really weak.
Took it out eventually and used a cassette to audio lead adaptor to connect my MP3 player in the end, much better!
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Just a quick update. The xcarlink unit turned up promptly, but without the radio removal keys. Turns out that Honda radios don't come out, you dismantle the dashboard instead. Quite a lot.
Their tech support people sent me a link to a US site showing someone putting in something similar, and we did have a go, but there was quite some discrepancy and I was worried about breaking stuff, so we gave up.
My local auto electrician just installed it for £30 and it works great. CD changer still works, and it sounds good. So all in all, I'm pretty pleased.
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Bit late, but I've been using a Jabra SP700 bluetooth handsfree kit, which has a built in FM transmitter that actually works.
Bluetooth from the phone to the kit, and then either music or voice calls come out the radio.
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I've tried a number of different FM transmitters (iTrip, Car Dock FM) with my iPod in a number of different cars that the family has owned over recent years (Focus, MX-5 and Mazda 6) and the sound quality in all cases has varied from appalling to poor, at best !
I came to the conclusion that the friends who I'd borrowed them from were more interested in convenience than sound quality, so the FM transmitters were an acceptable solution for them and they're usually the cheapest option too.
I ended up importing an AudioLink iPod adaptor for my Mazda 6 from the USA for around £70 - connects to the back of the sat-nav socket on the OEM CD player and sound quality is indestinguishable from CD quality (provided the MP3s are of a suitably high bitrate of course !) You can also control the iPod using the steering wheel controls, which you obviously can't do with an FM adaptor.
I've been so impressed with it that I'm currently trying to source a similar adaptor for my wife's Honda Civic - I'm not even going to bother trying any FM adaptors, based on my previously poor experiences with them.
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