Thread: incar music??

I think iPods are the way to go, they are overpriced, but have a load of features, heaps of accessories, and are very easy to use.
I put a $120 Sony headset in with front auxilory input and plug the iPod ( 80gb, currently 14,000 songs! ) to that, the only prob is having to turn the iPod off and on with the car, but that's hardly taxing as it's only one button ( not even a button really is it? ), at the moment I'm driving a mates Patrol with a Alpine iPod stereo built in, meaning it has the head unit and a cable into the glovebox with the head unit becoming the iPod controller, and find it a pain as it's no way near as intuitive to use as the iPod itself, although makes things much neater.

Headsets are cheap enough now as well..

Since you lost all yr CDs you need to replace your music collection so it may be better to go totallly MP3 and maybe even ( horror) pay for a few tracks. The music stores now have machines where you can go in and pay a buck fifty or so for a track and download it. Or you can get them onlne from Virgin etc.

I have an iriver mp3 player. When I want to use it in the car it plugs in to a "fake" cassette module that I got with an old external car CD player. This cassette module looks like a standard cassette tape and plugs into the cassette tape drive ( which my old car has ). A lead from the casstte module plugs into the MP3 players headphone socket. The sound gets passed through the tape drive's heads somehow. The sound quality is quite good I think maybe better than the FM radio transducer things. A lot of aftermarket car sound systems these days have a direct socket for an MP3 player or even have inbuilt MP3 players.

Originally Posted by Rayngie

at the moment I'm driving a mates Patrol with a Alpine iPod stereo built in, meaning it has the head unit and a cable into the glovebox with the head unit becoming the iPod controller, and find it a pain as it's no way near as intuitive to use as the iPod itself, although makes things much neater.

Headsets are cheap enough now as well..

I agree that controlling through the headunit is not as simple as directly to the iPod especially if you have heaps of music and playlists but we generally select one playlist that I have setup for the music we both like and leave it on that. So the only controls we use are the volume, skip and pause which are very simple to use.

And while it is only one button, it is having to go the glove box each time that was a pain. If you do long stretches then not so bad but we stop a lot. It also depends on how co-operative your better half is. Mine hates fiddling about with stuff.

BTW My parents are grey nomads and they download radio podcasts from the ABC for the shows they like but never get to listen to. My Mum is technically challenged but finds it pretty straight-forward with a bit of help from the grandkids. They then catch up on their programs while on the road. I believe all MP3 players can do this but they can chew up a bit of disk space.

iPod for sure. I think the smallest you can get now is 40GB which is more than enough for the largest of music libraries.

I also agree that it is worth going to the extra trouble of getting a head unit which the iPod can plug straight into. This enables you to keep the iPod safe in the console or glovebox out of harms way and you can navigate through your song library on the unit itself. Plus, the device charges while you drive so you never run out of battery. It is always fully charged for when you take it out to go walking or skiing or whatever.

I don't have any worries with switching it off when I stop since I NEVER leave it in the car anyway.

the next most popular is the Creative Zen range which has about 5% market share... but as mentioned above, you will struggle to find a manufacturer of accessories apart from Creative themselves.

If you have a bluetooth capable phone with media player software (a "Smartphone") you can get bluetooth headunits for the car which will work as a handsfree kit as well and allow you to answer phone calls when it rings and play music from media cards... GPS can also be run on most smartphones as well, so you get even more functionality.
I have this sony unit and it is fantastic:
http://www.xplodsony.com/article/Son...ed+CD+Receiver

GPS is a simple addition, depending on the phone you have... I've got 4gb memory cards (x3) and this is more than enough for my entire cd collection and GPS maps and contacts and calendar and....

Seriously - nothing comes close to the iPod. Apple have got it worked out just right and if anybody in your family is a student or teacher, then you can buy on-line at Apple's education store and get a SUBSTANTIAL discount.

Time to join the modern world hey farmboy, an mp3 cd player with front aux in will give you lots of options by adding a cheapo mp3 player.

Weren't the Incars massacred by the Spanish centuries ago? Who knows what they listened to back then