Wife and I just traded in our old pickup and got a 2004 Audi A6 Avant wagon. Great car, so far! The audio system has a 6-disc in dash CD changer, which is cool, but it doesn’t play MP3s. There’s no connection that I can see to hook up an IPod or MP3 player.
Short of replacing the stereo, what can we do? The only thing I can think of is to get one of those little radio adapters that broadcasts our MP3 player and the car stereo can pick it up with the radio- are there any other options? And if that’s the only option, then what would be the best setup/equipment? How can we make this a “permanent” (and safe-to-use while driving) setup as opposed to a tangle of electronics and cords loose in the car? There’s only one cigarette lighter plug (that I can find), and we use that for our Garmin GPS system, so any setup would have to be battery powered or powered some other way. Thanks!
Look harder, maybe. In my car, the audio-in jack for the car stereo is in the center console*. No guarantee yours has one there, of course, but it might be hidden somewhere.
There’s also a second power outlet in my center console as well. If you really only have one power outlet, they do make splitters to give you two plugs.
ETA: as in, the armrest lifts up for some storage, and it’s in there.
Which basically taps into the radio antenna in the back of your radio. This has the major advantage of eliminating most interference and it keeps most of the wires behind the dash. If you have an iPod or iPhone, you can even get some that will transmit song information via RDS so it’ll show up on your radio’s screen. Like this one: Scosche IPFMRDS Play and charge your iPod® through any car stereo at Crutchfield
One other possibility is that on some Audis, it’s possible to make an aux-in port that emulates the CD changer. Someone who’s handy may be able to wire one up for you, or else I think for some years you can actually buy a kit for it. I’ve got a setup like that in my '01 A4 Avant which has the changer port in the back of the car, but I don’t know if it’ll work for an in-dash unit or if you’d have to sacrifice the changer to do it. Checking in at an Audi (or VW) enthusiast forum would probably be advisable if that’s interesting to you.
On older cars, I’ve used on of those MP3 adapters which transmitted an FM signal. It also plugged into the cigarette lighter (or whatever they are calling them now) to keep the MP3 player charged. It was OK. MP3’s really don’t sound all that good compared to a CD then the FM signal further degrades the sound. Plus you can have problems with interference from other FM stations although my adapter had 4 difference channels.
I’ve also used one of those cassette adapters that TB alludes to on my wife’s old PT Cruiser. It worked pretty good actually.
However I finally broke down and bought a new indash radio that has an aux port, a USB port, plays HD radio, and has Bluetooth so I can use my cell phone hands free. I installed it myself and bought it through Crutchfield. I’m a mechanic by trade so the work could be above many people’s abilities.
Aux port: seldom use.
USB Port: I have a 16 GB thumb drive filled with MP3. This is about a third of my music collection. I listen to it 90% of the time. No stupid commercials!
HD radio. I live about 20 miles from St. Louis and stations frequently drop out of HD mode. Really nice when I’m closer to the city. I’d recommend checking if there are any HD radio stations close by that you’d listen to before worrying about HD. You can buy radios with HD or Bluetooth or both. You can save some money if you can’t use HD radio.
Bluetooth. Very nice for receiving calls hands-free. Of course you need a Bluetooth phone for this; however, almost all phones are now days. You can also play music stored on your phone, but the sound quality is somewhat poor through Bluetooth.
If you don’t have an aux input then I can’t stress enough to get a cassette adapter rather than an FM transmitter! FM transmitters are very prone to annoying interference and frequency ‘drift’. Cassette adapters, as old fashioned & clunky as they may seem, work perfectly! And they’re inexpensive.
One caveat to this though is that the cassette adapters only sound as good as the cassette deck. On late model cars that have the CD/cassette deck combos, the cassette player is often just an afterthought and the sound quality is atrocious. My '01 Audi has what I presume is a similar stereo system to the OP’s '04 and the sound quality is awesome with CD’s and the radio (and my CD changer aux-in hack) but the tape deck sounds awful, both with an adapter and real cassettes. I’ve noticed the same thing with the “premium” combo stereos in Toyotas too.
My pet theory is that they figure no audiophile in this day and age is listening to music on cassettes, so they only include the tape deck for people who listen to books on tape and such, so sound quality isn’t important.
Well, that’s a thought, but based on my extensive experience with car cassette decks during my first couple of decades of driving, it sounds more like crappy tape deck than a broken or dirty one. In the case of the Toyotas with the combo stereos I’ve driven, I’ve noticed the same thing even on basically brand new cars.
I’m sure they do to some extent, but mine always sounded pretty good. I seem to remember them adding some hiss. If you want to try out the FM adapter thing, companies like Meritline usually have them for less than $10.
Same here. I bought the stereo with using an MP3 player in mind but once I realized I could plug a tiny thumb drive into the USB and have all my music that way the concept of keeping an MP3 player in my car seemed quaint.
That’s silly. Even if you’re one of those “OMG MP3s are horrible!” people, why would you want to further degrade it on its way to the car stereo? Should people who buy a “good enough” car slash their tires and break out their headlights just to make a point?
PAC (Pacific Accessory Corporation) makes or sells several different adapters for your car, including AUX, iPod and USB inputs. You can probably find them on Amazon or eBay for less money.
Installation may or may not be trivial (but if you’re uncomfortable disassembling parts of your dashboard, you may want to consult a pro).
I don’t understand what this means. Are you calling a bit of hyperbole for sake of example a “violent over reaction” or are you implying that typing a reply on a web forum is a “violent over reaction”?
Neither seems to make any sense but maybe I’m missing something.
Do car radios still have (or rather did they nine years ago have) RCA jack inputs in the back? I think a car stereo I bought 20+ years ago had those. Or am I just misremembering?
