Apple’s iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player. Others were around several years before it. And it wasn’t the least expensive by a long shot. But the iPod was the MP3 player that captured millions of music lovers’ hearts and minds, music collections, and pocketbooks. The iPod quickly became a status symbol as much as a phenomenally popular product, and, in the process, it changed the way people buy, listen to, and store music.
The iPod also changed the way people access music in the car. In just a period of a few years, it’s made the CD changer virtually obsolete. Why bring a half dozen discs or more along for the ride when you can carry your entire music collection in your pocket? It didn’t take long for the consumer-electronics industry, the car audio aftermarket in particular, and even some carmakers, to respond to the growing number of iPod owners who wanted to take their iTunes on the road.
Today, there’s a billion-dollar industry based just around iPod accessories, and car accessories form a large chunk of this lucrative market. iPod integration has also become a driving force in the aftermarket car audio industry because the desire to use an iPod in the car has driven more consumers into car audio specialty shops and other car audio outlets.
Just as CD changer controls were popular features on car audio head units in the 1990s, now many heads have an auxiliary input for an iPod or even full iPod integration. Carmakers have also gotten into the act as consumer demand for pimpin’ a ride with an iPod has increased.
Today, you can access an iPod from behind the wheel in a wide variety of ways:
- FM modulators that send a signal to a car’s FM radio
- Aftermarket head units that have direct iPod input and controls
- Aftermarket adaptors that can add iPod integration to factory stereos
- Auxiliary (aux) jacks in aftermarket or stock stereo systems
- Aftermarket amplifiers and processors with aux inputs
- Kits available from car dealers that integrate an iPod with a factory stereo and the car’s controls
FM modulators
FM modulators have been used for years to add a CD changer to a factory stereo system, or even in aftermarket systems where a direct-connection between the head unit and the changer isn’t available. The concept is simple:
The audio signal from the CD changer is fed into an FM modulator, which converts it to an FM signal. The head unit’s antenna lead is fed into the FM modulator and a separate antenna lead from the FM modulator — which now carries the AM and FM signals, along with that of the converted signal from the CD changer — is plugged into the head unit.
The FM modulator lets you choose an FM frequency on which to tune in the CD changer, which is usually in the 88.1 to 89.5 range. When the car’s FM receiver tunes to that frequency, which is hopefully empty, it picks up the signal from the FM modulator the way it would a regular radio station.
Wireless FM modulators that don’t have to be hard-wired into a vehicle are now available. Instead, the FM modulator simply sends a wireless signal to the FM tuner, and it’s picked up as a radio station. Wired FM modulators provide superior sound quality, however.
FM modulators offer a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to integrate an iPod into an existing car stereo, whether stock or aftermarket. A variety of after- market FM modulator products are available, ranging from simple to complex. Most will also charge your iPod at the same time. But FM modulators have two major drawbacks:
Your music will only sound as good as the best FM reception, which is way below CD quality.
If you live in or you’re passing through an urban area, it can be hard to find an empty spot on the FM dial, and even if you do, you can easily get interference from adjacent stations.
It’s a good idea to look for an FM modulator what allows you to select from a variety of FM frequencies, such as Monster Cable’s iCarPlay Wireless Plus, shown in Figure 7-1. That way, if one FM frequency is occupied or filled with static, you can tune to another one.
Testing, testing...
Here's a good test to determine the quality of the FM modulator for your iPod (or any other MP3 player). Connect the MP3 player to the FM modulator and find a blank station on the FM dial for the signal. Then pause the iPod, turn radio all the way up, turn on the car's engine, headlights, and rev the engine and listen for noise. A high-quality FM modulator is relatively quiet, whereas a low-quality one produces more noise.
Figure 7-1:
Monster Cable's iCarPlay Wireless Plus sends an iPod's signal to an existing car stereo.
Courtesy of Monster Cable
Aftermarket head units
Full iPod integration in an aftermarket head unit offers much better sound quality than FM modulators because the audio signal is fed directly into the head unit. And it also allows easy access to the music on the iPod through the head unit’s own controls and provides information on the head unit’s display. This way, you never have to touch your iPod after you hook it up to a head unit, which is a huge safety advantage as well as a major convenience.
But not all iPod-ready head units are created equal. Most offer basic controls that allow accessing music just as you would on an iPod: by artists, albums, songs, and playlists. And the head unit displays the corresponding info visually. One of the biggest factors you should think about when considering iPod integration is access speed.
Alpine, for example, advertises its latest-generation iPod integration products as full speed, meaning that the rate at which you can access tunes on an iPod via one of the company’s head units (see Figure 7-2) is about the same as if you were operating the iPod itself. Kenwood, Pioneer, and Clarion also offer high-speed iPod access. Plus, most head units with iPod integration also charge the device while it’s connected.
Courtesy of Alpine Bectronics
Aftermarket iPod adaptors
Leave it to the car audio aftermarket to give the people what they want.
These days, what people want is to use their iPods while they’re on the road, no matter what car they drive or whether they have an aftermarket head unit. Some people may not be willing or even able to change out their radios because of cosmetic or cost concerns or lease restrictions. That’s where innovative car audio accessory companies such as Blitzsafe, PAC, Peripheral, PIE, and Scosche have come to the rescue.
Such companies may not be household names or even have the marquee value of other large and well-known car audio brands, but they are renowned in the car audio industry for providing solutions, largely to car audio specialty dealers, that integrate aftermarket electronics into almost any kind of vehicle. In the case of iPod integration, these companies offer adaptors that tap into a vehicle’s factory wiring and electronics so that the popular music player can be added without high costs or hassles.
Scosche’s AXIPTA, for example (see Figure 7-3), fits many 2004 and up Toyota, Scion, and Lexus vehicles and allows control of an iPod from the stock head unit, which also displays all of the control and track info. Such adaptors are also non-invasive, meaning they can be taken out and the car can be returned to stock condition.
Auxiliary inputs
Auxiliary inputs designed for plugging in a separate audio source have been around a long time, and they usually pop up like mushrooms after a rain storm when a new audio format comes on the scene. They were somewhat prevalent when CDs were still rare in car audio, for example, and people wanted to a plug a portable CD player into their car’s cassette-based head unit. A car audio system 1 put together in the late 1980s, for example, had an aux-in on the back of the head unit, into which I plugged a portable CD.
Today, many aftermarket car audio head units sport aux inputs, as do an increasing percentage of new cars. Car manufacturers have recognized this as a feature that more and more consumers want. Although most are 3.5mm miniplug jacks (see Figure 7-4), which fit the same connector that an iPod and other MP3 player use, a few use RCA-based aux inputs like those found on most car and home audio components (see Figure 7-5).
An aux-in jack is an easy and affordable way to jack an iPod (or any MP3 player or auxiliary audio source) into a car audio system, but you still have to fumble with the device to control it, which isn’t very convenient or safe while behind the wheel. And it’s not iPod-specific, which means you can plug in any outboard audio device.
Some car audio companies that don’t make head units have also gotten in on the aux-in act. They allow an iPod or other MP3 player to be added into a system’s signal chain on an amplifier, equalizer, or some other component (see Figure 7-6).
Figure 7-6:
Blaupunkt's
GTA480
amplifier
hasanaux
input
Courtesy of Blaupunkt
Car dealer kits
BMW launched the first iPod integration application among carmakers in mid-2004, with a dealer-installed option that allowed owners of certain Bimmer models to control the device via steering-wheel audio controls. Information such as artist, album, and song can be displayed on the in-dash head unit. Since that time, fourteen more auto manufacturers have begun offering iPod integration kits. (You can see a complete and updated list at www.Apple.com/ipod/carintegration.html) The obvious advantage of this approach to iPod integration is that you can keep a factory look.
Sync and the future
As the iPod becomes more entrenched and widespread and other portable players come on the scene to challenge its dominance, look for more car-integration solutions to appear. Ford recently unveiled its Sync system, for example, which was developed in conjunction with Microsoft. It allows complete control of a portable music player via voice commands and steering-wheel switches, as well as cool features such as a “play similar” command that will automatically cull a playlist based on your music preferences.
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