What a USB in the Dash !

An MP3 player syncs to Ford’s Sync via a USB port, which has become as common as clover on all sorts of electronic products. Originally found on computers, USB (which stands for Universal Serial Bus) has quickly migrated to all sorts of electronics products as a quick way to transfer information. Now car audio systems, both aftermarket and stock, are beginning to sport USB ports.

Another way in for the iPod

One of the primary applications for USB drives in cars has been as a way to integrate an iPod. Because it’s also the way an iPod syncs to your computer, a USB connection provides the best possible sound quality as well as slightly faster access to music on an iPod. Consequently, most of the major car audio manufacturers that offer iPod integration use a USB connection to dock an iPod and transfer information to and from the device.

Thumb drives

Car audio head units have also begun to sprout USB drives on their front panels (see Figure 7-7). This allows easy and quick access to digital music files loaded on a USB thumb drive, a small flash-memory device that is about the size of a person’s thumb. Depending on the capacity of the USB drive (which is measured in megabytes or gigabytes, with higher being better), it’s possible to store dozens of songs on a drive small enough to fit in your pocket.

Figure 7-7: A Kenwood head unit with a USB port and a thumb drive attached.

Courtesy of Kenwood

Yet another way to carry MP3 files on the road is with Secure Digital (SD) and MuItiMediaCards (MMC). You’re probably familiar with these if you own a digital camera because many use the removable cards to store pictures. As with USB drives, the larger the capacity of the SD or MMC cards, the more tunes you can store on it, and the more expensive the card is. And because they are even smaller than USB drives, SD and MMC cards are a convenient way to carry dozens of MP3s on the road.

SD and MMC cards actually predate the presence of USB drives in the car audio world by several years, and SD cards have proven to be the dominant format. A few manufacturers — including Clarion, Dual, and Jensen — now offer SD card slots on their head units, typically behind a fold-down faceplate. And Audi, Mercedes, and Honda offer SD card slots in the dash on the OEM side.

Hard Disc Drives: Burn, Baby, Burn

Higher-capacity iPods and similar MP3 players are simply data storage devices with functions, that allow you to access your tunes, whereas USB drives and SD cards are simply flash drives for temporarily storing your music files. But chances are you also store all of your tunes on your com¬puter’s hard drive and transfer it over to a hard-disc MP3 player or flash- memory device.

So why not install a hard-disc drive (HDD) into your car and just dump all of your tunes on it? Well, several car audio manufacturers had the same idea a few years ago, about the time the whole iPod craze kicked in. But by that time, most people didn’t want to go through the hassle of downloading their music to a hard drive in the car, which involved the tedious task of ripping songs from CDs one disc at a time, when they could have all the music on their iPod or other MP3 player. Subsequently, HDD head units never really caught on. There are still some around (like the Alpine HDA-5460 shown in Figure 7-8), and you can probably get a killer deal on one.

Some high-end head units these days use an HDD for the mapping database and operating system for GPS navigation because it offers fast access time. Pioneer and Eclipse (see Figure 7-9) also offer nav-based head units with an HDD, with part of the disc space used for storing music. 

Figure 7-8:

Alpine's HAD-5460 contains a hard-disc drive for storing music files.

Courtesy of Alpine Electronics

Figure 7-9:

The Eclipse AVN5495 has a hard- disc drive that’s used for

navigation as well as storing music files.

Courtesy of Eclipse Electronics

The HDD has also found a home in some stock car audio systems. Cars from Cadillac, Chrysler, Dodge, Infiniti, and Lexus offer in-dash HDDs for storing hundreds of digital music files.