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Hi everyone! I'm wondering what the best way is to listen to music from mobile devices in a car. I have huge music collections with my favourite songs on iPod, and even bought a special cable to connect it to the car radio. But the music sounds awful Any way to fix it? Also, is there any way to listen to music from USB pen drives, if the car head unit doesn't have a special USB port? Any ideas? Thank you in advance!
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The easiest way to get audio from your media player to your car radio is to use a fm radio transmitter. The devices plug into a +12Vdc power port for power and have a cable that plugs into your media player headphone jack to receive audio. The device broadcasts a very weak fm radio signal. Your car plays the radio like it normally does. Some of the transmitters have a permanent installation cable that don't broadcast the fm radio signal but plugs into the antenna plug of your car radio. Cost will be anywhere from $5 to $20 US. Sometimes you can find them in the electronics section of drug stores, Roses or Big Lots. I've also seen them on Amazon and eBay.
I used to frequently use one in rental cars during business travel.
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Hi everyone! I'm wondering what the best way is to listen to music from mobile devices in a car. I have huge music collections with my favourite songs on iPod, and even bought a special cable to connect it to the car radio. But the music sounds awful Any way to fix it? Also, is there any way to listen to music from USB pen drives, if the car head unit doesn't have a special USB port? Any ideas? Thank you in advance!
depends on how your audio system is set up, Anita. On my car (a Scion, built by Toyota) there is a built-in USB plug. Using it, I can play music VIA an MP3 player or by using nothing more than a thumb drive full of songs. Also, if your car stereo has blue tooth and your phone or MP3 player has blue tooth, then you can stream directly to the stereo without cables. It sounds like your car does NOT have a built-in USB, so you are probably using a 1/8" jack to connect the iPod's earphone jack to the stereo's AUX input. When you do this, you have to turn down the ipod's volume and let the car stereo control the volume.. otherwise the signal will be too distorted. PS: You may see USB connections that go into a car's cigarette lighter ... these don't work the same way as the built-in USB connections, and they can't be used to stream audio from a device to the stereo. They're only good for charging batteries.
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Many times, the issue is not with the gear but with the file format and the resolution of those files.
Most music on iPods is in MP3 format. People don't think twice about downloading or converting to 128kbs...and it sounds halfway decent on the cheap ear buds.... but when they play it back on a better system, the low sample rate shows. It's better to use 320kbs but waves are even better. Many mp3 players will not load waves.
I would suspect the sample rate to be a large part of the problem. I've played mp3's over a PA system and the low quality of the mp3 was very evident...and that was 320kbs.
No matter of you use a radio gizmo or a cable, the results will likely be the same. Radio will probably be worse.
How does a CD of that same song sound in the car? Assuming you have the disk and a player.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Welcome to the forum.
I'm not a fan of those FM transmitters. They are convenient but quality suffers badly on those I have tried. Likewise, Bluetooth sounds better but then you must leave your phone or other device plugged in, as Bluetooth will run down the battery faster. The best quality will be direct-wire into your car system, using the 1/8" to 1/8" cable as you are doing, or the USB if it is built-in to your car (which you said you do not have; the advantage there is that you can control the device from your car console).
So, since you are already using the best alternative in your situation, and you say it sounds awful, we need to examine 'awful'. Does your car stereo sound fine with FM or CDs? If it does, then try Pat's suggestion to match the volume better.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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eddie1261
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It really depends on your car. As Pat said, newer radios with some version of a "sync" system will stream your music via bluetooth. In fact mine starts streaming as soon as I start the car because my phone is paired so it can handle phone calls through the audio system. It also has an aux line in and a USB port, and that is a 2009 car, so they have been equipping cars for streaming audio for quite some time now.
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To the OP - define what sounding 'awful' means to you, as well as describe your 'special cable'.
Otherwise all of us are guessing at what might be wrong.
There are no defined rules of how loud you should set your iPhone/iPod - because there are no defined rules as to what the input specs are on the car's audio input. My iPhone 4s and now my older 'beater' iPhone 4 sounds primo at full volume. Some other portable devices (example Nook Color) need the headphone volume at full as it's the only setting where they haven't used a quantization of the audio signal (turning the volume down on the Nook is pure digital, no actual control of the analog volume).
Now, my Sansa mp3 player on the other hand has way too much output at full volume for the input on the very same radio input, and like Pat suggests, it has to be turned down or it distorts the input stage.
As for playing off of USB drives, this is becoming nearly standard on any aftermarket radios - even those you can buy at Wal-Mart. $100 will get that capability.
However, step back and think a little more about how you want to listen to music, because a Sansa Clip has a MicroSD card slot that you can load up with gigs of songs and you can go immediately from car to car-park to park to home to wherever, with just about the same convenience - if you eventually get a car radio with a USB port, then you can attach the Sansa Clip just like it's a 'pen drive' to the radio; most will see it as simply an attached storage device just like a 'pen drive'.
There's a reason the Sansa mp3 players are still around - they are one of the only legitimate alternatives to the iPod/Phone iOS devices and give users windows explorer simplicity of use.
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here are a bunch of commercially available replacement car stereos with USB, Blue tooth, SD card port etc CLICK HERE
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eddie1261
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I have a 500gb external USB hard drive that I bring inside, fill with my taste of the week, and plug into my car stereo. (The only caveat is that is has to be formatted as FAT32, but that may be a Ford Sync System thing.) Do you have any idea how much music 500gb (465gb usable) is? At 4 megs per song, (math in my head at 2:30am - lets see, 100 songs is 400mb, 200 songs is 800mb, 250 songs is 1gb, 250 songs times 465 usable gb) that is 116250 songs. (Someone please check that math.) That is around 113 hours of music without hearing the same song twice. For perspective, if I could drive straight through, I could go from my home town of Akron Oh to Seattle (35 hrs), then to LA (17 hrs), then to Miami (38 hrs), and back to Akron (17 hrs) and still have about 6 hours of music left. I doubt I could find 116250 songs I care to hear, but the math is fun. Or you could just use Sirius XM satellite radio... 
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Eddie, Sirius XM has audio quality equivalent of about 64 kbps or worse compressed .mp3. I have seen the actual figure somewhere. It didn't used to be that way, but as they added hundreds of sports and news channels for each major metro area, the bandwidth had to be divided up and many music channels suffered.
As a result it's significantly worse audio quality than a strong broadcast FM signal.
The only music fans that I have ever met that think Sirius/XM has decent audio quality for music have existing hearing loss issues. Early on in XM history, when there were fewer channels, the quality was about on par with 128 kbps .mp3 files, but it has significantly declined as channels have been added. The internet stream for these does not suffer the same issues as it doesn't depend on feed to/from a satellite.
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Why don't you buy a car audio adapter? Nowadays there are plenty of them on the market with quite affordable prices. Obviously, it's much better that buying a new car head unit with USB port/Apple connector or suffer from low-quality music using ipod cable of FM-transmitter... These adapters reproduce music from practically all modern mobile devices via car stereo system with high quality sound. For example I have AUX Link, but you can search for other brands and models, just google "car audio adapter", "aux car kit", "car ipod adapter", etc.... Good Luck!
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Mark, welcome to the forum.
That Aux Link unit looks very flexible. It says you need a CD Changer connector. Do all car stereos come with that now?
Even with that unit or similar, I don't believe you can improve on sound that uses a direct cable, what you called the iPod cable.
------
Where is Anita, the original poster?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I'm also not a fan of those FM transmitters, tried one, but it was a cheap ebay job, maybe there is quality somewhere.
I have a sub connector and this gives me the best sound, the phone is bluetoothed in also but I find if I user this the sound quality is less good, many its the phone's fault it's an HTC one
Z
Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k
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I wouldn't blame the phone too quickly, although the quality of Bluetooth implementation does vary. More likely, you are not happy with it because a Bluetooth signal uses compression. This becomes worse if you are transmitting a compressed file such as .MP3 or .WMA, as compressing an already compressed audio file leads to more audible artifacts. In addition, because it is radio, and very low power radio at that, it is subject to interference from other devices in the 2.4 GHz band like your wireless phones, microwave ovens, etc.
There is even a relatively new source of potential interference: USB 3.0.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I wouldn't blame the phone too quickly, although the quality of Bluetooth implementation does vary. More likely, you are not happy with it because a Bluetooth signal uses compression. This becomes worse if you are transmitting a compressed file such as .MP3 or .WMA, as compressing an already compressed audio file leads to more audible artifacts. In addition, because it is radio, and very low power radio at that, it is subject to interference from other devices in the 2.4 GHz band like your wireless phones, microwave ovens, etc.
There is even a relatively new source of potential interference: USB 3.0. Thank you Matt, I know very little about this sort if stuff..
Last edited by ZeroZero; 01/12/15 09:41 AM.
Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k
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interesting thread though!
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eddie1261
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The only music fans that I have ever met that think Sirius/XM has decent audio quality for music have existing hearing loss issues. To be honest Scott, if you take your index finger and place it against your thumb, that's how much I am concerned about audio quality in my car. My car is to get me fro point A to point B, not be looking for concert hall quality sound for the 7 minutes I am in my car. Not everybody is an audiologist like you. I rarely listen to music. Sometimes when I am cleaning house I play Pandora on my TV, but I HATE today's music so much I never listen to any of it, so Pandora day is Todd Rundgren, Tower of Power, Average White Band, etc..... I never understood people spending thousands to put esoteric audio equipment in their car. The best thing on Sirius is the comedy channels anyway. How about we answer the question, which was about iPod?
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Eddie,
sounds like your preferred Pandora channel is the same as mine!
well, actually I have a channel for my favorites in many different genres... but that's ONE of 'em!
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I've got a Parrot bluetooth device in the car. It takes an sd card and it plays through the car stereo. I CANNOT fault the playback quality, very reasonabley priced as well
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I've got a Parrot bluetooth device in the car. It takes an sd card and it plays through the car stereo. I CANNOT fault the playback quality, very reasonabley priced as well
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