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For the want of one little plug

33 comments on For the want of one little plug

For the want of one little plug
: Every damned car stereo should have an input plug on the front so we could plug in our MP3 players and phones (it would make my Treo into a speaker phone) and whatever else comes down the electronic pike. It would be so damned simple and cheap. But no.

So instead, I’m grappling tonight with the phone and a plug adapter and two cigarette-light power adapters and an Irock fm transmitter that doesn’t work, as it turns out, because all four frequencies it uses are already used in this market. So it sounds as if I’m trying to draw in a shortwave signal from Capetown when, in fact, I’m only trying to transmit to an antenna three feet away.

All this would be solved if only there were a little input jack in the front of the car stereo. Arrrrgh.

33 responses to “For the want of one little plug”

  1. EB Avatar
    EB

    Auxillary Audio Input from the Crutchfield web page:
    Auxiliary Audio Input
    An input on the face or rear of the receiver that enables you to connect a plug-and-play satellite radio tuner or portable player (CD, MP3, cassette, or MD) to the receiver. The input jack can be either Mini or RCA.
    Their page of receivers:
    http://www.crutchfield.com/S-aC7WAqj041g/cgi-bin/ProdGroup.asp?b=All+brands&g=62700&image2.x=13&image2.y=13

  2. Justin Katz Avatar
    Justin Katz

    There must be some reason for that (“reason” being a neutral term that could mean anything from technology restrictions to business sneakiness). When I bought my very first car stereo in the early ’90s, I wanted a CD player with a jack into which my dad (whose car I was driving) could plug a tape player. Finding such a stereo wasn’t easy.
    Is the adaptor market big enough that stereo companies would withhold this minor perk to keep it going? It seems unlikely, but if not that, what?

  3. John Avatar
    John

    If your stereo has a cassette player, a cassette adapter that can connect to anything using the mini-phone plug will work. That’s how I connect my XM Sky-Fi radio from the auto dock to the stereo, and the plug works just as well on my Rio mp3 player.

  4. anon Avatar
    anon

    Sorry for the offtopic post Jeff, but have you seen this: ANTI-BUSH AD CONTEST SUBMITS SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL — CBS Spokesman Doubts Spot Will Pass Standards Review
    So what do you think of that?

  5. Duke Avatar
    Duke

    The Honda Element has that plug on the dash, conveniently over a shelf. So you can buy a new radio for about 20K. My aftermarket Blaupunkt radio has an accessory plug that goes into the back. If I had know that when I bought it I would have got it

  6. Joachim Klehe Avatar
    Joachim Klehe

    Jeff, contact a quality local auto stereo installer; I just had an auxiliiary audio input installed in my new Suburban and I now have a pair of RCA plugs to plug my iPod into.

  7. henrycopeland Avatar
    henrycopeland

    A jack? My God, if things were that simple, the car company wouldn’t be able to talk us into the $900 upsell into the “special” radio/cd/mp3 player… the entire $437 profit margin that the $500 billion a year car industry subsists on would be swept away… we’d all have to go back to peddling bikes and pulling kiddie wagons. A lot of *sses are riding on that jack, Jeff. Don’t get greedy and ruin it for the rest of us.

  8. tim Avatar
    tim

    About 6 months ago, I went to a high-end car audio dealer here looking for exactly that — a miniplug jack on a car stereo.
    After I’d scanned the entire room of fancy new faceplates — including some that had slide-out video monitors (!) — a salesman oozed up and asked if he could help. I told him what I was looking for. “Not gonna happen,” he said. “There’s no demand, and besides, it would take up too much space.”
    I waved my iPod in his face, saying surely I wasn’t the first person who’d asked for a miniplug, what with the exponential growth of personal high-capacity audio players.
    He tried to sell me a nice cd-changer. Clueless.
    So I bought a cassette adaptor (elsewhere) and resigned myself to less-than-stellar quality. No way I’m paying $150 to have a line-in adapter custom-fitted to my car stereo.

  9. Bob Avatar
    Bob

    The Honda Element not only has the input right over a little shelf for the player, it has power available right there too. Feeds the MP3 right into the stereo, which is very good in it’s own right.
    Plus, it’s fun to drive. I love mine!

  10. Shawn Avatar
    Shawn

    There are a few decks that do have auxillary inputs. The odds that the factory stereo will have this is low (I know it’s an optional on the Mini). When I got my ipod, I also got a Sony Xplod car stereo http://www.xplodsony.com/products/?CATEGORY=CD&MD=CDX-M630 that had RCA inputs. Works wonderfully. They do exist, and the salesman who told you that they don’t is just wrong.

  11. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    I used to drive a Dodge Stealth. The car came with a Bose stereo cassette stereo system and an equalizer, both on the dash board. One of the nice features of this was that the equalizer had an auxilary input on it and would override the stereo when something was plugged in.
    I’ve never seen something like that on another car, but my wife and I were thinking of looking at Honda Elements as a next car (good space for kids and dogs) and if it has a jack for my iPod, Im all the more tempted :)

  12. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this one yet: Alpine announces car audio head units that interface with iPod

  13. andy Avatar
    andy

    I do the method John mentioned. I ripped a large portion of my CD collection to my laptop (playing via WinAmp), and also have audio books on there. For music, I set WinAmp to shuffle play, set my laptop to not power down when closed, hook it to a cassette adapter, and then tuck the laptop down by the side of the seat. I lose the “digitalness” of the sound, but it’s good enough for my purposes.

  14. djspicerack Avatar
    djspicerack

    Chrysler’s Pacifica has jacks as well, but fortunately, the 6 disc DVD changer also plays MP3s and CDRs, so I don’t necessarily need to bring an external player…

  15. henrycopeland Avatar
    henrycopeland

    If Apple can reinvent itself as a jukebox, maybe Honda should jump on the bandwagon, as Duke suggests. The profit margin on an iPod is about that same as that on car. And Honda’s gotten three plugs here already.

  16. CujoQuarrel Avatar
    CujoQuarrel

    I’ve got an oldish (3 years) Aiwa in my car that will do MP3’s and has an input jack on the faceplate so they do exist.
    I plug my portable MP3 player (Archos 20giger) to it for long drives.
    ME

  17. Rick C Avatar
    Rick C

    OT: How’s the acceleration on the Element? I’ve been kicking around the idea of getting one for the space and nifty features but I’ve heard that it’s kinda underpowered with only a 4-cylider engine.

  18. Don Avatar
    Don

    I use a audio-out/casette adapter in my RAV4 to play my iPod. Rest assured, in my next car purchase I will be looking for a line-in directly to the stereo. Car makers take note: I’m not the only one!

  19. Kleptomaniac Avatar
    Kleptomaniac

    I’d spring for a car stereo unit that has either a Compact Flash or a SD socket. Put some tunes on a memory card, stick it into the dash player, and away I go…

  20. Kustie the Klown Avatar
    Kustie the Klown

    Amen brother. I spent $6000 on a car stereo in 1998. It was the absolute top of the line (for its time) in every way. And yet it did not have, and could not be modified to include, a simple auxilary input jack to accommodate my portable minidisc player.

  21. Natalie Avatar
    Natalie

    And while we are at it….why doesn’t every car radio have built-in weather radios with severe weather alerts?

  22. Jay C. Avatar
    Jay C.

    Right on, Jeff!
    I ran into this problem a few weeks ago when my wife innocently suggested we get an “adaptor” so we could use her iPod in the car.
    [for reasons of space limitation, rant about Apple hardware/”upgrade”/connector issues is omitted]
    The fundamental issue, I quickly ascertained, was something along the lines of: “gee, why don’t car-stereos have an input jack?”
    Now that the awesome power of the blogosphere has been brought to bear on this issue, maybe we will see eventual progress on solving this seemingly simple problem: but for now, we (and I see I am not alone in this) will just have to get along with a cat’s-cradle of adaptors, plugs and wires.
    Maybe the highway-safety lobby could get input jacks made mandatory on safety grounds: I know I would hate to have to do ANYTHING with the iPod/cassette/plug setup at anything but a dead stop!

  23. Abraham Liebsch Avatar
    Abraham Liebsch

    I’m surprised you have had such a hard time finding this…not long ago, I went to Best Buy and picked up a Kenwood receiver for $180.00 that has an input jack right on the front, AND it plays MP3 CD’s! I absolutely love it.

  24. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Since I am going to be keeping my Camry for a while but I would love to have an input jack, I just went looking and found this thread:
    http://www.toyotanation.com/archive/topic/19205-1.html
    I have also wondered about the built-in FM transmitter in the Napster unit
    http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?j=1&id=1061127809427&skuId=5982118&type=product&cmp=LEC-NAPSTER
    Of course, I think the coolest thing would be Bluetooth
    http://www.webdesk.com/bluetooth-car-stereo/

  25. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    I added my own: just drilled a hole in the faceplate, cut the appropriate PCB traces, and attached a 1/4″ stereo jack. The hardest part was making it all fit (much harder if there’s a cassette or CD player in the way; mine was just AM/FM).
    I agree that this feature should be easier to come by than it is.

  26. NV Desert Rat Avatar
    NV Desert Rat

    I have a 2003 Mercedes C32 AMG, it has a 1/8″ input jack in the glovebox, so I can tuck my MP3 player out of the way, or run MP3s off the laptop in the passenger seat by closing the glovebox door on the cord. Works great, it’s a nice inexpensive feature.

  27. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    My 2004 Nissan Sentra came with one of those aux-in socket. I plug my portable DVD player into it :)

  28. TM Lutas Avatar
    TM Lutas

    Here’s another option, they could just stick a hard drive in the car with the requisite electronics including 802.11b with Rendezvous (zeroconf) and just let you network your car in as an iPod. Copy over your songs on the network and you’re done. As a bonus, since you’re not carrying the thing around, they could charge less and make more money. A large part of the cost of the iPod is that they have to use such small and light hard drives for the thing and they’re much more expensive than regular drives.

  29. newscaper Avatar
    newscaper

    I have an 18 month old Aiwa 4x45w CD/receiver that I bought for $99 installed from best Buy (plus $13 for the wiring harness adapter).
    It has that all important jack, into which I plug my $39 Memorex MP3 CD player.
    Technology on the cheap.
    Any claims about the cost , or space, of incorporating the jack are absurd. You are talking about easily less than $1 for parts and the chinese labor.
    The guy who said they are trying to protect the upsell to the exhorbitantly priced cd changer (or their own MP3 radio)is probably right.
    Bastards.

  30. Dan Taylor Avatar
    Dan Taylor

    May I ask a question or two? I have a pretty un-hip car but it came with a 6-disc CD changer. Which means it can hold approximately 480 minutes of music. How long a drive are you people going on that you need to plug in an MP3 that holds thousands of songs? And why would you want to make the trade-off in sound quality that comes from compressing an audio file into an MP3 file?

  31. Andrea Harris Avatar
    Andrea Harris

    Dan. You’re in a car. Even the most luxurious, top-of-the-line autos are not exactly prime audiophile experience chambers. I doubt most people (especially Boomers, half deaf after years of rock concert attendance) will be able to tell the difference between cd sound and mp3 sound.

  32. John Avatar
    John

    Which is why I stayed with the simple cassette adapter for my mp3. Given the noise levels in you average car — and for Jeff the average road condition in New York City and northern New Jersey — a costly modification for a perfect digital connection without the S/N hiss that the cassette adapter has is not worth a major financial modification expense.
    If you’re blasting something at 110 db on your mp3 player in the car, at night, and when it’s stopped at a traffic light or parked in some lot or your own driveway, then the hiss problem with the cassette adaptor plug-in becomes noticable. Driving down I-78 or the New Jeresey Turkpike, and those higher frequencies are going to be drowned out anyway.

  33. TX Bueller Avatar
    TX Bueller

    Yeah,the cassette adapter works for me too, but on cold days I have to hold it in front of my heater vents for a minute before putting it in the cassette player in order for it not to bind the cogs and get ejected!