POSTS
ipod in the car!
By astrophoenix
Installed an Audio Link in my car. this adds an ipod dock connector in my glove compartment. It keeps the ipod charged, and also pipes the music through the cd change connector on the back of my head unit. The car thinks the ipod is a cd changer! (which has cd with thousands of songs on them) the steering wheel controls will change tracks, and the head unit itself can select between the first 5 playlists on the ipod, as well as fast forward and rewind within a song. The only feature this unit is lacking is displaying the track title on the car’s display. in the most common mode though, the ipod screen stills shows that info, and the ipod controls can also be used to change playlists, etc. a killer feature of the Audio Link I haven’t seen on any other ipod adaptor is the extra connector which will plug into anything with a headphone jack, like laptops, dvd players, satellite radio receivers, even cheap walkmans from the 80s :) This is my second Audio Link, the first one was flaky and would only work after the car was started and turn off then back on again. and sometimes not even then. The second one has been flawless. (They sent me the second one free to replace the first one of course, free shipping and all). one thing I hadn’t expected is how nice it is not to have to fiddle with the ipod most of the time. it just sits in my glove box. when I park, I just have to turn the car off and get out, no more need to stop the ipod and stow it somewhere. before this, I was using an itrip FM transmitter with the ipod. worked well enough, but this is much better. my car has a number scale for volume. with the itrip, 15 was my typical volume level, and really loud was 20 or 21. now normal is 6, and really loud is 11! I’ve only had it back up to 15 once, that was just for a few seconds, and way loud (not distorted though) btw, I had the ipod on shuffle and the first song which came up was Ironman by Black Sabbath. installation took less than 30 minutes, with Aiden “helping” me. he did hold the flashlight once or twice. This was my second time to install it of course so I knew exactly what I was doing. the first time only took an hour or so though. no wire splicing required, it just plugs into the back of the head unit, that’s where it gets power from and everything.