Escape Artists
The Lounge at the End of the Universe => Podcast Pedantry => Topic started by: Unblinking on November 27, 2010, 11:58:08 PM
-
Whoo! I just bought a great little gadget that will play my iPod through my car tape deck. This will MUCH improve my fiction listening experience. I tested it out, and it sounds awesome, with full bass instead of those tinny little iPod earbuds. I'm looking forward to my Monday commute to give it a real working test run. ;D
-
Whoo! I just bought a great little gadget that will play my iPod through my car tape deck. This will MUCH improve my fiction listening experience. I tested it out, and it sounds awesome, with full bass instead of those tinny little iPod earbuds. I'm looking forward to my Monday commute to give it a real working test run. ;D
WANT.
Possibly not enough to brave the mall this weekend, though.
-
Whoo! I just bought a great little gadget that will play my iPod through my car tape deck. This will MUCH improve my fiction listening experience. I tested it out, and it sounds awesome, with full bass instead of those tinny little iPod earbuds. I'm looking forward to my Monday commute to give it a real working test run. ;D
WANT.
Possibly not enough to brave the mall this weekend, though.
It cost me $10 at Best Buy, but I expect you could find it at most any electronics store. I'm honestly not sure why I never thought of it before! Probably because I tend to forget I have a tape deck, as I don't own any audio cassette tapes.
-
Wow, it was so much nicer to listen using this! I'm in the middle of an episode of StarShipSofa right now, I can't WAIT to get to my next episode of Escape Pod and hear the opening Daikaiju music!
By the way, if anyone is looking to play their iPod over their car radio and you don't have a tape deck or auxiliary jack, you can also buy an iTrip, a short distance FM broadcaster adapter, which you can tune your car radio to receive. This doesn't work very well in metropolitan areas, though, because you need to find an empty radio channel to broadcast without interference. Or if you car has a detachable or retractable antenna, you can remove/retract it to stop it from receiving your weaker local stations, and use that band for the iPod instead.
-
102.1 FM works great in Atlanta and all the way up to Chattanooga.
-
I have a lovely FM transmitter that plugs into cigarette lighter, tunable to any frequency in the FM band (might be missing the extreme edges; can't remember last time I checked it against my car radio), and holds three presets. And of course, charges the iPod while it's plugged in.
Can't remember manufacturer offhand; bought it from CompUSA some years back when they were going out of business. Anyway, it's fraking awesome.
[edit]
It's a Kensington. It looks like this:
(http://www.digital-cameras-photo.com/images/Kensington-Digital-FM-Transmitter-Car-Charger-for-iPod-B0007XXHNW-L.jpg)
-
I have a 2008 Scion tC, it has an iPod attachment cable, and steering wheel controls for said iPod attachment. It is awesome. Stories sound awesome, though i have to turn the bass down something fierce for most stories.
Are cars still made with tape decks? I remember tapes... my mom once got an attachment to play a cd player through the tape deck and that was awesome.
-
Are cars still made with tape decks?
If my recent Hyundai i30 is anything to go by, nope. But it does come with an iPod connection, which is awesome! What's not quite so awesome is you have to buy a special Hyundai cable connector for it to work. I bought one on eBay -- waaay cheaper.
-
I have a 2008 Scion tC, it has an iPod attachment cable, and steering wheel controls for said iPod attachment. It is awesome. Stories sound awesome, though i have to turn the bass down something fierce for most stories.
I turn off the "loudness" function on my car stereo's head unit when listening to podcasts. In extreme cases, I'll also set the iPod EQ to "spoken word" (typically I have it set to "off").
-
I have a 2008 Scion tC, it has an iPod attachment cable, and steering wheel controls for said iPod attachment. It is awesome. Stories sound awesome, though i have to turn the bass down something fierce for most stories.
Are cars still made with tape decks? I remember tapes... my mom once got an attachment to play a cd player through the tape deck and that was awesome.
Yup! My car's a 2008, and I didn't custom order the radio. In fact when we bought it and asked if they had something with an auxiliary jack, they said "Sure, we'll swap them out for free". And then I found out the other radio was listed by them as being worth several hundred dollars less, so "for free" meant "we will pocket the money and giggle with glee". So I kept this one.
-
So you chose to go with the inferior option because while the superior option cost you nothing, choosing it benefited someone else?
Gotta love economic psychology...
-
So you chose to go with the inferior option because while the superior option cost you nothing, choosing it benefited someone else?
Gotta love economic psychology...
I'm not claiming it was entirely rational. I was pretty annoyed, though, that the salesman was happy to just say "We'll do it for you for free!" and happy to take the credit for giving me such a great deal while stuffing the wad of cash in his back pocket. I mean, I know he's making his living off of these sales and that he is in the business of APPEARING to be a nice guy, but I naively like to think that when dealing with the salesman we are negotiating a compromise that is mutually beneficial, not just grabbing for cash with tooth and nail. Being reminded otherwise made me angry and spiteful. I'd just literally spent 2-3 hours waiting for all the financial approvals and financing arrangements for the car loan, and I was getting crabby from that anyway, and then this just topped the cake.
In this case, inferiority is a relative term anyway. Mine has more market value because it has a 6 CD changer, but I would certainly get more use out of an auxiliary jack, so the Aux jack has more value to me personally.
-
I have a lovely FM transmitter that plugs into cigarette lighter,
[snip]
And of course, charges the iPod while it's plugged in.
Looks like a good choice. I have a Belkin transmitter that runs on two AAA cells, and they don't last very long.
Charging up the iPod is a nice bonus too.
I also have a cassette deck adapter for my other vehicle. The only problem with that is that sometimes the tape deck thinks there's a problem with the "cassette" and spits it out. Eventually though, it warms up or something after 3 or 4 tries and the device stays in.
-
On my project truck, I'm going to install a Bose sound system. I run 2500 watt inverters in all my trucks so the drivers can have refrigerators and microwaves. With "hotel loads" common in trucks now, I've decided to go ahead and install quality 120 volt equipment.
A lot of the stuff discussed in this thread is commonplace in the trucking industry. The biggest problem I have with an axillary input on my stereo is the interference from my truck's electronics. I bought a nice set of noise canceling headphones for audio books and podcasts, but they don't boost the volume. This caused me to stop listening to several podcasts that I do enjoy. On the plus side, I have been listening to a great many nonfiction audiobooks lately, so I'm using my driving time productively.
-
I have a lovely FM transmitter that plugs into cigarette lighter, tunable to any frequency in the FM band (might be missing the extreme edges; can't remember last time I checked it against my car radio), and holds three presets. And of course, charges the iPod while it's plugged in.
Can't remember manufacturer offhand; bought it from CompUSA some years back when they were going out of business. Anyway, it's fraking awesome.
It's a Kensington. It looks like this:
(http://www.digital-cameras-photo.com/images/Kensington-Digital-FM-Transmitter-Car-Charger-for-iPod-B0007XXHNW-L.jpg)
I use one of these too - it works quite well. The only problem is when you travel into a new city, that has a strong broadcast frequency on the channel you're using. Then you need to go searching for a new free channel, and it's a bit of a pain. But the audio quality is surprisingly good!
-
It's a Kensington. It looks like this:
(http://www.digital-cameras-photo.com/images/Kensington-Digital-FM-Transmitter-Car-Charger-for-iPod-B0007XXHNW-L.jpg)
I use one of these too - it works quite well. The only problem is when you travel into a new city, that has a strong broadcast frequency on the channel you're using. Then you need to go searching for a new free channel, and it's a bit of a pain. But the audio quality is surprisingly good!
That's why three presets.
-
Woohoo! I now have a radio in my truck that I can dock my mp3 player to. The quality is phenominal. I generally only listen to audiobooks and podcasts while driving. Now that I finally have a good setup, I can catch up on Pseudopod. It had been dropped because of my listening environment. Now to figure out where I left off...
-
Yeah I drive a lot with my job, and have been listening to Escape Pod in the car since it started, it sure brightens your working day!
Steve