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(Yet another) Question regarding car audio

BigSmooth

BigSmooth

Lifer
OK, I know very little about car audio, but please excuse my ignorance. 😱

My question is: how can I hook up a portable CD player to play in a car system with no tape deck? I used to use one of those cassette-adapter things but now my car has a CD player in it already. The reason I want to hook up a portable is that I got one of those MP3-CD players so I would like to be able to hook that up in my car.

The portable I have has both a headphone jack and a "line out" jack (so you can use a miniplug-to-RCA connection). My car is a 2000 Nissan Sentra.

So is there some way to hook this up easily? Is there a "car adapter kit" for this sort of thing, and if so where could I buy one? Or would this be something only a professional could do properly?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 🙂
 
Do you have an aftermarket CD player in your car or a factory one? An aftermarket one might have an AUX input that could accept the line-out from your CD player. To get to it though, you would probably have to remove your deck and hook up a cord to the back.

Most aftermarket decks should have an RCA input that could help you out.
 
TRP is right, you can get a thing called an FM Modulator. It will broadcast any input to a specific FM station.

The sound quality isn't any better than FM radio, but it's better than nothing.

Why not buy an aftermarket deck that has an AUX in? (not all do). They can be had for not too much, and will be better than the stock deck!
 


<< There are also companies that make car stereos that play MP3 CD-R's. >>



Yeah, but they are quite pricey, and don't work the greatest yet.

I know Pioneer's old deck's had AUX in (I had one). You can pick up a mid-level Pioneer deck for a lot less than one of these first-generation car mp3 players.

EDIT: to be clear, i'm not saying that current pioneer decks have an AUX in, just using that as an example.
 
Yep, you want an FM modulator. As long as you buy a decent one sound quality should be just fine. If your factory deck has an input for a CD changer it may be adaptable. You'd need to either buy or make an adapter. My EQ has an aux input and I run RCA cables with a minijack adapter at the end. When I want to listen to cassettes I just pull the RCA cable out from behind the center console and plug it in. I would recommend the FM modulator route since MP3's and particularly cassettes have a fairly high noise floor as-is.
 
I realize it depends on bits/second record rate but I think once you rip a CD to MP3 and burn it to a CDR the quality has deteriorated and it's easy to hear. Now I can clearly hear this, especially in my aftermarket car stereo. I can compare an MP3 to a CD sitting in front of my computer and it's pretty easy to hear. If you're running a stock car stereo or sub-par headphones it's probably not a big difference.
 
The only problem I have with that test (aside from the file size with my dialup) is that they are switching formats. Any time you switch formats I think the sound quality gets compromised. A better option would be to burn the MP3 to a CDR and compare the two. Obviously you need a CD/MP3 player to do this. I'll try to get an MP3 from a particular album and compare it to the actual CD in my CD-ROM drive.
 
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