How to play MP3s from your iPod through your car speakers

Posted on December 3, 2007 at 1:32 pm

Want to take your iPod on the road with you and have it play through your car speakers while you drive? Connecting your iPod to your car speakers may seem a little difficult, especially if you don’t have a cassette deck in your car, but it’s actually quite easy and won’t cost you much money. It definitely worth the $40 or so bucks you’ll have to spend in order to have your entire music collection available at all times rather than having to listen to the radio.

There are actually two ways you can go about connecting your iPod or MP3 player to the car speakers:

Cassette Adapter for CD and MP3 Players

You’ve probably already used this method before for connecting up your CD player to the tape deck on your car. If you still have a tape deck in your car, then you can use the same cassette adapter to play songs from your iPod on your car speakers. Simply plug in the 1/8 inch stereo jack into the headphone jack of your iPod and you’re good to go. You can get one of these for around $20 or so from your local Radio Shack.

iPod FM Transmitter

The second way to play your iPod through your car speakers is by using a iPod FM Transmitter for anyone who does not have a tape deck in their car. These devices are a little more expensive than the cassette adapter because they also contain a built-in charger for your iPod. Simply plug in your iPod into the device and you can have your iPod constantly charged and send out a FM signal that you car radio will pick up.

The cool thing is that you can set the transmitter to broadcast an FM signal to any frequency between 88.1 and 107.9. You can basically create your own radio station with your iPod music! Pretty neat. Make sure to get an adjustable cradle that can handle an 80GB iPod all the way down to the iPod Mini.

Some of the better iPod FM transmitters allow you to detach the transmitter device itself and connect it to a Mac or PC via USB. You can then broadcast any audio from your computer via a FM signal to the radio including music from iTunes or the Internet, audio presentations, movie audio, etc.

Here are a couple of links for iPod FM Transmitters that you might be interested in:

Griffin RoadTrip FM Transmitter and Car Charger for iPod

Kensington Digital FM Transmitter/Car Charger for iPod

Using these two devices, you should now be able to enjoy any of your music from your iPod or computer on your car speakers! No more listening to boring radio stations, etc. Also, if you like to watch movies, you can play the movie on your laptop and play the audio for the movie via your car speakers using the FM Transmitter! So if your computer speakers suck, go get one of these. Enjoy!

[tags]ipod fm transmitter, cassette adapter, digital fm transmitter, connect ipod to car speakers, play ipod through car speakers[/tags]

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