MP3 Transmission on Your FM Dial
I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my mp3 player to talk to my car stereo for awhile now. I’ve tried the old cassette dupe with the cable out to the player, but it sounds like ass. 2 years ago I bought a FM transmitter doodad, but it sounded worse…staticy, poor frequency response, totally unacceptable for the then $75 or so. I had resigned myself to not being able to do it. However, recently a co-worker of mine brought his newer Belkin Tunecast II in for me to try and it worked! It wasn’t amazing sound, but with some slight tweaking of the stereo’s tone controls, it was more than passable as a trade-off to have 20GB of my music library driving around with me. Now I own one.
Trouble is, I want more. I drive a stationwagon, (shut up), and the antenna is in the rear of the vehicle, presenting one challenge…there is always a little bit of static under the music, noticeable on quiet passages. And I find the stereo imaging to be suspicious….supposed to be stereo, but it seems rather narrow. And of course, it has an auto shut-off feature which is great except when you are thumbing through the player searching for a song, and the Belkin turns off, hosing your ears down with a mighty blast of static from the empty station you’ve tuned into.
Luckily it seems I’m not alone in this quest for bigger, better, badder, and I’ve found an Instructable that serves the solution up all nice and simple-like. So sometime in the next few, I’m going to bust out my as-yet-unused soldering tool and see if I can become a pirate radio station unto myself. 
 I’ll let you know how it goes…..
Leave a Comment