iPod bare minimum needed?

[AaronV]

Hi Folks, I'm quite new here.

I've got a 2005 Mazda 3 I'm very happy with. It has the stock 6-cd changer. I'm wondering what the bare minimum is that I'll need to pipe my iPod directly into the stereo, not using an FM transmitter.

The FM transmitter is underwhelming. The sound quality is unreliable and the iPod battery gets drained very fast. I looked around a bit on the forums and found some links to stuff I needed to install in the head unit and a post that seemed to suggest there was an aux input already built in but not accessible from the dash directly.

 

[1sty]

For the $30 i would just do a wired FM modulator. They will sound fine for an IPOD as it has no sound wuality anyways.

 

[jbors]

I would not say iPod has bad quality. There are many reports which shows that. It has very acceptable especially compared to stock audio system installed in most cars.
Wired FM provide frequences 120-8K which is very poor compared to direct connection and still not free from interference.

 

[AaronV]

So aside from Wired FM. Will I need to modify my stock audio system to plug in the iPod, or is there an Auxiliary input built in already? If not, what will I need to look at and where can I learn about installation?

 

[dave45090]

http://www.sylfex.com/products/AuxMod/

 

[jbors]

You will need either Aux adapter or iPod one. Google or ebay are the best source of those.
We have announced beta testing for such things lately. Will be out in couple of weeks...

 

[mctriple]

I took out my stock cd player and noticed that it had an extra set of pins.. looked on the net and found out what they're for.. connecting a cd changer. It was pretty easy to then wire up a little mini jack and switch (to tell it when it switch to this input). Got a power inverter (my 3rd gen iPod's battery is quite old by now) to keep it powered up, and it worked fine.

This Christmas, somebody got me a new cd player with a minijack aux input, so that made it even nicer than having a few extra wires run under the passenger side. They have some that are pretty inexpensive. Mine can also read USB flash drives of up to 2gb, so you may not even need an iPod (and power supply) anymore.

 

[mctriple]

So aside from Wired FM. Will I need to modify my stock audio system to plug in the iPod, or is there an Auxiliary input built in already? If not, what will I need to look at and where can I learn about installation?

I'm betting that if you unplug your cd changer, you can hook up a mini jack connection to the right pins of that connection, like I did for mine. You'd lose the 6 cd changer, but gain many more play hours from an iPod.