if get a "headphone to RCA" Cord and plug it into the headphone jack of your MP3 player and the other end into the toyota AUX adapter, do you have to adjust the MP3 Player's volume to max, min, in between?

I'm fixing to get an MP3 Player to use in the car solely....so i can see, scan through songs easier.

PART II

Or would an FM Modulator be a better/easier route?

THX ahead of time.

-Skizzle-

 

The FM modulator would be by far the easier route, BUT you will have static. I would connect your MP3 player to the AUX input of your headunit, this will give you the most clear and crisp sound. I don't know how the stock headunit works with the AUX adapter but I'm sure someone will respond with the correct way to hook it up. Its probably as easy as 1) Remove headunit 2) Plug in and finally you have RCA onnections to attached to your cable from your ipod to the RCA's

 

I have found - and I work in the music biz - that when I use something like an iPod, and the volume is being adjusted on the analog out (as in your question) it's best to set the iPod (or whatever it is) to about 85% volume.
If you set it to 100%, it will clip and distort. You can prove this by using extremes - try it very low and pegged - you will see it's best to have it near the high end, but not 100%.
It should work nicely. We do this with all sorts of devices in a pinch.

Scott

 

The iPod is designed with line level outputs on the little-bottom-connector-thingy. Any consumer electronics store should have a variety of products availalble that you can plug to the iPod connector and output what the RCA inputs are expecting.

Check out the XtremeMac Auxiliary Audio Cable for iPod at the Apple iPod Store:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...lm=TC856LL%2FA

 

Can someone post a picture of what this AUX adapter looks like. Thanks

 

are there any other Mp3 players besides Ipods that have a line out that someone would recommend ?.... I'mwilling to spend around 200-250....I'm not buying an ipod because for the same ammount of money with another one I can get 6-10gigs of music....

 

FM modulator would be easier for sure. Just plug it in to the MP3 player, then tune the radio to that station. But whether they work right is a gamble. You get some people who say they have no problems at all. Then you get people like a friend of mine who was not able to get a clear signal no matter how many different stations she tried. (She was using the Griffin iTrip w/ her iPod).

Just google the TOY03 Aux adapter and you'll find a pic of it. It's a small box with 2 RCA inputs on one side, then a cable on the other side that plugs into the Disc Changer input in the back of the headunit. Pulling out your headunit is EXTREMELY easy.

There is a really good faq here on scionlife that takes you step-by-step on removing your radio. Trust me, that's what I used and it's even easier than it looks.

So basically I pulled out my radio. Plugged in the aux adapter. Used some 3M double-sided industrial tape to attach the little aux adapter to a panel behind the radio. Plugged in a couple of headphone-to-rca cables and ran those where I wanted them, then put every back together and I was done.

I have both my iPod and Sirius running through the adapter. On both, I have the volume all the way up on the actual devices. My iPod sounds excellent.

And just to throw it out there: If you have an 06 TC, you don't need to worry about an Aux adapter.

 

I have a dell jukebox and i like it a lot. I use the headphone jack to connect it to the aux in the tC, but in my 4Runner i used a mini jack to rca to hook it up to my stereo, sounds great at 100% volume in either ride.

 

I just got the Creative Zen Touch 40 gig player for 250. It works beautifully, and sounds great in my xB (thru the aux port next to the ebrake). I looked at tons of players and settled on this one for a few reasons.

First off, I HATE iTunes. I love the Ipod and it's controls, and if it let me interface with software other than itunes I'd get it. I have about 50 gigs of music, and with iTunes, it's just a big freaking list of songs displayed. Sure, you can use search to find what you're looking for, but it's just a huge pain in the booty. With Windows Media Player, or most any other jukebox for that matter, you can organize your music in collapsible folders (Parent Directory/Artist/Album/Track Title). The Zen player is super compatible with this, and even lets you drag/drop stuff onto it, like a portable hard drive. The interface is really easy to use (and similar to the iPod for that matter).

The Zen Touch is also compatible with multiple formats. Most consumers use Mp3 / WMA for their audio files, and the zen touch works just fine with both. It even lets you adjust the bit rates so you can fit more or less music on your player, depending on the quality you desire (I use either 128 or 192). iTunes formats ALL your music into a format called AAC, which I've personally found to be pretty crappy compared to the other two. There is no way of getting around this, which is hugely dissapointing for me. I have so much music and it's taken me COUNTLESS hours to organize it, and if I used iTunes, it would undo everything I've done so far.

The only downside I've found so far is that in using the player in my car, I'd like to be able to see the track names / have a remote for the player to change tracks/play/pause. The one made by creative has been discontinued, and no 3rd party makes one. I had to get one off ebay from austraulia for about $100. Hope this helps!

 

Tool7f - WTF are you taking about? iTunes lets you organize to your heart's content - I have 250GB of music - yes, 250GB and iTunes is fantastic.
I think you need to spend more time looking into it - I'm not sure why you think what you do...
AND...iTunes lets you encode in a number of bitrates AND formats - you clearly don't know what you're talking about, sorry dude.
AND...AAC has been rated as better by most audiophiles. Per any given bitrate, AAC has better sound in smaller files.
The only thing that iTunes doesn't do that many want is OGG.

Scott

 

haha! Maybe it was just because I got too frustrated trying to do it. If you're familiar with the setup of WMP, everything is minimized on the left hand colum of the screen (music/video/etc). When it's minimized, that's all you see. I can click on Music, and up pops a list of ways it's organized (by artist/ album/ genre / rating/ etc). Also, since I clicked on the parent folder, all my music shows up in the center orginizer. So Then I click on artist, and I get a big list of all the artists. I can click on a specific one, and the albums will pop up, while displaying all of that artists tracks. I can click on an album, and that albums tracks will be displayed, as well as any addditional info I have about it. I spent a considerable amount of time (6 hours) organizing my girlfriends music library (she has about 20 gigs) on iTunes, and it just about drove me crazy. I couldn't organize albums how I wanted to as above. Also, it drove me crazy changing my information. For example, Linkin Park's Reanimation album. On WMP, I can organize this album under the main artist (Linkin Park), or each sub artist on the record (there's about 10). With iTunes, I never could find a way to do this. Every time I changed it to just Linkin Park, it would change it right back to putting them under each individual artist. Now I don't know how much file sharing you do, but trying to share an album when each track is in a different folder is an organizational nightmare.

These are my concerns with iTunes. Please don't take this as Apple bashing, because I love Apple, and the Ipod is awesome. If there IS something I can do to organize iTunes the way I'd like, please let me know so I can do this to her iTunes/iPod.

Thanks!

Edit: as to bitrates, I never said the ipod couldn't do it, I just said it was a cool feature of the zen.
As for the AAC vs. mp3/wma, I wasn't really quoting anything, just stating from personal experience that the zen seemed to sound a little better in my car against the ipod with same bitrate quality (@ 192). Again, all I could find was that the ipod wanted to use the aac format, and after 6 hours with no luck, I have to say I gave up. If it'll play wma, then that's news to me

 

Bashing is talking sh!te about something when you're wrong!

I think that you have not invoked the "Browser" in iTunes for starters.
I don't know the menu commands on a PC, but on the Mac, it's under the Edit menu - Show Browser.

Then, you can organize like crazy - and make bada$$ playlists - very amazing power in playlists.

Also, you can configure the type of encoding by (again, on Mac) by going to Preferences / Advanced / Importing / Import Using...from there - config away.

Didn't mean to jump on your ****, but you clearly have not spent any time exploring what a great app iTunes is!

AAC vs MP3

Scott

 

The browser feature may be where I need to go to look, but again, I wasn't really trying to make a playlist, just organize the jukebox and my collection to my liking without spending countless manhours. It also makes me wonder what exactly the difference is between the PC and Mac versions...Do I have all the same features as you?

 

I'm sure it's got the same (mostly) features.
DL 6.0.1 and the latest QuickTime.

Scott

 

I'll check it out. Back to the topic though, as I said the iPod is pretty cool, but I really like the player I just got. It had minimal setup, and didn't involve me using any new software or having to mess around with any other proprietary software. I don't believe the iPod can use WMP or any other player than iTunes, which could be a downside for potential purchasers. Also, can the iPod be used like an external harddrive? Meaning drag and drop any sort of files onto it for easy transfer using the explorer instead of a synching program (aka a jukebox or provided software). I can just plug mine in via usb, and it shows up in my computer. I can click on it and edit any of the content on it just by dragging it on or off.

 

iPod is not WMA-compatible - but WMA sux!
Yes, you can use the iPod as a hard drive - I have five of them and I use them for backing up data and one for software installs.

Scott