iPod as a stand alone

[blackline]

my car just got its aftermarket cd player and cds stolen from it. i dont listen to the radio but need something to replace the cds.

question is could i use a rca cable from a ipod to go directly to a 4 channel amp to power the speakers. the remote wire for the amp would be wired into the 12 volt power connection on the stock harness. this means the entire system (volume control, etc...) would be ran by a iPod has anyone done this?

[bobb-mini]

Yes. Do it. From he headphone's out.

[blackline]

has anyone done this? im guessing you can get like a 10 ft cable from radio shack right?

[morganw]

Originally posted by blackline
has anyone done this? im guessing you can get like a 10 ft cable from radio shack right?

I did this in my old car (VW Passat) when the deck started to fail & it was suggested I try a source directly into the amp. When I did this with the iPod, it sounded better than it ever had, even when the deck was new.

I first ran with a regular 3.5mm (1/8") stereo miniature phone plug (for the iPod headphone jack) to two RCA plugs cable between the fold-down back seats to the amp. I had an Alpine 4/3/2 channel amp which was set up as 3 channels: 2 (50 Watts each) for the stereo mid/tweet & 2 bridged to mono (100 Watts) for the subwoofer. I could run four or two channels to it (four for a receiver with a back/front fade control which I use to tweak sub level), so I set it to two.

A professional place had wired power and four channels of audio to the trunk for the amp, so I built a cable that went headphone plug to two RCA inline jacks. I bought a "no radio" blank panel from VW, made a tiny hole in it for the cable to go through & plugged the RCAs into the existing wiring (in the dashboard).

Instead of building that cable, you could also just use two RCA "gender changers"-- adapters that connect two female plugs together-- and a regular headphone->RCA stereo cable.

--

You'll want an amp with level trims so you can make all the way up on the iPod very loud so you never have to turn it up past 80%. It'll click & pop if you plug in when the amp is on (and also if you drop the plug on something metal) which is bad for your speakers long term, though I admit I did this a lot.

I always ran the iPod from batteries so I had no ground loop issues, but I had a 3G with a new battery, so I rarely forgot to recharge & ran dry.

I have a new car with an aux-in adapter in the deck, so I'm not "pure iPod" any more. I only use the CD player on the ride home from a record shop, until I have it ripped for the iPod, but the radio sure is nice for checking traffic once in a while.

-M

[morganw]

Originally posted by blackline
the remote wire for the amp would be wired into the 12 volt power connection on the stock harness

Right- I forgot about that part. I used a Metra adapter with amp-turn-on shorted to switched-power so the amp would be on whenever the car was. (When I first removed the deck I shoved a wire into the car's harness for those pins, but I couldn't live with the cheesiness of that setup).

One thing this didn't allow was music listening without the key as the original VW (& BMW as it turns out) deck (& Blaupunkt) did. Taking the key out of the ignition turned off the deck & amp (it stayed on when the igntion went from On->Acc->Off), but hitting the power button would turn it back on. I suppose a switch to connect amp-turn-on to constant power would restore that function.