iPods in Cars:
A Plea To Clear The Static

Monday, September 13, 2004 06: 57 PM

"What is the point of having a $400 40GB iPod if your are going to be playing it through a $20 tape deck adapter that makes your favorite Def Leppard CD sound like the tape you had in your Walkman in the seventh grade? The album, if you must know, was Hysteria...and yes, I listened to over and over again on the school bus each day."

(These are thoughts and ideas developed with just a passing glance of the MP3 player and car stereo markets. Please take this information as personal observations and not necessarily hard, research-driven facts. I am commenting on this "problem" as a consumer with limited time to research all possible solutions. If I have made any factual errors, please let me know: nix at nixlog dot com.

My own frustration with iPod/car stereo solutions, combined with one of my best friends dropping $400 on a new 4G iPod, only to be disappointed by audio solutions for his car and this recent boingboing.net post all led to the mess below...)

The Problem: There are tens of millions of people that own MP3 players worldwide. Many of these people drive cars. Current, low-cost solutions for listening to their MP3 players in their cars provide sub-standard audio quality (namely tape adapters and FM transmitters). If you actually care about audio fidelity, using these low cost solutions with a high-quality MP3 player leave much to be desired. After-market solutions exist: RCA audio jacks, AUX inputs, etc. Yet these solutions can be plagued with a high investment of time, energy and cost for users to incorporate them into their car stereo system.

The Crime: There is no leadership in this space. No one wants to build the bridge. Why isn't someone, like Apple or a major automobile manufacturer, taking the lead here??? Is there no real incentive? For the record, I don't believe that an Apple/BMW deal qualifies as taking the lead. It certainly creates buzz in the industry, it's a symbolic lead. Perhaps it's the first baby steps and is laying the foundation for me to eat my words in the next couple of years. But it is far from a mainstream solution for the majority of boot strapping iPod owners of the world. On top of that, I certainly don't have a desire to own a BMW anytime soon.

Additionally, Apple provides very little education in this space. If you go into an Apple store and ask about playing an iPod in your car you are given the 1-2 pitch: Tape adapter or FM transmitter. There may also be a passing mention of after-market "input adapters" or just "buy a new deck with an input"...but this gives little incentive for someone to drop $400 on a new iPod. Especially someone who wants their music EVERYWHERE when they are on the go. Go to the Apple website and search for "iPod, car" and this is the best you get or better yet, this elaborate FAQ. I think Apple is, to some degree, letting customers down by not at least providing greater education about how to get good sounding audio in your car.

Perhaps A Deeper Problem? There is no clear winner in this space. Perhaps this is the real problem. There is no clear winner to absorb the cost of doing this. Automobile manufacturers probably feel they are not going to sell more cars with such a modest feature (and I don't think they will). Car stereo manufacturers aren't going to mass produce something that automobile manufacturers aren't demanding. Apple isn't going to push for this from the industry at the moment because there have enough trouble keeping iPods stocked. Who wins? The little guy that makes the actual hardware for input jacks?

Possible Solutions:
The Automobile Industry: Suck it up and innovate. To start, provide stock car stereos with RCA/AUX inputs right in the front of the deck. Don't worry about fancy display integration and all that crap. Just provide a conduit to get music from an iPod to those speakers. Take a risk (and then offset that risk by adding $99 to the cost of the car if you don't think it will fly.) If one mainstream manufacturer (mainstream being one who's car prices a quite a bit lower than that of BMW) did this, it seems most would follow suit. It happened when we transitioned from radio to tape decks, and now tape decks to CDs. Stop focusing on supplying decks that can play MP3 CDs - and start focusing on the growing hub of digital music, the MP3 player. Ironically, I think supply (stock car stereos with a RCA/AUX input) would drive demand for MP3 players) making the MP3 manufacturers even happier. If I'm average joe and bought a car with a funny little jack in the radio and then someone told me that with an MP3 player that little jack would allow you play all your CDs from a single MP3 player, that might be pretty strong incentive to get one.

Car Stereo Manufacturers and Installers: Start and/or continue pushing automobile industry to go stock with decks that have inputs. After-market manufacturers and installers: Find a way to bring down the price on these things. Do they really cost this much to produce or is it a bit of price gouging because you know the true audiophiles will foot the bill? And why not advertise that these after-market products even exist? The local New Times is littered with car stereo ads, but no seems to be pushing the AUX input route for getting MP3 players in your car.

Apple (and other major MP3 player manufacturers): If anyone, Apple should be pounding home any and all high-quality audio solutions for your car. In the short-term, local Apple stores should have examples of equipment that can be installed in your car stereo. They should have a list of name and phone numbers of local car stereo shops that do installs. Better yet, develop partnerships with some of these guys and show a deck or two in the Apple store with an iPod plugged in. We know Apple cares about music, so why aren't they showing their passion for music in cars??? Somehow they can make money in the hand off.

My experience in summary:(In criticizing the two solutions below, please note I am criticizing a limitation of the technologies employed, not the actual product quality. Both companies make solid products with excellent build quality - it's just the technology doesn't inherently provide high quality audio.)

Purchased an iPod. Love it. Wanted the convenience of listening to it in our Jetta with that beautiful Monsoon sound system.

Solution #1: Tape adapter. This wasn't good. Tape adapter actually didn't even work in our Jetta since it sucks the tape in and up. Wouldn't accept adapter. Tried it in our other car. It worked. Sound was sub-par. Would rather pop in a CD.

Solution #2: We were getting ready for a long road trip in the Jetta. We wanted to iPod. We dropped cash on an FM Transmitter. This wasn't great either. While bearable on the open road (with the steady background noise of the car, road, etc.), in stop and go traffic around town, there is just not enough ummmph in this solution to produce great sound.

Potential Solution #3: Drop money on RCA/AUX inputs for one or both cars. Cursory research looks like it would be between $80-200/vehicle. $80 is pushing my personal threshold for how much I want to drop to make this happen. In the future I hope our next new car comes with it stock.

Some supporting material:
· MP3 Players in the marketplace: 24 million units worldwide shipped in 2003 (In-Stat/MDR)
· MP3 Market Penetration: 23% of all households in U.S. had some form of a digital audio player (In-Stat/MDR)
iPods sold: 4 million since launch (CNET)

NOTE:
· Increasing numbers of smart phones and pdas support music and could also be used in vehicles.
· This wouldn't just be for MP3 players - laptops could plug-in and be used to play music or broadcast movie sound throughout the vehicle.

Links:
Def Leppard Hysteria

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