No Auxiliary Jack in Car Radio

Killgrimage

Title says it all. My new car ('05 Malibu Maxx) doesn't have any way for me to plug in my MyTouch so I can listen to my mp3s. I've tried an FM tuner, but this absolutely mangles the sound quality. Is there anything I can do short of installing my own radio? Any tuners you guys can recommend? And if I did have to install a radio, how much would that cost and how would I go about doing that?

Captain Vash

if you can read directions and follow instructions, car stereos are ridiculously easy to install.
Remove old head unit.
possibly replace metal frame.
match color of wire in stereo guide to correct color of wire from car and join.
I picked up a quality head unit with a decent amount of power from my local sony outlet store for about $90 bucks recently, and it had all the features you'd expect, removable faceplate, cd player, fm/am tuner, aux ins on back of unit for possible future expansions, and most importantly that 3.5mm jack on the front.

Now if replacement isn't your first option, and your current set has a tape deck (probably not eh?), the tape deck -> 3.5mm adapters have decent sound quality.

Every FM tuner I've ever bought / used has suffered from sound quality issues, it's simply not a terribly useful technology because in order to meet fcc interference requirements the broadcast unit has to be fairly weak.

Spawnbroker

Killgrimage wrote: »

Title says it all. My new car ('05 Malibu Maxx) doesn't have any way for me to plug in my MyTouch so I can listen to my mp3s. I've tried an FM tuner, but this absolutely mangles the sound quality. Is there anything I can do short of installing my own radio? Any tuners you guys can recommend? And if I did have to install a radio, how much would that cost and how would I go about doing that?

If your car has a tapedeck, there's an Ipod device you can buy that uses the tapedeck to play your mp3 stuff. There are also those radio ones that broadcast your Ipod to a certain radio station that you set up.

Figgy

I doubt an '05 has a tape deck.

Your only option is a tuner, but you're going to lose sound quality no matter what. If you can't handle that, you'll need to install a new stereo. You can do this yourself. Even if there are dozens of wires that need to be matched, you can buy a harness to take of that for you.

Just go into any old place and pick up something you like and read the instructions. If you're even marginally handy, it's a no-brainer. Just be careful if you need to take parts of your dash off to do this that you don't break something... that can get more expensive.

Iruka

Tuners are no good. I had this problem with my car and just bit the bullet and got a radio, adding an AUX jack and bluetooth hands free for under 200. As the others said, If your car doesnt have a particularly strange configuration.

Killgrimage

My fiance is trying to convince me not to go the "new radio" route because there is a lot of information stored in there (actual MPG, being able to switch to kph, etc) that I would lose if I did that. Is there some way I can go into the radio and add a jack instead or is that really impossible? (also, yeah, no tape deck)

Tavataar

Go look at what is available at www.crutchfield.com. They have a whole web-tool designed to just put in your year/make/model and they then recommend what can fit into your car.

The prices there are a little bit higher than what you would find at newegg or amazong, but Crutchfield will ship you very good directions for installing the radio, a free wiring harness, and have excellent support. If you have trouble while installing, you can simply call them up and they will talk you through it.

I put a new radio in my Subaru Forester in about 1 hour with no prior experience.

November Fifth

This is a problem with these models. You are going to lose several functions if you swap to another car stereo, and it is definitely not a DIY project if you haven't done it before.

According to this video, there may be an Ipod adapter that can be plugged in to the CD changer input.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toE_AQOuX64

You are going to have to go to a car stereo place and see what your options are.

soxbox

I have an adapter that fits into the CD AUX port from these guys: http://www.pie.net/ - I they have one that fits your vehicle, I'd heartily recommend that over getting a new head unit.

Quid

I'm generally against tuners because I agree they often do a terrible job.

However.

I've been in a couple cars that used the, larger, more expensive kind that plugged in to the cigarette lighter with pretty good results. Bit of a gamble of 50-100 bucks though.

Natas_Xnoybis

if you have a positive influx of $$$ then just buy a new stereo.... Seriously. a stereo that has an aux in jack is uber cheep.

soxbox

Note if you do replace your factory stereo that an aftermarket stereo is a juicier target for thieves and also may or may not have its theft covered by your insurance.

Bendery It Like Beckham

soxbox wrote: »

Note if you do replace your factory stereo that an aftermarket stereo is a juicier target for thieves and also may or may not have its theft covered by your insurance.

It's an 05 malibu, not exactly a target on anyone's list, and a thief (a good one) isn't going to bother with a car he can't part out quickly and efficiently.

soxbox

It's the stereo rather than the car - an aftermarket stereo is normally easier to rip out of a car (hence why they normally have the removable face-plates). The secondary market for factory installed stereos just doesn't exist. Stereo theft isn't a big thing anymore, mainly because their cost is so low, but it still happens if you're somewhere dodgy enough.

quietguyintheback

I've got the same kind of problem with my car. If I change out the factory head, I lose all kinds of functions that I'm pretty attached to. I did a little research, and found a solution, though. People I know have had pretty good success with this. It's an FM modulator that wires directly into your existing stereo's antenna input. There are autoswitching modulators out there, too, meaning that they activate when a signal is detected, turn off when it goes away. No toggle switches needed. I think Dynex makes one.

Killgrimage

quietguyintheback wrote: »

I've got the same kind of problem with my car. If I change out the factory head, I lose all kinds of functions that I'm pretty attached to. I did a little research, and found a solution, though. People I know have had pretty good success with this. It's an FM modulator that wires directly into your existing stereo's antenna input. There are autoswitching modulators out there, too, meaning that they activate when a signal is detected, turn off when it goes away. No toggle switches needed. I think Dynex makes one.

Thanks, this sounds great!

strebalicious

I personally have this guy for an FM tuner. It's got good enough sound for me, but I don't claim to be an audiophile or anything. But it is really susceptible to interference. Since the Japanese FM band is different, everyone is crowded onto the same 2 MHz or so of spectrum and I tend to get cutout when driving by other people's stuff.