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I just finished building my new deck and I'm trying to upgrade my outdoor music system. Previously I have used my home theater system using the "B" speaker outputs, the trouble is I have to come in the house and change the CD after it finishes. What I was thinking of doing is getting an adapter that plugs into the headphone outlet of my iPod and L-R RCA plugs in the AUX IN of my reciever. I have heard that the sound quality is very poor from this set up. Does anyone have any experience with this, any other suggestions? (I don't want to go out and buy a CD changer).

your ipod probably came with a head to female rca jack cable (mine did) all you'd need is a male / male rca patch cable. a cheapy one will be less than 10 bucks.

last week's rental car came with an aux radio input so for 7 bucks i bought a 3.5mm headphone plug male / male patch cable and viola itunes in the irental.... sounded as good as the radio did.

I can't imagine the sound quality would be too much worse than just listening to your ipod through headphones... it might even sound better depending on the quality of your amp/speakers...

The cable will probably run you like $5 at Radio Shack... it makes sense to at least try it....

The output from the headphone jack will be as good as the quality of the music you have on your ipod, if you have a lot of downloads with poor bit count, you're not going to have very good quality, on the other hand, if you ripped your cd collection using a high bit count, you should have CD quality sound out of the headphone jack.

Radio Shack sells a dock for $20 that plugs into the input on a stereo, it uses the interface port of the ipod, you should get slightly better sound but thats transmitting the signal over normal stereo cable too so in the end its all the same. Using a tape interface or a FM transmitter will definitely degrade the sound.

Speaking of ipods...my daughter wants one for her birthday and I know NOTHING about them. She will be 10. I saw an ipod shuffle and and ipod nano on the website...any suggestions? Thanks!

PackPhanGirl wrote:Speaking of ipods...my daughter wants one for her birthday and I know NOTHING about them. She will be 10. I saw an ipod shuffle and and ipod nano on the website...any suggestions? Thanks!

Depends on how much music she listens to.
The Ipod shuffle will hold only about 100 songs and is on constant shuffle. She will not have any control over what she listens to.

The nano is slightly bigger than the shuffle. It comes in a 2 gigabyte (500 songs) version and 4 gigabyte version (1000 songs). This is just a smaller version of the iPod. It even has a shuffle setting on it.
If you do decide on the nano, I HIGHLY recommend getting a protective case for it. The nano is pretty flimsy and scratches easily.

But she CAN control what she listens to on the nano, correct?

Thanks so much...I did find out what I needed to know about the shuffle...I appreciate the help!!

To me, ipods are a tad overpriced feature-for-feature with other mp3 players....

For the price of a 1GB ipod nano, you could get a 2GB creative zen V (http://creative.com/products/product.as ... duct=15283) that would have more features than the nano...

Of course, if you want to use itunes, you'll be out of luck with anything but an ipod, but there are other online music store alternatives out there...

Then there's the whole peer pressure "everybody's got an ipod" thing, you wouldn't want her to be outcast for getting a rogue mp3 player...

PackPhanGirl wrote:But she CAN control what she listens to on the nano, correct?

Thanks so much...I did find out what I needed to know about the shuffle...I appreciate the help!!

Correct!

I prefer iPod to its competitors because of its ease of use both the iPod itself and with iTunes.

Thanks Sharkonland, for the info as well...I am totally clueless...she doesn't need much, but I do want her to be able to choose what song she wants to listen to. I will also check out your link. Are less features, less complicated?

jonesbeach10 wrote:

PackPhanGirl wrote:But she CAN control what she listens to on the nano, correct?

Thanks so much...I did find out what I needed to know about the shuffle...I appreciate the help!!

Correct!

I prefer iPod to its competitors because of its ease of use both the iPod itself and with iTunes.

I like the phrase, "ease of use"....she will probably be able to figure it out before me!

80% of the world's mp3 players are iPods, sometimes it does pay to go with the flock.

i would hold off buying any from aplle until after aug 7th or so. apple's worldwide developers conference starts then and steve usually unveils the lastest goodies at it. lower pricing on the existing products also happens to get announced right around then too....

AlbatrossFlyer wrote:80% of the world's mp3 players are iPods, sometimes it does pay to go with the flock.

i would hold off buying any from aplle until after aug 7th or so. apple's worldwide developers conference starts then and steve usually unveils the lastest goodies at it. lower pricing on the existing products also happens to get announced right around then too....

cool...don't really need anything until mid-August..THANKS!

If you get a player with "Plays for Sure" support, the player will be just about as easy to use as an ipod... it will sync with any of the major (non-itunes) music stores (Napster, Rhapsody, MTV's URGE)...

I guess I'm just one to go against the grain I just recently purchased an iriver clix (http://iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/clix/clix-2GB.aspx) and love it... great sound quality, will play some little flash games and will even play videos...

My wife has an ipod nano (which I got for her strictly for the ease of use), and it's a nice little piece of hardware as well, I just prefer to be nonconformist and just want to point out there are other options out there...

Harry_Fins wrote:The output from the headphone jack will be as good as the quality of the music you have on your ipod, if you have a lot of downloads with poor bit count, you're not going to have very good quality, on the other hand, if you ripped your cd collection using a high bit count, you should have CD quality sound out of the headphone jack.

Radio Shack sells a dock for $20 that plugs into the input on a stereo, it uses the interface port of the ipod, you should get slightly better sound but thats transmitting the signal over normal stereo cable too so in the end its all the same. Using a tape interface or a FM transmitter will definitely degrade the sound.

Thanks to all, seems like the Radio shack dock may be the trick. I was going to get a monster mini-RCA cable for $30 but I HATE to buy anything from Monster- too pricey! When I bought my home theater system, I got a bunch of Monster cables for about a gazillion bucks, then when I needed more, I bought Radio Shack stuff and saw/heard no difference.

BTW, I have a 512 shuffle that I won, for my purposes (fishing/yard work/etc.) it does just fine, however if I purchased another, I would probably go with a 2gig nano or the iRiver.