Car stereos? Buh?

[Andrew_Culture]

The cassette radio in our 1996 Honda Aerodeck is crapping out and needs replacing. The radio bit works okay but the cassette adapter we use for our iPods and phones won't stay in the machine, it just ejects or 'turns over' (tries to reverse tape direction).

Budget is low (duh), but we'd love to have DAB so we can listen to BBC6 Music and an aux input is a must so that we can use our iPods and phones to play music. We don't actually need a CD player or tape player at all.

Any ideas? I haven't bought a car stereo since before Blair and Googling for car stereos hurts my noggin.

 

[Crackle]

Look in Aldi or Lidl, they often have bluetooth stereos with input for about 50 squid. Failing that, check out any second hand stores in your area.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Look in Aldi or Lidl, they often have bluetooth stereos with input for about 50 squid. Failing that, check out any second hand stores in your area.

Ta star!

 

[Davidc]

Get someone with the right nouse to sort the existing one. They're not very difficult to work on.

I had the same problem (about 10 years ago) and it was the adaptor. Mine had a rubber drive belt between the take-up spool and feed spool dummies to put the cassette machine into the tape running state. The belt had come off and putting it back on was all that was needed. Used it for a portable CD player.

An alternative at lots less than £50 would be an FM modulator. If you are adding DAB some in car add-on units have the FM modulator built in and can also be used for a mp3, ipod, iphone etc. I fitted one of these in a relative's 1997 Corsa and to make it work bought a separate DAB band aerial which went on the roof at the other end from the fitted FM/AM aerial (cheapest way to do it). The same firm does other radios, but they're higher priced, and simple modulators are on sale cheaply on ebay (I use one).

 

[derrick]

Whats a cassette.

 

[Andy_R]

Whats a cassette.

lots of spikey wheel thingies fastened together, lives on yer back wheel

 

[Night Train]

I got one of those FM transmitter things to play music from my phone on the car stereo. I just tune one of the preset radio stations to the transmitter.

Having said that, the CD radio is completely unable to receive any actual radio stations though...

 

[simon.r]

Can't answer the question, but I've just got a DAB radio in the car and it's fantastic. I'm hearing things that I've never heard before! Only problem is that it makes my mp3's sound dull in comparison.

 

[Milo]

I was using cassettes when I was younger and i'm only 23. mp3 and mini discs and the like were bloody expensive them days. I even still have a small collection now.

p.s dab is gash and runs on pre mp3 tech iirc. Though FM is not much better these days.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I never liked cassette tapes, even when they were the only option. I loved minidiscs for the ten seconds before cdrs took over!

 

[Milo]

They have their faults but they are still quite fun to play with Never got on much with cds. Also all the cheap cd player walkmans back then would skip so easily hence why I used to use cassettes. Personally prefer Vinyl as my main format though did not get into that until I was about 17. Different strokes and all that.

 

[MontyVeda]

...
p.s dab is gash and runs on pre mp3 tech iirc.
...

who cares what technology DAB uses? the music on 6music is far superior to any of the FM stations.

 

[Davidc]

p.s dab is gash and runs on pre mp3 tech iirc. Though FM is not much better these days.

DAB uses MP2. Less efficient compression but more robust than MP3. DAB+, which in a sane world is what the UK should have used, uses MPEG-4 HE AAC v2 coding, which is the most efficient and highest audio quality yet devised. Available for some BBC web streams (mainly Radio3) and I believe it's the coding used for the audio on HD TV.

Many (most?) of the national commercial stations use low bitrates and are mono, BBC isn't quite as bad. This is partly because of the use of the bandwidth inefficient MP2 coding.

DAB has poor error correction compared to DAB+, leading to the well known digital mud sound.

FM is capable of very high audio quality in the absence of interference and signal distortions. You'll rarely hear it achieving that now owing to the near universal use of audio processors and in the case of some stations the use of low bitrate digital studio to transmitter links.