How to connect your mp3 or ipod on a car cd-player.

This is a Sony X-Plod series CDX MP40 about 9 years old, it has served me good all those years ,and I intend to use it for many more.
My purpose is to use the aux input to connect my mp3 player and gain some space from old cd's, and of course use this for as long as it is still working instead of buing a new one.

Step 1: Check the back panel.

At first I removed the device from the dashboard to check if there was an easy way to do this!

Comments

[guywire]

The title of this leads one to believe it is how to bring audio in to any car cd player, but really all this is is how to buy something for sony cd players. This is not an instructable.

[amclaussen]

I would not say it is not an Instructable... It is worthwhile as far as it shows the problem of dead RCA inputs thanks to SONY (or others) Stuborness in deleting simple, straightforward Line level inputs, only to promote the sale of their exclusive brand of Unilink accesories.  As far as the Author has found a way to overcome this large limitation, I applaud him for its success in solving SONY's handicap.  Maybe a better title of the Instructable would be something like: "How to connect your mp3 or ipod on a Sony brand car cd-player that lacks Line Inputs or uses Unilink components"...
or something like that.  Anyway, congratulations for your Instructable Johnsid (Author).
Amclaussen.

[johnsid]

Would you be kind enough to read each step again carefully please.
Thank you!!!

[dwoods-1]

You know for less than 14€ you can just buy a FM transmitter on ebay ? way less effort and safer

[ikoneckox3]

along with half the quality!

[Icebreacker]

Really, or less than a half :)

[amclaussen]

I would say even less than half a half of the quality!!!

[IPman]

It is very interesting what in the black box on other end of Sony Unilink Car Stereo Adapter? Have you open it ?

[johnsid]

No I haven't opened it my friend sorry!!

[iordanakis]

Και γαμώ τις ιδέες!!!! Ευχαριστώ

[johnsid]

Παρακαλώ!!!

[johnsid]

The other end does not connect anywhere,there is a litlle black box though with a small cirquit inside!!

[amclaussen]

YES, because that little box only generates a train of pulses, that deceives the damn Sony stereo, making it believe that there is a Sony brand CD changer connected to the stereo, and only then the stereo ALLOWS the dead RCA inputs to become alive.

One possible way to get the RCAs working is to open the car stereo and rewire those inputs to the volume control (or other adequate point in the audio circuit, tru a switch that would select the RCA´s over the internal CD player. I'm tired of having to carry several different DC-R's in order to avoid having to carry valuable original CD's that only hold about an hour of music! (even my inexpensive Nokia 5530 Expressmusic cel phone with a 8GB micro SD holds enough music at 320KBPS MP3 to go with me in long trips.

[Coolboyme]

NICE!!! i have the same cd player.. and the cd reading thingy wont work... this is gr8!! thanks a bunch! :)

[johnsid]

Check this out: http://www.instructables.com/id/Sony-X-Plod-car-cd-player-fix/

[johnsid]

I used to have the same problem, a friend suggested that I should open the device and apply with a cotton bud a little bit of engine oil on the threaded axle that moves the cd head .After you're done with this gently move the head all the way back and forth without touching the lens a few times. After that your cd will play cd's just fine.If it doesn't then you need a replacement cd head!

[Coolboyme]

but, do you think this will work, given my player doesnt at all make a response to CDs...? it doesnt even know that there's a CD in there!

[Coolboyme]

thanks a bunch!! i'll try that!! :)

[dimtick]

the two rca jacks that you tried initially are designed for a amplified signal from a separate component like a disc changer. there are headphone amplifiers for mp3 players that may have boosted the signal enough. really an irrelevant comment since you found another way.

Now, I just gotta figure out how to do this with my Dodge Caravan with factory cd player.

[mbenner]

I have a Caravan as well so if you figure it out let me know - would make my life so much easier! :)

[dimtick]

I'd stick a new radio in my caravan in a heartbeat but aftermarket stereo's don't work with the steering wheel controls.....at least none that I've found . For now i'm using the fm transmitter both for my ipod and for xm radio.

[maxhuey]

I just bought a mp3 player/fm transmitter at Target for $19, plug in cigarette lighter, tune fm radio to match freq and call it done. Safety? yes, comes with remote!

[dimtick]

I have 2 fm transmiters . First one kept cutting out so got another. Works ok is u can find a good empty station even then u get a lot of static. I do a lot of cross country trips and am always having to find new stations in different areas. Much better to have a direct connection.

[bowlerhatman]

I hacked my own aux input into my car's head unit. If you crack the case of the head deck open, you should see a silver box on the circuit board. This is the radio module. If you're lucky, the pinouts will be marked on the PCB. Find L-out, R-out and gnd. Cut these traces, and you have direct access to the amplifier stage. I hooked up a 3.5mm stereo switching socket on mine, so if you have the aux cable plugged in the amplifier is fed the ipod signal, if the cable is out, it gets the radio. To use, you just turn the deck to 'Radio', plug the ipod in, and hit play.

[LifeWarrior]

Very cool! A few years ago I started buying stereos with bluetooth capability so I can use my smartphone with them. But my old truck still has a standard sony mp3 stereo with an external cd hookup, I've been trying to think through rigging a bluetooth headset to it and an esternal mic up through the dash but this could work in the interim.

One thought though on the hanging wire in the ashtray, you could drill and mount a jack somewhere or remove the ashtray all together and make a mp3 shelf with jack.

Anyway very cool, never thought about tapping the cd jack. great job!

[cantinora]

They could be pre-amp output jacks. It's also possible that you need to go into your radio's settings and turn on the AUX IN which would use one of the jacks as an input.

[mintybreath]

Does the CD player still work with this installed?

[johnsid]

Yes you can still use cd or radio with this.On this model you can change from radio to onboard cd-mp3 player by presing the upper left corner button(source button), only now that I have the adaptor on I have three choises radio-onboard cd and aux (when selected on screen appears as CD2).

[nodnodwinkwink]

Thats a great idea. I didn't know about that cable. And to those who use a FM transmitter, i've tried 3 different types of transmitters and theres always some sort of annoying interference.

[shuyghe]

i think they are outs. (For use of external amplifiers and such)

[Kasm279]

For all of you who are mentioning FM transmitters: An FM transmitter will of course work, but you will sometimes get interference in them, plus the sound quality of directly plugging in an MP3 player will *always* be better than a radio transmitted signal.

[Phil B]

I had never seen one of the Sony Unilink adapters. In the USA Crutchfield has them. They allow audio input to some Sony car radio systems that lack it. Pretty nice.

[rondk1]

For less than $10 your headaches will go away,
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Car-MP3-Player-Wireless-FM-Transmitter-USB-SD-MMC-Slot-Yellow-/280759711217?pt=Other_MP3_Player_Accessories&hash=item415e9535f1

[amclaussen]

did you said: "NICE"???
I find very disturbing a manufacturer such as Sony gave us a pair of RCA inputs, and then DISABLED them as "AUX" by calling them "BUS AUDIO IN", and then tried to steal more money from us by selling their adapter at more than 100 dollars!
The fact that there are two or three aftermarket Unilink adapters, all of them of low construction/cheap parts quality at prices between 15 to 40 dollars show that there are many Sony units that the unsuspecting owners want to use with auxiliary inputs. Shame on Sony for not allowing users to directly connect to their aux inputs. It is a consecuence of the greed of present day business practices and too many people trying to design things using software for very simple tasks, Auxiliary inputs were ever present in Car Stereos before this stupid trend of Unilink. I'm happy the last generation reversed this trend and now includes AUX and even USB inputs (which is also stupid, since Firewire was the way to go, NOT USB, which is NOT the best way to handle Audio (or Video, for that matter).

[bryan3141]

Firewire's only advantage is speed....and the bandwidth in even USB 1.0 is more than adequate for car audio...and it's a heck of a lot cheaper and more ubiquitous.

[amclaussen]

Really??? Bandwidht is NOT the only aspect that plays in high quality audio reproduction...

While you are partly right in pointing out that USB is cheaper and more ubiquitous, (say pennies vs a couple of dollars a FW port in a consumer device, which are fabricated in tens of thousands of units), then USB is ever present only because it costs pennies, but resulting audio is NOT the best, and cannot be. Please read about "dropped frames" in video, or "jitter" in audio to begin understanding why USB was the wrong way to go. USB is mediocre not because of transfer rate, but the way it works.

Firewire, on the other side, is a Peer-to-Peer link. Videographers and High Quality Audio experts all agree FW was the way to go. Unfortunately, USB costs LESS than a FW port (by a fraction of a dollar), so that ever greedy industry managers push towards USB for everything. I'll give you an example: in really high quality audio home equipment, the DAC (Digital-to-Analog converter) determines much of the quality of sound. Well, really good present day DAC's that use USB tend to cost ABOVE 1,400 US dollars...Fhewww!

Why? Because those DAC's NEED TO De-Clock, filter and Re-Clock the time base signal to keep "jitter" to the minimum. And there are USB implementations that limit audio quality to 16 bit/48 kHz. A really good digital Audio signal would be considered ABOVE that level, say 24 bit/96 kHz, or even higher (24/176 or 24/192 kHz). Talking about video; Have you heard about "dropped frames"? Really good video cameras use Firewire, not USB!
Please stop disseminating the myth that USB is "better", and that difference between the two is ONLY about "bandwidth", there is MORE to that, a lot more! Amclaussen.

[bryan3141]

Notice that my comment dealt only with CAR audio (the issue at hand) where road noise, lousy speakers and a ridiculous "room" shape are the real limits on your sound. I don't know what universe you're living in, but the rest of us are going to go with standards which are generally accepted and cheap. At the bandwidth and reproduction quality which is actually required of a car audio system, USB is the way to go.

Besides, we ALL know that the only REAL way to listen to music is with live musicians and real instruments...everything else is just a sad attempt to relive the experience....good luck fitting a band in the average vehicle though.

[wkearney99]

Being able to have control over connected devices IS nice. Being able to use the built-in radio controls is a lot safer than fiddling with a touchscreen on a portable player. But it is ridiculous how expensive they try making it (clarion, jensen, sony, etc). That and they tend to do a poor job of control. So it's a great idea but one poorly executed. What's "simple" to you might actually be a lot more complicated to implement safely and cost effectively.

Firewire is dead. Tens of thousands of different portable devices support USB, dozens (if that) support Firewire. The market has spoken. Move on.

[amclaussen]

YEAH! Firewire could be dissapearing thanks to the ignorant public taking whatever industry throw to them as the "best", when the opposite was true. "Market has Spoken" has prevented too many great ideas to be displaced or buried alive, only to maximize the earnings of industry managers. The only way intelligent consumers can significantly raise the level and quality of the consumer electronics industry, is by DEMANDING better results; which results from consumers becoming more knowledgeable, and then more Discerning!
Just reason why High Definition TV, or 3D TV took SOOO MANY years to just start to become available again, when the principles needed to achieve them were ready DOZENS of years ago... (Remember "View-Master 3D color slides discs? or that Japan had Hi definition analog TV MANY years before the USA?) It is clear to me that industry has a vested interest in KEEPING things as mediocre as possible for the public at large, being that technically it is quite easy to have HDTV and 3D TV, nothing magical about it, but industry asks itself: "Why give people more than the absolute minimum necessary?... Let's give them breadcrumbs and circus to keep them happy...!"

And by saying "move-on", you are really becoming STUCK on a false concept! USB vs FW is the same kind of struggle, and by perpetuating myths some unsuspecting consumers help keeping those myths alive, for industry economic benefit. More knowledge helps, but needs straightforward study.

[ManifoldSky]

In what way is FireWire dead? FireWire was never intended for low data throughput applications like keyboards, mice, and SD card readers. Instead it was designed for high-throughput, data intensive applications like professional level HD enclosures, video, cameras, and audio interfaces. While some low end video cameras now use USB, most mid to high end units, as well as many low end ones, preferentially use FireWire over USB, which does not even have close to the same bandwidth of FW400, let alone FW800 or FW16/32.
The only thing that will kill FireWire is LightPeak, which, BTW, was designed specifically to be FireWire's successor.
What IS dead in the water is USB 3.0.