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I have a Creative zen nano mp3 player. My car has an AM/FM radio and CD player; I’ve looked (in my car) for a jack to use an auxilary connection, but can’t find one. My mp3 player has a headphones port, "line in" port, and USB port. I’m not very tech-savvy, so please be specific and don’t use hi-tech words! Thanks a lot!
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There are five basic methods for hooking an iPod up to a car stereo, though none are guaranteed to work with every model:
1. Line-in adapter. Some newer model car stereos come with what appears to be a headphone jack on the face. This will allow you to connect your player to the stereo using a "line-in patch cable," which appears to be a standard 1/8" headphone cable with two male ends. If your player has both a headphone and line-in jack, you could use this with either, the only exception being that with the headphone jack you’d have volume control on both the car stereo and the player, where with the line-in jack you’d just have it through the car stereo (this can be an important distinction if your car stereo is a low-power factory-installed model, as the preset line-in volume might not be optimized for use with yours).
2. USB port. A handful of really new MP3-friendly car stereos come with a USB port on the face. This can be used to connect a player through a standard sync/charge cable, as well as eliminating the need to use a separate charging cable with the cigarette lighter.
3. Casette adapter. By far the preferred method if you do not have a line-in jack or USB port on the face. It provides a physical connection without requiring you to dig into the dashboard of your car. It’ll have a headphone/line-in plug, and the other end will be shaped much like a standard casette tape that gets inserted into your car stereo’s tape player (if it has one). Just make sure you insert it with the correct side facing up (it’ll have a "this side up" label on it) and redirect the wire through the channel on the top so it won’t get snagged inside your car stereo.
4. FM transmitter. This is probably the most universal solution, but it’s also the hands down worst option you can pick. The problem being that if you live in an urban area, or any place where you can get a really wide selection of radio stations, there aren’t many clean stretches on the FM band that you can use for your purposes. To get it to work at all, you’ll need to drive around a bit and listen to lots of static so you can indentify a section of the FM band that’s fairly isolated from any adjacent incoming radio signals. Set both the FM transmitter and your car stereo to that frequency, and you should be able to hear your player through the stereo as if it were a moderately-powered FM station. Expect to hear a bit of static, depending on odd stuff like the direction you’re driving, the weather, and how far you are from your home location. As incoming signal strengths/frequencies change, it can easily interfere with this signal, which means it’s a pretty lousy solution for long-distance travel. FM transmitters come in three basic varieties. One is a stand-alone iPod-only type that connects to the iPod dock connector and powers itself through the iPod. Another is a car-powered iPod-only type that connects through the dock connector, and charges the iPod from the car’s cigarette lighter. The third is a battery-operated universal type that plugs into the headphone or line-in jack.
5. RCA cables. On the back of many (possibly all) car stereos, there should be two RCA jacks (one red, one white) that can be used to hook up a stereo patch cable. You’d need to dig into your dashboard to even check this, but if it turns out to be the case, you can get a headphone-to-RCA adapter cable that would allow you to feed a direct signal into your car stereo, much like you would with a line-in port on the face.
My best suggestion is that if you can’t hook up with options 1-3 or 5, for about $100 you can get a servicable aftermarket car stereo that has a line-in jack on the face, and that’s going to be the most universal set-up you can use, not to mention the fact that it’ll have the best possible sound quality. Avoid using the FM transmitter if at all possible, unless you’re using it indoors (I use one at work, where I can set my iPod next to a stationary radio, and adjust its position if I’m not getting a super clean signal).