Anyone got one of these that they really like?

Lisa asked me to ask "my Axiom buddies" for suggestions (but Peter and Ken can give their opinions too ). I'm getting her one for her birthday and I really don't know much about them.

Bren R.

I just installed one in my truck. It gives you radio and steering wheel audio controls to navigate through the iPod. My iPod is tucked away unseen in the center consol. It’s not perfect, and the iPod navigation is somewhat clumsy, but I think it’s probably the best one available right now.

Peripheral Electronics iPod Adapter. http://peripheralelectronics.com/

I bought mine through Discount Car Audio. They sell them with th e required wiring harness. They are on line.

My primary recommendation is to stay away from FM transmitters if at all possible. What sort of input options does she have to work with on her head unit?

I've got a couple of Griffin iTrips. If you're in a major metro area, they're crap. If you have a lot of open stations and a lot of time to tweak with it, they're still not very good.

I bought a Harmon/Kardon Drive+Play a few months ago when they hit $19. Yes, nineteen bucks. I ordered it from Buy.com and it even had free shipping. It was $200ish when it was released a couple of years ago. It's cheap because it's discontinued, replaced by the Drive+Play 2.

It works really well. It can feed your audio system via direct Aux-in via 3.5mm cable, FM-transmitter (and it's a strong one), or direct FM-input where you hook it up inline with the car's FM antenna. The direct FM input is an add on, but mine came with one in the box. Both of my cars have 3.5mm Aux-in jacks, so that's how we use it, and so the sound quality is excellent. I've tried it with the wireless FM modulator and it sounded very good. Better than the FM modulators I've used in the past. Nice & clear, though not quite as good as aux-in, unsurprisingly.

It's nice in that you can hide the iPod away somewhere safe, and you control the music via the little toggle controller and can see what you're doing on a much-larger LCD screen. It also charges iPods too. It's just a lot easier to use than fiddling with an iPod.

But it's not perfect. There are two main problems with it. #1, it's not designed for an iPhone so A, it won't charge it and B) there's a lot of GSM interference if you do use it. And #2, it doesn't work that well with Podcasts. They're in there, but there's no 'Podcasts' menu option and so you have to find them under Title/Genre. But for just music, on a normal iPod, it's perfect.

Anyway, for the super-cheap price of these things, it blows the pants off of just a stand-alone FM modulator.

Stock 2005 GM DCC (Driver Control Centre) I've never seen the back of it, so I have no idea if it has a set of auxiliary jacks or not, I'm assuming not. No mini plug on the front.

We live in Manitoba... you know how you have one to three sets of 6 FM presets on most head units? Hard to fill the first set of 6 here. Wait, that used to be true... now the band's pretty much full... just most of it is crap.

Bren R.

Thanks, guys... I'll get her to look through this tonight and we'll look at the products together.

Bren R.

I have a DICE Electronics adapter for my iPod that I use in my 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. It connects to the SAT radio input and can display text on the stock head unit. I can use the steering controls to control the iPod. It also has another AUX input so you can use the adapter to connect another audio source. These types of adapters use the iPod dock out and sounds much nicer. BUT, it's much more expensive. Mine was about $100 and I did a self install which was pretty easy.

I prefer this because in my area, FM transmitters just suck. If you're in a metro area, like SF, LA, NYC, or any place with significant amount of stations, it won't work well. I've never had much luck. Honestly, you'd be better off connecting directly to the radio's AUX input.

Or if you can, even a tape adapter, but most new cars don't have a cassette anymore. If you do have a cassette player, there's an old Griffin adapter that would let you use your cassette FWD/RWD functions w/ the ipod and the tape adapter.

Google Griffin SmartDeck. It's cheap now...

Sadly my one and only Monster product is their FM transmitter for the iPod, bought out of necessity as it was the only one in stock when I went to get one the day before a trip, luckily it was 40% off, so I don't feel I paid too much for it. It does work quite well, I haven't had any problems with reception and it sounds pretty clear, no static etc.

That sounds a lot like the Peripheral I am using. One complaint I have with the Peripheral is for some reason, when I have the iPod in Shuffle mode, every once in a while it will turn shuffle mode off. This isn't too much of a PITA for me as I generally use Playlists that I put together with the Genius function.

I posted a responce at GM Trucks.com describing how to install one of these gadgets and they made a "how to" article out of it.

http://www.gm-trucks.com/resources/how-t...r-installation/

She ended up wanting this Griffin. A good balance between useability and portability.

So far it seems to be pretty good... but like I said, our FM band is a wasteland.

Bren R.