the 5 best ipod car adapters , and How to Instal them

So your car doesn't have an iPod dock. Rather than scrapping your mp3 player for burned cds, (or scrapping your car, for that matter) owners of dockless vehicles can patch together a method for streaming their MP3s through the built-in stereo. Effort and expense will vary, and some setups will sound much better than others. Here are five options to connect your iPod to your car.

By Seth Porges

Option 1: Wireless FM Transmitter

INSTALLATION: Easy
SOUND QUALITY: Poor

FM transmitters are the most popular and convenient way of playing an MP3 device through a car stereo. They typically plug into an iPod’s dock or headphone jack to create what is essentially a low-wattage pirate radio station—powerful enough to be picked up by your car radio inches away, but not strong enough to interfere with neighboring car radios. Unfortunately, these transmitters need to compete with real (and far more powerful) radio stations and are easily swamped by 6000 watts of classic rock. When this happens, the sound that comes out of the speakers can be a cacophonous mix of static, local radio stations and whatever your iPod is playing. This problem is exacerbated by FCC regulations, which prohibit FM transmitters from broadcasting at greater than 18.75 nanowatts, essentially ensuring that they won’t work well. And while this problem is particularly pronounced in cities with crowded airwaves, the issue exists nearly everywhere in the country. There’s another downside to FM transmitters: Even under ideal conditions, FM radio just can’t deliver excellent sound quality.

That being said, FM transmitters are extremely convenient and, with many models selling for as little as $15, affordable. If you decide to use one, choose a model that lets you pick any FM frequency (some restrict you to a few stations on the top or bottom of the spectrum). This will increase your odds of finding an open channel.

Option 2: Cassette Adapter

INSTALLATION: Easy
SOUND QUALITY: Good

Audio cassette adapters take advantage of an increasingly rare feature: a car’s tape player. These adapters are shaped exactly like a cassette tape. They are cheap (around $15), commonplace and deliver decent sound quality. To use one, simply plug one end into the MP3 player’s headphone jack and the other into the tape deck. If your automobile has a cassette player, there is no easier way to get interference-free listening.

Option 3: Wired FM Modulator

INSTALLATION: Moderate
SOUND QUALITY: Good

With wireless FM transmitters, the signal has to travel through high-traffic airwaves on its way to your car antenna. Wired FM modulators, which usually come as small boxes with a few cords running out from them, intercept the connection between the car’s antenna and radio, allowing you to inject your iPod’s signal directly into this wired pathway. The result is dramatically improved sound quality—although the final result is still hampered by the limitations of FM radio, which is far from audiophile-friendly.

These modulators are inexpensive (they can be found online for as little as $15) and relatively easy to put in, as long as you are comfortable fiddling with your car stereo’s wires. To install one, position yourself underneath the dash. Reach up and unplug the antenna from the back of the stereo and plug it into the modulator’s antenna input. Take the modulator’s output cord and connect it to the stereo’s antenna input. You can then set the modulator to run at any FM frequency. Pick one with weak competing signals (usually at the very top or bottom of the spectrum), and plug the modulator’s audio output cord into your iPod’s headphone jack.

Option 4: Stereo With Line-In Port

INSTALLATION: Moderate
SOUND QUALITY: Very Good

If you’re lucky, your car stereo has a headphone-size line-in port right on the front. If so, all you have to do is jack your MP3 player into this hole, tune your stereo source to “Auxiliary,” and crank some tunes. Unfortunately, most car stereos lack this port. Installing a new car stereo that has one is one method for getting excellent sound using your iPod. New stereos with the port can be purchased for under $100 and installed either by you or a professional. (Some shops offer free installation with purchase.)

Option 5: RCA Port

INSTALLATION: Moderate
SOUND QUALITY: Very Good

Some car stereos—primarily ones with CD players—include an RCA jack in the back. Hijacking this audio connection from the CD player will provide excellent sound quality for music coming off an iPod. First step: Remove the stereo. If there is an RCA port, you will see dual jacks—one with a red and one with a white input (similar to the RCA jacks on home stereos). RCA-to-headphone cords can be bought for a few dollars at just about any electronics store. Plug the red and white ends of this cord into the stereo’s RCA jack and the other end into your MP3 player’s headphone jack. Finally, tune your stereo to either “CD” or “Auxiliary” (the exact setting depends on your stereo).

Deconstructing Apple's Tiny iPod Shuffle

A teardown by researchers shows the device's components cost a mere 28% of its retail price—a fat profit margin. Biggest supplier: Samsung

By Arik Hesseldahl

When the first iPod graced store shelves almost eight years ago, it could pack about 1,000 songs into roughly the same space as a deck of playing cards. A new iteration of the digital music player called the shuffle packs the same number of songs into a space that's about the same size as your pinky finger.

There's not much else to the shuffle, released in March. There are no buttons, for instance—only a power switch that also controls whether songs are played in sequence or "shuffled," as the name implies. Other controls for playing and changing the volume have been moved off the device entirely and into the wire running from the headphones.

Nor is there much on the inside of the shuffle, as a teardown analysis of the device by market research firm iSuppli has found. Privately held iSuppli takes consumer electronics apart in order to estimate how much they cost to build. And while a teardown doesn't account for the costs of design, software, manufacturing, or shipping, these cost estimates help fill in the blanks toward estimating the profit on each device sold.

All told, the cost of the shuffle's components, the headphones, and the packaging it ships in comes to $21.77, according to iSuppli's estimates. That's about 28% of the device's retail price. The smaller the component cost as a percentage of price, the higher the potential profit. This suggests the per-unit profit margin on the shuffle is higher than on other iPod models. The component cost for the first iPod touch released in 2007, for instance, amounted to about $147, or about 49% of its $299 retail price. The component cost of the third-generation iPod nano, also released in 2007, amounted to about 40% of its retail price.

Who the Suppliers Are

Analysis by iSuppli also helps determine the makers of the components inside electronics devices. The big winner in the shuffle, says iSuppli analyst Andrew Rassweiler, appears to be South Korea's semiconductor giant Samsung. ISuppli examined the insides of the four-gigabyte shuffle, which goes for $79. The main application chip used in the device, controlling music and other functions, comes from Samsung and costs $5.98, Rassweiler says.

Samsung remains the king of Apple's silicon suppliers, at least for the iPod and iPhone family. It supplies the main applications processor on the iPhone 3G as well as for the iPod touch. And like the other Samsung chips used in Apple devices, the one in the shuffle is based around a core design licensed from ARM Holdings (ARMH), a British chip designer in which Apple used to be an investor.

Samsung also supplied the four gigabytes of flash memory, used primarily to store music, at a cost of about $6, Rassweiler says. Apple is likely to be using other suppliers in addition to Samsung for flash memory, including Japan's Toshiba (6502.T) and South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor. "It's almost like six dollars worth of flash memory tied to some flash and a battery and not much else," Rassweiler says. "It's very basic and downsized." Other suppliers of various parts include On Semiconductor (ONNN), NXP Semiconductor, and Texas Instruments (TXN).

From Tiny to Minuscule

The device contains a tiny lithium ion battery that costs $1.20, and that Rassweiler describes as "the smallest we've ever seen." And for a company that doesn't ignore the tiniest of details, the most mundane of components are the most advanced available. The device's so-called passive components—capacitors and resistors—are unusually small. Known by their numeric label 01005, which in electronics shorthand describes their dimensions in thousandths of an inch, they're about the size of a grain of salt and cost fractions of a penny each. But they're half the size of what had previously been considered the smallest device of their type, those labeled 0201.

It's just one of many ways that Apple continues to differentiate its products from the rest of the pack. "Until recently we didn't see passive components quite this small," Rassweiler says. "Here you see them working on the cutting edge, even on the passives." They also help save space inside.

The components themselves are too small to give even a hint of who made them, but typical suppliers include such companies as AVX (AVX), Vishay Intertechnology (VSH), Kemet, and Rohm (6963.T), Rassweiler says.

There are other costs in addition to components for which a teardown can't account: The time and efforts of software engineers and designers, industrial designers, manufacturing, distribution, royalties paid on patents owned by other companies, and so on. When it last reported earnings on Jan. 21, Apple said its gross margin, a key indicator for profitability that takes into account costs to make all its products, was 34.7%. The company also said it expects a gross margin of 32.5% in the quarter ended Mar. 30, for which it will report results on Apr. 22.

Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.