If you’re looking for a solution to getting your iPod to play in your car, don’t buy a Griffin SmartDeck.
I wanted to replace my current makeshift system (a dissasembled and Frankensteined with electrical tape one of these and a Radio Shack cassette adapter).
It sounds great, but there are two main problems with it: 1. The dock connector keeps falling out when I drive on even moderately rough road and 2. It looks totally ridiculous. So the SmartDeck sounded like it’d be a better solution.
Or at least it did until I went to Best Buy and bought one tonight. I tried it out while I was still in the parking lot, and I’m glad I did, because the “volume modulation technology” or whatever the fuck they’re calling it completely kills the volume coming out of the iPod.
I turned my stereo almost all the way up and could still barely hear the goddamn music over the tape noise the SmartDeck created.
When I walked back in to Best Buy, the woman at the counter took one look at what I had in my hand and said, “Let me guess, it doesn’t work?” Apparently almost everyone who’s walked out with one has walked right back in.
Good idea, Griffin. But my, what shitty execution you have.
What if you try one of those FM transmitters? Not always the best sound quality, but it sounds like it wouldn’t be any worse than that Griffin tape thing!
Brendan
The FM transmitters don’t really work well in LA in general beacuse there are so goddamn many radio stations here. And the sound quality of the FM transmitter even without interference is inferior to that of the jury-rig I’ve got set up.