[Biturbos4] S4 audio

[John M. Harrison]

Shortly after I got my S4 I obtained the BlitzSafe cable referenced in
the AudiWorld article Ti has linked below.  It has been great except for
the engine related noise produced when running off the car's 12 volt
power.  Battery powered sound sources work great.  I use an Ipaq
handheld, laptop, portable cassette deck, ham radios, etc.  

Experience with amateur radios in the S4 tends to indicate the car
produces a lot of RF and audible frequency electrical noise.  This is
probably not unusual.  

I asked my dealer about the PhatBox after getting a promo in the mail,
but the parts guy seemed clueless.  Also seems to be an overpriced
solution.  The Blitzsafe cable is a good first step to hooking up the
audio of your choice.  It wouldn't surprise me if details on how to
build one yourself are available somewhere. 

Cheers.  

John M. Harrison
Laramie, Wyoming
2001 S4 Avant


-----Original Message-----
From: Ti Kan [mailto:ti at amb.org] 
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 3:46 PM
To: Russell Romano
Cc: biturbos4 at audifans.com
Subject: Re: [Biturbos4] Another CD Player Question

Russell Romano writes:
> Now getting the headunit to control that MP3 capable player is another
story altogether... but possible.

Yes, of course.  You'd have to reverse engineer the control protocol
and build a circuit or something to do it.

Fortunately, Audi already has a solution for you, if you have a
relatively
deep wallet (about $650 street price).  It's called the PhatNoise
PhatBox
digital audio player.  It goes in place of your CD changer, and connects
to your head unit the same way the changer would.  The head unit
controls
the player.  The PhatBox has a removable hard disk cartridge (comes with
a 20GB unit, you can get more or get larger capacities), and it stores
MP3 files as well as other formats for playback.  It also comes with
a cradle and cable that allows you to connect the removable disk to
your PC, so you can rip CDs and download music onto the disk at home,
then plug the disk into the car.  You could conceivably store your
entire CD collection on the disk, so it makes a CD changer rather
redundant.  If you do want to play CDs, there is always the in-dash
player.

    Check it out:
    http://www.phatnoise.com

People have also adapted the Apple iPod to Audi's sound system (with
some
wiring work and an adapter into the CD changer wiring).  Since the iPod
is small, it can sit in the cabin (like in your armrest bin), and be
operated by hand.  Here is an article on how to do this:

    http://www.audiworld.com/tech/elec72.shtml

Other small, handheld portable MP3 players can be similarly connected.

-Ti
2003 A4 1.8T multitronic
2001 S4 biturbo 6-sp
1984 5000S turbo
1980 4000 2.0 5-sp
-- 
 R 1 3 5  Ti Kan
 |_|_|_|  http://www.amb.org/ti
   | | |  Vorsprung durch Technik
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