Tape or FM interfaces for consumer electronic doo-dads??? LAC

[William Magliocco]

As a BSEE, broadcast engineer and all that good stuff,
I feel drawn to comment.

At present, I am using a cassette gee-gaw to interface
a "poor mans Ipod" (Sandisk MP3 player) as well as a
XM radio with a built-in FM transmitter (6~8 channels
no less!).

With the Panasonic made OE cassette FM stereo in my
1998 VW Jetta, when in XM mode, I find that the
cassette beats the FM sound hands down.  A _decent_,
_well aligned_ cassette interface should beat a little
bitty FM stereo transmitter.  You're going through
fewer processes with the tape thingy.  It's simply a
transformer.  The tape thingy has a cassette tape head
inside of it that comes out with a cable to hook up to
your CE device.

You really think a little bitty FM transmitter on a
chip is going to rival an umpteen thousand dollar
"exciter" (as we broadcast engineers call them?  I
don't think so...

My suggestion to the befuddled is this-buy your little
adapter thingys at a store that will allow returns. 
Buy one of each and figure out which works better for
you.  Return the lesser of the appliances from whence
you bought it.

Audi content (just for Brett)-Certain Audi lovers have
old Audi OE car radios and want to hook up things like
MP3 players, portable CD players and satellite radios
into their legacy car sound systems...they wish to
keep the car as stock as possible and don't want to
buy new autosound hardware.

WPM-BSEE, Syracuse 1987
SBE Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer
FCC General Class Radiotelephone Licensed since 1981
Extra Class Radio Amateur WA2QKO

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