FrancoP

Hello all,

I recently intalled the GROM Audio product in my '06 LS430. Basically, this is a three mode unit which allows a USB-based CD Changer emulation, an IPod/IPhone connection with some device control, and a straight stereo input for any other device. You can toggle among these three modes, or inputs, as you see fit.

I previously installed this unit on my wife's '07 SC430, but I did not see the device on this forum, and thus thought it worth posting. Thanks to the excellent threads on panel removal, the actual stereo removal goes very quickly.GROM provides a "TOY" cable which simply interfaces with the cable and receptacle on the back of the factory stereo. The other end of that cable goes to the GROM device, which is about 3"x4"x1". I tucked this in a cavity just in front of the gear selecter, under the lower seat heater accessory panel.

From there, I ran the USB cable into the glove compartment. Be sure to do this before you re-install the stereo, as access is much greater.

The difficult part of my install was deciding on where to locate the IPod and stereo cable. One school of thought was to put everything in the glove compartment, which in retrospect would have been the more elegant solution. However, I use the sliding compartment in our center dash stack for my phone, and wanted to have ready access to the phone to view incoming calls or see text messages. Thus, I decided to modify the sliding/retracting drawer in the center stack to run the cable in there. By far, this took the most time, in that sigificant modification to the inner and outer box was necessary to allow smooth sliding of the unit without the cables bunching up. I used a dremel to remove material. On my first run, I'm still having some cable bunching which occasionally interrupts the smooth travel of the unit. I think I will remove the entire back of the interior box so that there is no surface to compress the cables against as it is closed.

The fidelity is excellent, everybit as good as playing a CD. All of my files were created by direct CD to computer transfer, so the quality of the files are as good as the Apple format allows. I'm using a 32 GB Transcend USB drive, organized into 6 playlists i.e. 1-Rock, 2-Jazz, 3-Opera, etc. There is a lot of information on the www.gromaudio.com website, so I encourage you to peruse that information if you're considering this product. The price point is well below the other types of integration products which was a factor for me. There is no text support in this installation, which perhaps is why it is cheaper that some of the others.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. If anybody's interested, I can take pictures of the device location and the modifications of the sliding box when I go back in to revise the inner box's rear panel.

Happy to answer any questions.

BTW, when I installed the device in the SC, they sent me the wrong cable. Nothing worse than having your car apart only to learn you can't finish the job. This time, I paid a bit extra for a refundable additional cable (TOY and TOY1 cables) which are the only two options. On the SC forum, there were some comments about wrong cables as well, so best to have both in case there were some running production changes by Lexus.

Also, try and keep your CD "playlists" under 2000 songs. The Random feature works better this way, as the unit can freeze temporarily when advancing tracks while in random mode if the playlist is too long. I think the unit "builds" the playlist in Random mode which can take some time if you've got more than 2000 songs in that playlilst. I separate my jazz playlist to two separate CDs i.e. 2-Jazz and 3-Jazz. Though you can have, I believe, up to 99 playlists, I keep mine to 6 to emulate that actual CD Changer's operation so you can go directly to a playlist via the CD 1-6 buttons on the Nav screen. If you want more than 6, you simply use the toggle switch on the right of the stereo unit to navigate through them.

Frank

cyclehead

Is your "32 GB Transcend USB drive" a flash thumb drive, or a spinning-disc type drive? I tried running a small Western Digital drive (that has a disc) through my Grom Audio box. It would never read it. So far, I can only get it to read thumb drives.

FrancoP

Yes, it's the thumb drive. I don't know what capacity they're up to now, but for me, the 32gb of music is just about all I have. I guess one could go to a 64GB thumb drive if you need more capacity. Again, the system gets a little buggy on folders with more than 2000 songs when using random, but other than that, a larger thumb drive may be the answer.

jayclapp

For folks who want to really carry a lot of music in their car, I find that a 160 GB iPod driven off a Viastech unit works just fine.