amcdonal86

I have a Phillips tape adapter from the 90s. It works great! Fantastic, even. Unfortunately, I close it up in my cigarette tray so the cord has gotten damaged. I need to get a new one!

Jabberwock

The typical good quality car cassette deck runs at 40hz - 14khz response but has a relatively low signal to noise ratio compared to a line level input device. In addition you have mechanical transport noise, clicking, and vibration to contend with due to the cassette deck trying to read and roll the "tape" in the adapter. If the plug in on the cassette adapter plug is 3.5 m instead of an Ipod port line level plug, then you have even more noise (and decreased signal to noise ratio) because the feed has the noise from the ipod amp injected into the signal that the car amp gets and then that additional noise is amplified again - result is a high noise signal to the speakers....not good

A line level input direct plug in device like the TOYPD2 should provide the car's amp with a very clean low noise line level (meaning unamplified) signal from the ipod which should be audibly superior to any cassette adapter. The limits to fidelity will then be primarily the highly compressed signal inherent in the way ipod music is stored and played back - but we have all learned to pretty much accept the current fidelity limitation as a trade off for having 100 albums of music stored on a 3 oz device. Give it a few more years and storage systems will grow so big that a lot less compression will be required for music.

Playdrv4me

Fantastically informative post as usual. I'm looking forward to receiving the device.

abs

Has anyone found a way to use a USB connected hard drive instead of an iPOD but still retain control through the OEM interfaces (does the PA15-TOY do this?)? I would prefer NOT to use an iPOD for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I don't want to have to convert my music formats to work on the iPOD - I prefer lossless formats like .FLAC and .WAV. Also, I have too much material to fit on a typical iPOD - I really need a hard drive that has more than 500gb capacity on it. Lastly, the reading I've been doing on these adapters talks about using "play lists" - does this mean that I won't have the ability to pick my tunes by Artist and then by Album in a hierarchical fashion?

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

thinkin

@Jabberwock: All of what you say is true, yet audio is one of those areas where subjective and objective realities don't always synchronize. I've been into serious home audio for a few decades and if there's one thing I've learned it's that measurably superior equipment can often fall flat in actual listening enjoyment (witness the continuing dominance of analog audio among music lovers, despite its serious drawbacks in convenience). This is the case because we simply don't have good metrics for some areas where the ear is extremely sensitive, and have too many for areas where it isn't - our hearing is an organic perceptual system, not an oscilloscope.

Is the Vaistech a better-sounding solution? Very likely (hopefully!), and it's certainly much more convenient. But all I can say is, for some reason that I would never bother to attempt to quantify, but can qualify, that I find the sound through this cassette adapter to be agreeable, more dynamic, with better extension and smoother than I thought it would be. I can only assume the cassette deck in the LS is above average (not Nakamichi Dragon above average, but pretty good!), and the Philips adapter especially well-designed, and there seems to be a pleasant synergy. For $10, at least in this car's stock system, it's a raving bargain.

All that said, I too went ahead and ordered one of the above units. I guess the peer pressure got me (thanks, Playdrv! ) and for $81 it's within my impulse territory and I'm willing to give it a try for the convenience factors alone, assuming I can work up the courage to brave the install.

@abs: My understanding is that the pre-MP3 systems (like the Gen 4 we have in the '04-06 LS) are limited to doing a playlist function as a result of CD/MD emulation, so no, you cannot browse your iPod for artist/album/whatever, only select playlists you've made in advance. You can however see song info on the screen and use the track controls (though why you'd even need to see the name of the song/artist/etc. beyond the cool factor is not very clear to me - I don't have any unknown songs in my collection, I know them, that's why they're there).

This limitation is not present on the Gen 5+ systems, where supposedly you can browse around your collection. However, I can't imagine a very good interface for doing this on the Gen 4 steering wheel/screen with its current capabilities. I would certainly not want to be mucking around trying to pick something while driving, and when I look around at all the texting maniacs driving all over their lanes and into mine, I don't relish the idea of anyone else trying either.

You can put Rockbox on most iPods and some other PMPs and they can play FLAC directly (I too vastly prefer uncompressed music if it has to be digital). The iPod will never be a high-end source, but this helps. I think all of the rest of the signaling works just fine through the controller jack, so I can't see any reason it wouldn't still work with the Vaistech/etc. It won't help your other reasons but I just figured I'd mention that in case you ever want to use your iPod for FLAC.

jayclapp

If you make your playlist by "Artist - Album" in iTunes they will be sorted alphabetically. All albums by a particular artist will be grouped alphabetically. That means you can have 100 albums (with the same quality as the CD you might have copied them from) in your iPod. You can scan thru the albums up and down, with the "Artist - Album" being displayed on the NAV screen. When you stop on one it will display the "Artist-Album" and the name of each song as it plays on the line below.

100 albums will consume about half of a 160Gb iPod. I only access my iPod to remove it and install additional music.

Hope this helps answer your question.

Jabberwock

It will be interesting for people to post their impressions of the direct input versus cassette adapter sound. On paper (and theoretically) the line level TOYPD2 interface should produce cleaner better sound than the cassette adapter, but you never know until both are compared and tested in real world conditions. I have never used the cassette adapter (and never would) because its beyond my tolerance level for tacky/cheesey which is normally pretty high.

I will be limited to posting a report on ease of install and use on a premium non Nav stereo. Coincidentally I have a weeks vac coming up and will have plenty of time to doco the install if the device gets here on time. Hopefully that will be useful to others.

Spending time on these forums can save you money, but it can also cost you money sometimes... as that is $81 I would very likely never have spent if I wasn't reading this forum : )

Playdrv4me

One thing I forgot about that made the VAIS SLi2 supposedly superior to USA Spec and other line input alternatives, was that it contains a ground loop isolator to get rid of that annoying hum/whirr/whine from the electrical system. I sure hope that the Soundgate, being a supposed carbon copy, contains this functionality as well.

thinkin

Apparently these units are VAIS units, not clones. From the VAIS tech forum:

And the response from VAISTech2:

http://www.vaistech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=987

Playdrv4me

Sweetness.

Ears

All this fascinates me, and I have nearly pulled the trigger a couple of times for the toy/vias. My question or hold up has been in the text/playlist scenario. My '04 LS 430 is equipped with the ML NAV and 6-disc changer in dash. My display does not show cd titles or track names, only which of the 6 cd's is loaded, and which track number is playing. What can I expect from the toy/vias interface. I don't really need the text, I guess, but I am accustomed to using the ipod without playlists, and in shuffle mode for my 20Gb of music stored... Will I have to create playlists?

convoy

i've been using an old sony cassette adapter for a few months now. sound quality is pretty good, only problem is the adapter annoyingly pops out from time to time. anyone else have this problem? is it just my head unit going bad or something to do with the volume settings? i don't crank the volume high or anything...

Playdrv4me

No, some adapters will do this. You should switch to the Philips adapter as it should not pop out unless the tolerances within the deck mechanism themselves have loosened.

McSwine

I ended up ordering this one since it has a second aux. input I can use for sat. radio and non-ipod mp3 players...

http://www.mp3carpros.com/product_in...roducts_id=166

KILLERGS4

i've bought Monster, then Sony, but have the same problem. Sound is louder on one side, so I have to adjust the Balance every time. I wonder if the Phillips brand is any better, but I doubt it. I use for my In-Dash DVD changer hooked to rear DVD monitors...