1995? We were still using these in like 2008.
2025 as well.
Worked? Mine works perfectly!
Two cars ago I had this. I had a MiniDisk player to go with it. I felt like the coolest young adult.
Then I got another car that had a CD player with no AUX port. Had to get a RF adapter. Worked well.
Then the FCC put limits in the RF adapters and they sounded worse.
Replaced my radio after that one with a shamcy one. Got my AUX cable back!
… Now they took my AUX cable away from my phone.
Get a Bluetooth AUX receiver.
Those didn’t exist yet. It was amm FM Transmitters. They might’ve been around but too expensive.
I had one of those up until 2012, because my F150 at the time still had the tape deck. They worked well, and even 2019 I used one in a company truck I had at work. But when it broke I was hardpress to find a replacement. I do know they made Bluetooth versions, but most didn’t have good reviews and never bought one to try out.
That, plus a portable CD-MP3 player, was the bomb.
I still have my iRiver iMP-350, a portable CD player that could read mp3 and wma files off a CD-R or CD-RW, allowing way more than 74 or 80 minutes of audio. Damn thing still mostly works 22 years later too, thanks in large part to them including a 2x AA battery dongle in addition to the gumstick-shaped rechargeable batteries in the main unit which have long since leaked.
When they started selling head units with aux in ports, I had to have one in my car. And when they started putting iPod connectors in head units, perfection.
iRiver= S tier mp3 nostalgia
Pretty sure I still did that in like 2012?
2018 here lol
What were you driving cerca 2018? That’s amazing
Chrysler 300M. Second car I ever owned, kept it for years
We were using this well into 2010 or so. Better audio quality than an FM tuner as long as the electromagnet wasn’t overheating.
The best option though was to get an inline FM injector and plug it in where the antenna plugged in. Perfect audio.
My 2000s-era cars don’t* have tape decks, unfortunately. I say “unfortunately” because they also don’t have line in, USB, or Bluetooth, so their AM/FM/CD car audio units are, in 2025, objectively inferior to the AM/FM/cassette ones in my 1990s-era cars.
* Present tense because I still own cars from the '90s and 2000s. I refuse to own any car capable of violating my privacy, which is every new car.
Let me introduce you to the Citroen Ami/Opel Rocks-e/Fiat Topolino, where the entertainment system is a literal bluetooth speaker in a cupholder.
It’d have to be a long-distance relationship, because those aren’t sold in the US.
Yeah, but we’re talking about cars. I think the Ami is legally something like a dune buggy
I haven’t seen it in ANY of the dune movies though…
It’s okay. My car is covered in cameras and has a mobile broadband connection to the mothership, so it’s probably tracking your glorious 90’s swag wagons without your consent anyway.
Anyway, sorry about that. I’d tape the cameras up but then the car complains a lot.
Super reasonable. We had a 2004 Honda Pilot at the time, which still had a tape deck.
I swear, even ebikes are starting to get all these GPS tracking features 😅 such a dystopia.
I refuse to own any car capable of violating my privacy, which is every new car.
To be fair, any car with a license plate too. But still your point is well taken.
Luckily most cars with cd players made after 2007 also included an aux port.
I refuse to own any car capable of violating my privacy
Is this you?
No, but he’s right.
*Is this GNU?
A lot of CD units from the 2000s were wired to connect to a 6-CD changer mounted in the trunk, and you can get an adapter cable that provides an AUX input this way. I drive a 2001 BMW and I’m able to play music from my phone over the car stereo with one of these (cost around $50).
This worked a lot better before I was forced to buy a new phone without a fucking headphone jack. I have a USB adapter that works but the signal level is much lower than a normal headphone jack so the maximum volume is a lot lower.
You may want to look into a GROM audio subsystem. They work remarkably well. Buddy installed one in his 2004 Volvo and you’d never know it was there.
My nokia n95 had a small integrated FM transmitter.
Tanked the battery but was fun to play with
Tape adapter should be just as good. If it’s not, you probably have dirty heads or are using it wrong (wrong side, NR on, etc).
The tape adapter is legit just a wire that connects to a tape-head inside the cassette body. That’s it. It’s head-to-head.
Most of the noise and artifacts in tape are a result of the tape itself. No tape, no noise. Consequentially if your tape deck has Dolby Noise Reduction or a similar feature, it should probably be turned off.
Relevant Technology Connections: https://youtu.be/dH4n8fUjtLQ
Yep I used these till the tape deck broke and phones stopped having earphone plugs
We were using these in 2013 also. Went through a ton of them then never lasted
We’re still using one of these haha.
i was using one of these to connect my laptop to my “speakers” (an old stereo set) as recently as 2019, lmao
Russia or Mississippi?
Switzerland, which probably makes this even funnier
The best thing about the 1997 Volkswagen Jetta I had was it had a 12-disc CD-changer in the trunk. Why it was in the trunk, I don’t know, but I had updated the front side deck (which was also cool because it was just a box you could plug into the front and not have to get deeper into the wiring or anything) so it could read MP3 CDs, so 12 of those in the trunk basically held almost everything my iPod could.
I had an Acura with the disc changer in the trunk, I imagine the moving parts right behind the firewall would not fare well for long in high heat, as well as the discs. You’re right though, the move to burning MP3 CDs felt like you had almost infinite space for all your bands
No longer remember the car model but mine had a deck for 6 in the trunk and one in the dashboard
Magnets, how do they work
Literally no one knows.
They are still around. They even come in Bluetooth flavour now so you don’t need the cord.
Perfect for my Bluetooth Discman.
Like how did these even work??
Instead of running a magnetic tape over the cassette player’s sensor, you put an electromagnet on it powered by the headphone jack. The cassette player just reads the magnetic field and doesn’t know any difference.
damn I thought it was writing the tape in real time that would be insane
You shoved the cassette into your car radio and plugged the other end into a cd player
Computer Engineer here, studied QED and E&M.
This is the most accurate answer
The player reads a magnetic tape. Put the same reader inside the cassette and reverse it, now the player reads a reader.
Technology connections explains it very well
These adapters were perfect… The only problem was that personal CD players of the same era skipped when you looked at them wrong.
I remember buying a Sony mp3 CD player with 5-second skip delay for $80.
Everyone was still using regular CD players with their 80 minutes of audio, carefully holding their precious device.
While I was living like a god, playing over twenty hours of music, dropping my player over and over, without losing a beat.
I remember shopping for diskmans that had the longest anti-skip.
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You definitely had to keep the cd player in a level spot in your car where it didn’t bounce around a lot
Please. I had a cassette with built-in storage, that could play in a cassette deck player AND had an headset jack plugged in for music on the go.
Yeah, it worked much better than our current USB bluetooth dogle that lags every 30 seconds. Just because we could not get radio wit cassette player. I still have the cassette adapter.
64gb USB stick filled to the brim with pirated music. No skipping, no ads. This is the way.
Yeah I used to have my MP3 Bean filled with random music gathered from friends. Little red triangular player, lasted for like three weeks on one charge, just music, no [artist] radio bs on Spotify. My phone lasts one day, if I don’t play music.
Ugh I WISH… my old car didn’t have Bluetooth so I bought a BT-AUX adapter. It worked INSTANTLY and sounded amazing. Zero delay, loved it so much.
Got a newer car. Bluetooth included! …with a two second delay. I go to plug my BT-AUX adapter in so I don’t have a delay… NO AUX PORT IN CAR AAAA
