The Mobile Cassette Adapter from Belkin easily connects your iPod device, portable MP3, CD, cassette player, PC, or laptop to your car stereo, through your car's in-dash cassette... more
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your portables into your car's in-dash cassette player. It works with your MP3, CD, or cassette player, and with your PC or laptop to deliver high-quality sound
control of two PS/2 computers from one console. Its compact design with built-in cabling saves you time on installation, desktop space, and money. The Switch includ...
your portables into your car's in-dash cassette player. It works with your MP3, CD, or cassette player, and with your PC or laptop to deliver high-quality sound
Since all of my music is now in MP3 format and contained on my I-Pod I wanted to be able to listen to my I-Pod in my car through the car speakers and not through headphones.
There are fully integrated package solutions available, such as the Denison Ice, but these are very expensive to buy and require specialist installation adding to the expense. I also noted that this solution is permanent and does not allow it to be changed between cars, this in my opinion, is a major disadvantage.
I remembered the in-car solutions for personal CD players that consisted of a cradle to hold the CD player, often made out of a bit of flexi steel with a platform on top of it and Velcro stuck to that. To get the CD playing through the car speakers there was a cassette tape with a wire attached that was plugged in to the CD player headphone socket.
Since my car had a tape player I though that the above would be a great solution.
There are numerous cassette tapes with the headphone wire available on the market and these vary greatly in quality and in price. A cheap version can be had for as little as a pound from Ebay but this is a cheap Chinese piece of crap with really poor quality. Alternatively you could spend over £10 on a ‘branded’ item that is much better quality.
Going for a cheap version would prove false economy since I would only end up buying a more expensive branded product, so I purchased the Belkin tape solution in the first instance.
****Compatibility****
The Belkin cassette adaptor works with all I-Pods, regardless of the type, be it nano, shuffle, classic or touch. It can also be used with all other MP3 players, including those that a basically a flash drive.
In fact, this product is compatible with all music players with a headphone socket.
****Installation****
Simply plug the cassette adaptor in to the headphone socket of the I-Pod and put the cassette in the cassette player of the radio. Turn on the I-Pod, select the track and hey presto, it is now being played through the car speakers.
There is no tuning, no messing around and no faffing about. It is really simple.
****Sound and quality****
The quality of the sound is dependent upon the quality of the radio unit and speaker set up in your vehicle, to a certain extent. It should be noted that the best you can expect is that of a cassette tape, which by today’s standards is pretty useless.
You can hear the whine of the tape as the cassette spins which is annoying especially at lower volume levels.
****Price and availability****
The Belkin cassette adaptor cost £12.10 from ebuyer.com, although it is available from many other places. Before buying I would recommend carrying out an internet search as you could probably find a good deal.
****Conclusion****
Whilst reasonably cheap this product, in my opinion, is not worth buying as it does not represent value for money.
The I-Pod has great sound quality, even through its headphones, and by plugging it in to a cassette adaptor it reduces the quality of sound right down to that of the tape cassettes I used to buy back in the 1980s. It is a real shame.
Now I am used to the quality of CDs, MP3’ etc a cassette tape just doesn’t cut it.
When using this product you need to find the most suitable volume levels. Too quiet and you can hear the tape churning round and round in the radio unit. Too loud and the quality is so poor that there is loads of distortion. If you find the sweet spot, which can take a bit of trial and error, then it is ok.
I would not recommend this type of solution to anyone. The FM transmitters do not cost that much more and appear to work a lot better.
(Originally posted on Dooyoo under the name of Yackers1)
Advantages: play MP3's through an old stereo Disadvantages: few
I remember this kind of thing from about 20 years ago, but it wasn't half as usefull as it is know. With one of these cassette adapter you can play any hi tech portable Ipod / MP3 player though any stereo system with a tape deck.
You just plug the headphone jack (standard 3.5mm like you find on nearly all uk earphones) into the socket of your mp3 player, stick the cassette in the stereo, and set both the mp3 player and stereo to play, instantly ... ...stereo speakers.
I bought mine for use in my car, and it served me well till I replaced the car with one with CD stereo. Now it's sat in my home hi-fi tape deck, any time I want to listen to my Ipod I can just plug it into the wire coming out of the tape deck and fill the house with my MP3 tunes.
Instantly modernises old stereo systems into MP3 players.
it's small (normal cassette size) and very light weight, the only real down side is the wire ...
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Advantages: Allows you to listen to your mp3 player in your car Disadvantages: Very Poor Quality Of Sound!
...one. The durability of the Belkin one looks even worse. It is very delicate, any slight touch to the wire or the portable device causes bad sound quality. If you want my advice... if you have a modern head unit in your car, it will probably have aux inputs at the back. So buy an aux to 3.5mm jack cable, and connect it to your head unit. This surely would produce better sound quality. Anyway, the Belkin case holder which fits my iPod to my dashboard ...
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Advantages: Cheap and it easy to use Disadvantages: A little tempremental
..."music" and got her the Belkin MP3 cassette thingy in the hopes that we could finally listen to some good music.
There are some very good things about this product and some not so good things as well. The good points are its a hell of a lot cheaper than getting a new CD player for the car. It also means that you can listen to 10000's of songs that you have on your MP3 player (or if you don't have an MP3 player it will work exactly the same for a ... ...cable with it (i think its just over a metre) so you can put what ever you plug it into just about anywhere in the front of the car. Now for some of the bad points about it. I'm not sure if this is just my girlfriends tape player but some times when you have the cassette in the cassette player it tries to switch sides and cuts out the music, this is very annoying because it can do this 10 or so times before it besides that it wants to play again. ...
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Advantages: Gives the great sound quality of an IPod Disadvantages: Uses more battery power than normal usage of an IPod
I use mine with my IPod 4G. The sound quality is amazing, as good as my IPod and better than sound quality that I get using the radio or tape cassette in my car. The hardest part of using this product is getting it out of the sealed plastic packaging it comes in. After that is a simple case of popping it into your cassette player and plugging it into the earphone socket of your MP3 player then you can control what you listen to through the normal ... ...control through the MP3 player and your cassette controls so if you like your music loud you can achieve double the volume by using both controls.
The only disadvantage to this is it does seem to drain the IPod battery quicker than normal usage would. That aside I would recommend this product to anyone, it has certainly made getting stuck in traffic more bearable to me. ...
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Belkin Components Car cassette adapter Colour: White
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Listed on Ciao since : 16/04/2004
Manufacturer's product description
The Mobile Cassette Adapter from Belkin easily connects your iPod device, portable MP3, CD, cassette player, PC, or laptop to your car stereo, through your car's in-dash cassette player. It provides an easy way to transfer quality sound from any portable audio equipment to your car stereo while on the road, on the beach, camping, or anywhere you would use a portable tape player. Designed for outstanding audio performance and use on the road, the Adapter reduces noise by automatically maintaining the correct tension within the cassette deck as you drive.
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