Digital Music In The Car

{mosgoogle}Most new car CD players can play discs with MP3 and other digital music files. You can copy several hours of digital music from a computer library to a single disc. All the major car stereo makers have MP3 CD decks from about $150 to well over $1,000.

A smaller but growing number of car decks feature auxiliary audio line-in jacks so you can connect a digital music player using a standard audio cable plugged into the player's headphone or line-out jack. Sony's 2005 Xplod Specialty Series offers this features, as do decks from many other manufacturers.

It's also possible to play digital music from a portable player over a car stereo system using a cassette or FM adapter.

iPod has also made its presence felt in the car audio realm. High-end automakers such as BMW, Volvo and Alfa Romeo now offer iPod interfaces in the cars as an option. Alpine, one of the premier names in car audio, makes an adapter, the KCA-420i, that allows you to plug an iPod into any of its Ai-NET models and control it from the car system.

What's next? Mobile wireless networking. Just imagine, you pull into your garage and the Wi-Fi enable player automatically logs on to the home network and begins downloading a fresh selection of music from your PC library for the next day. SoniqCast already has a product that does this. Others will follow.