Miata Mailing List: March 1993, Message #149
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   From: (none)
Subject: Trunk CD player (fwd)
   Date: (none)

Forwarded message:

> With all the talk of trunk-mount CD players, I've gotten to wonder about
> the quality of sound.  Most of the ones that I've seen seem to indicate
> that they contain a small FM transmitter.  My guess is that you are
> supposed to set your stereo to some frequency low on the FM band in
> order to listen.  Is this assumption true?  Or have I just seen
> el-cheapo ones?  Does it affect sound quality?  Will I be listening to
> what the guy in the next car has? etc, etc...  I'm not looking for
> brand-name wars, but what would I look for in a trunk CD changer?

The FM transmitter is a pretty widely used solution, and yes everything
I've read suggested that you lose some amount of dynamic range and
frequency response.  These normally attach in-line between the antenna
and the car stereo.  You set your FM tuner to some fixed band to listen to
CD's.  Although it "broadcasts", it does so directly into the antenna
input of the stereo, so I doubt that others would pick up your CD music.

It would seem that you could simply wire the changer into the back of the 
factory stereo (Miata magazine gave the pinouts recently) if you wanted 
better sound quality at the price of a bit more installation effort.

Something that I'm considering is the new MD format, a smaller, recordable 
CD.  The car units I've seen mounted in-dash, just like a normal stereo, 
and had the capability to load 6 MD's.  Blaupunkt's unit also accepted a 
cassette.  Besides the obvious advantage of a single, in-dash unit, the 
MD's also have 10 second track buffering which should cure most of the 
skipping problems associated with full size changers.  The disadvantages 
include: yet another format to buy if you want prerecorded material, some 
small loss of music quality over normal CD's (music is stored in a compressed 
format), and yet another home unit to buy if you want to record your own MD's.
Even with the disadvantages, this seems to me like a more logical choice for
automotive applications.  I think the latest issue of "Audio" magazine
discusses the format and one of the Sony portable units.

jdm

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