My car has an Aux port in the glove compartment that lets you plug an iPod in and listen to it through the stereo. It’s easy to find a cable to go from the headphone jack of the iPod to the Aux port, but what has always driven me crazy about this solution is that the headphone jack only puts out so much power, and if you turn the iPod volume up too far the sound through the stereo gets distorted. If you have ever listened to your iPod when connected through the Dock to a stereo you can really tell how much more power there is without distortion.
So I have been looking for a cable to go from the Aux port to the dock connector of the iPod. You’d think this would be easy but I checked at Radio Shack, Best Buy, WalMart, etc. and I couldn’t even find anyone that had ever heard of a cable like this. I found a couple cables online, but one was retractable and wouldn’t work for the routing I wanted to do between the glove compartment and my center console, and the other was 4ft long and white. The second cable was inexpensive, but I really wanted a black cable to go with the interior of my car and I didn’t think 4ft would be long enough, so I kept on looking.
What I ended up with was a connector called the PocketDock Line Out USB from SendStation that plugs in to the iPod dock connector and has a line out port. I can then run from the line out port to the Aux port in the glove compartment and the power and fullness coming from the iPod now is amazing. I bet it is at least 4-5 times more powerful than the headphone connector. I don’t know why this isn’t carried in stores, but I was only able to find it online and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a way to get better sound, and more power, from their iPod to their car stereo.
My only complaint would be the cost, but if you shop around online you can take a few bucks off of list.