Add cassette player to a new car stereo

March 11, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Q. I bought a brand-new car that I love, except that it does not have a cassette player. It has a hard drive that stores music, CD player, USB port and auxiliary port in the center console, and satellite radio, but no cassette player! Why don’t they put cassette players in cars anymore?

J.F., Ridgeland, S.C.

A. Few cars have cassette players because the demand is no longer there. Few people use cassettes these days, and even digital physical media (such as compact discs) is not as prominent as it once was. There is an easy solution to your problem.

You can plug most anything with a headphone output into the auxiliary port by using a miniplug-to-miniplug stereo cable. A portable Walkman-like cassette player can be connected to play cassettes. Just make sure you turn the volume up on the player to about 75 percent so it sends a strong enough signal for your car stereo to amplify. If you turn it to the maximum, you will probably hear distortion because the player itself is causing it.

Of course, portable players require power, usually batteries, which would not be convenient for you. Your car’s USB port can come to the rescue here and power the cassette player. If you look online, you will find a number of portable cassette players with USB connection. They sell for under $25. Connect the USB port on the player to the car to provide power and the miniplug cable from the player’s headphone output to the auxiliary input to provide the signal, and you have effectively added a cassette player to your car at minimal cost. Just select AUX as your source, not USB.

Two of my cars have a USB port and an auxiliary jack in the center console. I purchased a “USB Portable Cassette to MP3 Converter Tape-to-MP3 Player with Headphones” for $22 on Amazon and tested it. It worked perfectly. Don’t forget to buy a miniplug cable also as the player does not include one.

photo transfer app

A must-have app for smartphone users: I’ve started using an app that has greatly enhanced my enjoyment of my iPhone and iPad. It works on Android and computers, too.

Photo Transfer App is $2.99 on the iTunes Store and Android Market. It makes exchanging photographs and videos between devices a snap! First, install and start the app on both devices. Connect both devices to the same wireless network (Bluetooth is also supported) and select the photographs and videos to send. Photo Transfer App will copy them to the desired device. The process could not be simpler. You can use Photo Transfer App to download to your computer as well. I use it to transfer pictures and videos from my iPhone 4S to my iPad and couldn’t be happier.

A single purchase will allow you to install the app on multiple devices, so if you have an iPhone and an iPad, you need to pay only once. See it at www.phototransferapp.com.

Contact Don Lindich at www.soundadviceblog.com and use the “submit question” link on that site.

2012, McClatchy-Tribune News Service