I was thinking about this, would it be possible to hook an I-Pod to an amp directly. I know that they have RCA outs and all you would need is a manual switch to turn on the amp. Would this work? This would eliminate the stereo and give me more room for gauges. What does everyone think?

 

wait...why would you want to plug it into an amp
an amp supplies power to the stereo/speakers
if you wanted to run your ipod through your stereo, youd want to put it in the back of an aftermarket deck

by eliminating the deck, you pretty much sever the connection between the car and the speakers. so you do NOT want to get rid of your deck.

 

you can RELOCATE the deck to say...the glove compartment if youre looking for space...but you dont want to ELIMINATE it

 

If your amp has RCA ins (which it likely does), YES!

Just go kinda easy on the volume control.

 

^^ but he wants to remove the deck itself i thought....the amp would be running to nothing and POWERING nothing (other than the iPod...speakers are just kinda sittin there)

 

dont the speakers connect to the amp. the deck is nothing but a source, same as an ipod is.

 

yuh.

deck ---> amp ---> speakers

or

ipod ---> amp ---> speakers

the amp and speakers don't care where it comes from

 

nevermind....im thinking amp for a sub....duh theyre connected to an amp if the amps powering the speakers
forget my first few posts....im tired...its 2am

 

lol I thought u were smoking crack dude.
I'm pretty sure u can do this but u could just get a 5$ tape deck offa ebay with a 1/8" in, which is what an ipod has and that way you wouldn't be able to damage ur expensive ipod and u could have a solid volume control rather than mess with the ipod while driving.

 

So it would work, but I never though about the volume control? Hmmmm thinking....

 

The factory decks have a CD-In for the CD Player Option on the factory system... I'd say try feeding that plug a miniplug line out signal from a cheap walkman, or radio, to see which wires you need to jack into... and then hard wire the Ipod to it... A lot of people @ www.mp3car.com have done similar things, good luck....

 

just take your ipod and splice a line level -> RCA converter into the headphone wires and run that to the amp. I'm guessing you have a 5 channel amp? anyway it should work fine

 

It'll work, and if you're planning on using the headphone jack on the ipod, you can just use that for volume control. Turn it up all the way, turn the amp gain to the max you'll want to hear w/o blowing speakers, and then use the volume control on the ipod to lower it.

 

do you know if that'll put a decent signal to the amp though? like will it even be a 2v signal from the ipod? I can't stand having any less than a 4v signal to my amps, but if it's 2v it'd do I supose. If it's less than that, I can't imagine it sounding decent

 

I haven't measured it. But just FYI, Voltage != Sound Quality. Why don't you just grab some RCA cables and see if it sounds ok?

 

I have, I was incredibly surprised at the clarity that can be obtained.
I thought I couldn’t tell the difference between a nice deck, and a mp3 @128bps.

 

wickedrx7, what's your setup? Amp(s), channels, crossovers, etc.

 

the guy who had the car before me ran all of the speakers of an amp..... I hook my ipod directly to it.... does suck having to change the volume on th ipod itself instead of the head unit

 

Setup:
PPI PC 650 six channel amp w/ built in crossover
Stock Bose fronts
MB Quart Q-series behind the seats
1 JL W-6

I have since removed the sub and amp to save weight. I was just going to run the fronts and rears off a four channel amp. I was thinking of eliminating the Head so I could put some more gauges in there. The car is only driven on the weekends and to race events. I don't really care too much about the stereo and just wanted some music to listen to on the long drive to the track.

I am also thinking of just replacing the fronts with some cheap speakers and just running them off the Head, decisions, decision...

 

Yea, I went through all this a while ago too. I speced out a $4000 system, then I decided to replace the non-bose fronts with something decent, and keep the rest as it is.

If you're using the amp crossovers, everything should be fine. I asked because I wasn't sure if you were using the head unit for crossing. It wont be the most sonically perfect system in the world , but you can just y-cable each channel of the ipod over each channel of the amp... at least try it out. Put it this way, it wont sound BAD.

 

The best solution to your problem

http://www.macnn.com/news/22778

only downside is you need a alpine head unit(if you can consider that a downside)

bill

 

So...that's NOT a solution. He wants to *eliminate* the head unit for guages.

 

It's funny how every stereo thread in here ends up with someone forcing Alpine equipment down someone else's throat.

No personal offense intended, tobecontinued. It's just a general observation.

 

Ipod--> volume control--> amp--> speakers

For the volume control, use one of those bass volume controllers in-line with the rca's, then it's only a small box with a twiddly **** on the front and your Ipod