Originally Posted by The Wall Street Journal October 9, 2006

Volkswagen has a clever new television advertisement in the U.S. featuring the rock guitar hero Slash wailing away on a guitar plugged into a stack of VW cars. (See it here, on YouTube.)

On its face, the Slash ad is just to promote VW's offer of a free guitar with certain of its cars. But the real message is about the future of car audio: It's all about the connectivity, dude.

Not so long ago, the key features in mobile audio were things like a six-disc CD changer -- and, for certain high-end brands, the ability to play new surround-sound disc formats such as DVD Audio. But compact disc formats such as DVD Audio are yesterday's news. The next wave has more to do with auto makers providing plugs and ports for connecting various digital-storage devices with the audio system.

The simplest of these is the "AUX," or auxiliary jack. That's the little socket that allows you to plug a portable audio device into the car's audio system. The VW GTI, for example, has one in the glove box. While you really can use the AUX jack to transform your car-audio system into a substitute for a Marshall stack, most people will probably use them to plug in their iPods or other MP3 players.

The proliferation of audio AUX jacks in new cars got started in the late 1990s. But it's taken off -- and been promoted -- more recently as brands such as VW and Chevrolet have begun equipping more of their cars with the inputs. But just as the AUX jack is making the move to mass-market acceptance, the front edge of the audio wave has already moved on.

The problem with just plugging your iPod into an auxiliary jack is the "human-machine interface," says T.C. Wingrove, senior manager of North America product marketing for Visteon, one of the leading suppliers of factory-vehicle audio systems. To locate the tune you want to hear among the thousands stored on a 30-gig iPod requires twiddling the iPod's touchy little control wheel while piloting a car at 70 miles per hour. That's a nasty business.

One solution, Mr. Wingrove says, is to integrate the iPod with the car's audio system so the driver can select tunes using the normal audio controls. BMW was among the first to market with a factory system for integrating iPods into the audio system, but others are following fast. By the end of this year, Apple is forecasting some 70% of vehicles will offer some form of iPod connectivity -- beyond the simple auxiliary jack -- as an option.

At Scion, Toyota's youth brand, the hardware to connect and control an iPod through the radio headset is a $260 option, and about a quarter of Scions are sold with iPod connections. Scion is discontinuing the six-CD-changer option in its models, and moving to iPod connectivity instead, says Scion spokeswoman Allison Takahashi.

OK, so getting an iPod connection plug that lets you dock your player in the glove box will make you cool, right? Not really. The next step up from the auxiliary jack and the iPod docking plug is a USB port, which allows you to plug in memory devices or other USB-enabled devices. Volvo, for example, says it may offer a USB flash-drive port as an option in sound systems for its new C30 hatchback model. Visteon's Mr. Wingrove says he expects installations of USB ports will grow by 80% a year between now and 2009.

At Mercedes-Benz, the new S Class has a 20-gigabyte hard drive as part of its music system, and a slot for a PCMCIA card. Other new Mercedes will likely come with similar systems that allow drivers to bring large amounts of digital entertainment into the car without an iPod.

The final frontier: wireless connections. A growing number of cars already have Bluetooth enabled systems that allow you to talk to your phone through the audio system. Next up are wireless USB connections and wireless charging. Such systems might involve a pad mounted in the cupholder that would charge a properly equipped digital device. Visteon will likely show such a system at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, says Mr. Wingrove, and every major car maker has expressed interest.

A lot of consumers probably wonder: Why has it taken the car business so long to figure out that people want easy ways to bring their digital entertainment into their cars? The fact is, the auto industry is still wrestling with the digital revolution. Consider the rising popularity of handheld navigation devices, which can also be mounted on the dashboard of a car. These provide route guidance and other functions for a fraction of the cost of built-in car navigation systems.

Auto makers still have something to offer, if they can create systems that integrate all the varieties of digital data consumers want to bring along for the ride in displays that are useful, easy to control and, in the case of audio systems, sound great.

But auto makers will always struggle to keep pace with the rapid changes in consumer electronics. Cars still have gestation periods of two to three years; in that time, digital entertainment formats can rise and fall, and the ever-inventive replacement-market audio business can go through two or three generations of products.

Which is why, not too long from now, the images of Slash playing an electric guitar wired into a stack of Volkswagens probably will strike technologically savvy consumers as quaint.

Wires and cables? Who uses those?

And by the way, who is Slash?

Originally Posted by stars1010

I just want to be able to upload music to my car and have it saved there on a hard drive.

That way I'll always have the same few thousand songs at a finger touch away.

I don’t want to have to hook up an MP3 player or iPod every time I want to listen to music, whether it wireless or not.

I want to download on my computer and transfer to car....just once.

And yeah....I'm so sick of CDs in my GTP now.....

Originally Posted by Doug Harden

Until mp3 technology improves sound quality, I'll listen to my CD's thank you.

Originally Posted by GRNcamaro

that would be neat how would you do it a usb jump drive? my one complaint with that would be audio quality but i guess i could live with a little less.

i was just thinking to wouldnt the car have to have some kind of lcd screen i mean you wouldnt want to flipthrew 200-300 songs to hear one or you were looking for.

Originally Posted by stars1010

Ya know, if flipping through 300 songs on an LCD is too much to search through while driving, you could always have a voice control system. The one on my phone didn’t have to be programmed and is accurate more than 80% of the time.

Originally Posted by Threxx

Listen to MP4/M4A/AAC/OggVorbis, or just stick to higher bit-rate MP3s than 192kbps.

I'd consider myself a moderate audiophile... have spent a lot of money on my audio setups at my house and do a lot of reading and critical listening. To be honest, I'm happy with MP3 at 256kbps or above for just passive listening in the car.

If I want to really blow myself away then, no... but if I want to really blow myself away then WTF am I doing listening to material in a car anyway? You'll never get flat clean response inside a car anyway, so why bother concern yourself over the source material? I mean maybe if you were listening to it on a Mark Levinson system in a Lexus or a Bang & Olufsen in an Audi... but other than that - your average typical OEM system is going to eff up music far more than a compression codec could ever dream of.

Worry about formats and sources once you get home and are sitting in front of a few thousand dollars worth of audio equipment, at least.

Originally Posted by stars1010

Yeah I think a USB would work.

And personally, I’m not worried about the detailed audio quality. I have some moderate hearing loss from my childhood, so I turned up it all sounds the same to me.

Ya know, if flipping through 300 songs on an LCD is too much to search through while driving, you could always have a voice control system. The one on my phone didn’t have to be programmed and is accurate more than 80% of the time.

Originally Posted by Doug Harden

Until mp3 technology improves sound quality, I'll listen to my CD's thank you.

I realize that as a musician and someone who has their own recording studio, that I'm in the minority, but I HATE the sound losses associated with mp3's....even at 192 bit rates.

Now if I could save at least a wave file at full size, then maybe I'll convert....but just think of the hella' large HD required for that!

Originally Posted by muckz

One word - FLAC



It is taking off slowly, and the problem is that you won't be able to play it anywhere except your computer. For now.