Have MP3 player? Wish you could connect it to your car’s stereo system?

Unfortunately, most head units are not mobile device-friendly. But I found a device that might help. Well, okay, it isn’t exactly as much a device as it is a new head unit, but see if it makes sense to consider this.

There are typically three ways by which you could connect your beloved iPod (or Creative? or generic MP3 USB device?) to your car. The first is for you to check if your head unit comes with a provision for connecting an Auxiliary In adapter. If so, good luck in finding the adapter.

The second way is sheer ugliness: get one of those cheap cassette adapters that you slip into your head unit’s cassette slot, its long tail of an auxiliary wire snaking out of the slot like an unwanted tapeworm (is there any other kind?), to be plugged into your mobile device’s headphone jack. Not a pretty picture, and the sound, trust me, is baaad.

Third way would be to get an RF modulator, which is a doodad that transmits your music into an FM radio station channel. You sacrifice some clarity in the process of compressing your music to fit FM limitations, but this seems to serve the purpose for the average listener.

Well, here’s the fourth way: buy a new head unit. And I’m not talking about you suddenly up and spending a fortune just to get your MP3 player into your car. I’m talking about a cheap head unit that actually makes it easy for you to connect mobile audio.

The irony of it all is that the unit comes from ProLine, a brand that’s more known for dirt-cheap car audio rather than cutting-edge tech. And yet they are probably among the first in the market to come out with a head unit that actually comes with a CD In jack right there on the face plate where it’s most accessible! (Why didn’t Alpine think of that before?)

And here’s the clincher: the unit, the Proline GBX3210EQ, is only Php 1,850 at Phasetron in Park Square 1, Glorietta Center, Makati City. That’s practically impulse-item priced for people desperate to get their iPods into their cars! (There’s a cheaper model with CD In as well but, with its manual radio tuning knob, it looked too, uh, cheap even for budget gadgeteers to consider!)

Of course this solution won’t be for everybody. Audio snobs would shirk at the thought of putting something named ProLine into their vehicles. And yet if you don’t give a flying fig about terms such as dynamic range, distortion and channel separation, who cares? Here’s one quick and dirty car audio solution for the MP3 player-toting set!