| jerfo |
Folks,
After doing hours of research on the various iPod interfaces available for the MDX, I decided to take a chance on an Axxess Wire-Tunes unit. I haven't seen any significant mention of them on this site (or anywhere, really), so I wanted to give you guys a brief overview of how the installation went on my 2001 Touring (non-NAV) and how it works.
The installation process was nearly identical to the Blitzsafe installation wonderfully documented here . The only differences were:
1. I had much better luck prying out the plood with old credit cards than with a coat hanger. No matter how careful I tried to be with the coat hanger, I couldn't avoid tweaking and eventually damaging the vent.
2. I did not have a pre-existing opening under the CD tray in my MDX, so I needed to drill a small hole. This was a challenge, since the drilling angle was extremely awkward.
Aside from this, the installation was a relative breeze. There's a short cable that runs from the Wire-Tunes interface to the head unit, and a long cable that runs from the interface to the dock connector on the bottom of the iPod. (The longer cable has the look and feel of a genuine Apple cable.) Once everything is connected, you hit the CD button on the head unit twice (the display will read "CD1") to switch to the iPod audio. All iPod functions are controlled via the CD changer controls. Hitting "1" on the changer allows you to play all of the songs on the iPod, while numbers "2-6" correspond to playlists 1-5 on it. Some folks aren't too keen on this limitation, but it's not too bad if you can plan your playlists ahead of time.
The audio quality is fantastic, provided that you've encoded your audio at a high bitrate. It even sounded good through the lousy stock Bose system in my MDX.
There is a mysterious second connector on the Wire-Tunes interface. It appears to be an S-Video connector. The Wire-Tunes documentation and web site don't mention anything about it; in fact, it should be noted that the documentation is laughable (one flimsy piece of paper) and the web site is completely devoid of any substance whatsoever. There is a brief mention of an "optional" interface that will display track and artist information, so my guess is that you can hook this up to an S-Video capable monitor to either get a generic display of the current track and artist OR get the actual iPod display. While the former would be nice enough, the latter would actually be pretty exciting, as one could potentially use it to play slideshows and movies from a video iPod. If I ever have a monitor at my disposal, I'll try connecting it and let you know what happens.
The biggest reason that I went for this interface over all others was the price. I paid $41 plus shipping for mine on eBay, and probably could have spent less had I been patient. This is significantly cheaper than all of the other interfaces that I've encountered, but the functionality appears to be comparable to some of the more expensive units.
All in all, I can say that I'm genuinely impressed with this unit so far. It does what it's supposed to do and didn't break the bank.
Has anybody else tried one of these? If so, I'd like to hear your experiences (both good and bad) with it.
- Jerfo |
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