[joojoo2915]

I wanted to use an mp3 player to go straight digital to my car cd player that has a coax digital input. During my research I saw a lot of interest on the head-fi forums for digital out from mp3 players so I thought I would share. The only dedicated mp3 players to come from the factory with digital out appear to be the Iriver h120 and h140 which have been discontinued for several years and are expensive to purchase on the second-hand market. There are a couple of more fully featured DAPs that have digital out but they are a lot less portable. There are a couple of ipod docks that do straight digital but they are very expensive -
 
Wadia 170i - $370
iLink Portable Music Server - $1999
Onkyo ND-S1 - $200 to $300 and not available in US
Cypher Labs AlgoRhythm - $579. 
 
Since I wouldn't have a network available in my car using airplay to an AppleTV was out. My saving grace came from a little known feature of the Apple Airport Express which, in fact, comes with a mini-headphone, optical combination port.
 
My setup is as follows: iPod Touch 3rd Gen -> Airplay to Airport Express -> Optical to Coax converter -> CD Player.
 
Total bill:
Airport Express (used) - $74
Duracell Power Inverter - $29.95
Stupid mini-optical to toslink cable - $8.49
Optical to Coax converter - $16.99
Total: $129.43
 
Overall I am very pleased with the results. My iPod doesn't have to be plugged in to anything and it works great from all areas of the car. The only downside is that the router takes approximately 1 minute to boot, if anyone has any suggestions about shortening that time I would be extremely grateful. Granted, it's not ideal, but it appears to be the cheapest method, by far, for getting a digital signal from your ipod.

 

[Brent Hutto]

That's a cool hack and thanks for the report. With no disrespect intended I've got to say it would awfully hard to hear the difference between the DAC in your car stereo and the DAC in an iPod whilst in a car driving down the road. I can barely hear the difference between Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan at 70mph in my Civic...

 

[joojoo2915]

 
 
Quote:

That's a cool hack and thanks for the report. With no disrespect intended I've got to say it would awfully hard to hear the difference between the DAC in your car stereo and the DAC in an iPod whilst in a car driving down the road. I can barely hear the difference between Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan at 70mph in my Civic...

 
I absolutely agree. In fact I would argue that if a DAC is working correctly you probably shouldn't be able to hear the difference between DACs at all. There wasn't a whole lot of logic behind my decision, I just thought that since I had spent so much on my car audio system up to this point that it would be a shame to go analog if I didn't have to. Plus cars are electrically very noisy, so I at least avoided some emf induction if nothing else.