Some of my music that I have is downloaded off the internet and stored on a flash drive. A freind of mine has a fm modulator that plugs into the cig lighter and you can plug in a flash drive or a sandisk memory card and play your music through a fm station. For those who haven't seen my center console yet, I made a custom switch panel in place of the cd holder. What I am looking to do now is to put another panel in place of the change holder. I know there are some stereo guys on here, and my question is for you. What I want to do, is to put a usb plug into that panel, along with a amp kill switch for when I get a system. But what I want help on is the usb for now. I am going to look around to see if I can find anything, but does anyone know if there is something I can plug into the rca's of my deck and route to the inside of the center console, then run a usb plug to the panel so I can plug my flash drive into and play my music through my stereo. Maybe possibly even show the title of the song that is playing on my stereo. If not, then I am going to rerout the wiring for a cig lighter to the center console and buy a cig lighter fm modulator. Any help is welcome and I thank you in advance.

 

ive never seen a usb/rca adapter... id say get one of the modulators and plug it in and wire it under the console and run a usb extension to your switchplate. i dont know if you will be able to see the song title or not...

unless you already have subs and amp in mind, i have 2 12" subs with an enclosure and an amp that im trying to sell.

 

also keep in mind that the quality of the file is going to be crap unless it is lossless.

 

after googling "usb rca adapter" and following a few links through a few more website, i found THIS. its kind of expensive but i think it would sound a lot better than an fm modulator. it looks like it has a usb male connected to rca in and rca out. i think you could just cut off the usb male end in splice on the female end and run that through the center console to the switches you have and then plug it in there. you could also buy a new headunit. i have seen quite a few that have usb ports built in

 

I would like for you to explain how the *average* human ear can hear the difference between 192kpbs MP3 or 320kbps MP3 and lossless files on the *average* car or home stereo system. If you are working from digital files, losses are already there.

 

well from my experience, ive noticed that,regardless of bitrate or filetype,anything sounds bad on an fm modulator. but i live withlots of traffic and lots of powerlines and an enormous amount of interference so that could also be the reason

 

FM modulators bite... Might as well listen to the radio, lol, that's the quality of sound you get... Well, actually, most real radio stations are better quality anyway...


I know they sell decks that have USB ports built in to them... My brother has one, and you can stick a USB stick in there, or an external USB harddrive, and all the titles and such show up with no problems or issues... I'll go find out the model brand and model number if you want...

There's not really anything for converting USB to RCA as per-say, because you have to power the USB device, and transfer the information and such...

The thing thatotnietdehoooo found is more of a USB soundcard than anything else...

You'll have to run 5 volt power to the flash drive for it to turn on, then you'll have to design a circuit board that'll decode the data transferred from the device... All in all... Not an easy task by any means, lol.

 

lol i didnt realize that there was no power source on that thing... from some of the few webpages i went through to find that thing, most people said its not very easy to do b/c usb is a digital protocol and its quite difficult to convert it to an analog signal.

i really wish my deck had the usb port... back when i bought mine, they were just coming out and they were a little too expensive.

 

The USB decks are a lot more affordable now. I have a Clarion DXZ775USB that i picked up for $350 and there are two sub-models that have USB ports. The thing i love about this deck is that it playsWindow's Media files via flash drive (doesn't do USB MP3 players) So no more skipping scratched CD's for me! There are add ons for i-Pod, Sirius, XM satellite and Bluetooth for hands free cell phone calls.

 

can you control which songs it plays, through the headunit? i bought an adapter so i can hook up anything with a 3.5mm output to my headunit but it doesnt allow me to control songs and skip through. i have to use my zen to select song and fast-forward which seems a little dangerous to me