Absouloot

Hey all.. Yea, I am new here and a 1-year owner of a 95 ES300, two tone White/gray. I have to say, it was the sweetest deal I picked up from a little old couple that never drove it hard and averaged only 6k miles a year.

Well, on to business… in trying not to be a noob, I read through most of the MP3 threads and it seems that everyone is quick to suggest a FM Modulators or a tape deck adapter, which neither seem to have good results. The FM Modulator that I am trying now is by CenDyne, Gruv X, which is great for ease of use however the sound quality is really poor. The tape adapter is also a problem; my tape deck doesn't seem to like it and keeps spitting it out after about 15 seconds.

So, here is my question, what is the signal from the CD changer in the trunk? If it's a standard signal back to the deck, couldn't I jack into that source and plug in my portable MP3 player in to it? Now if its a digital source, then I can see that this would not work, however I am thinking its a standard analog signal that is just waiting for me to tap into!!

Also, trying to simplify this, I figured that I would have to keep a disk playing in the changer just to keep the source active on the HU.

Thanks again for any suggestions! I have to admit I am enjoying these threads, I have found a few fixes to little problems and a lot of new projects that I want to try to take on!! However, first things first, I have to have my music!!!!

NVICTIS

I would imagine that you would have to "tap" into the actual cable that runs from the hu to the cd. I imagine that one could test this using just the wires that run from your head phones and the changer cable. I highly doubt this is a digital application, but I myself wouldn't bother with trying this. I say you save a little and buy a good quality aft/m unit and avoid possibly destroying your changer cable. One more thing, you will lose quality for the simple fact that mp3's are not high quality to begin with. You sacrifice s/q for amount of songs. This is why I recomend purchasing a new h/u. Im sure they have better quality components than a portible mp3 player. Just my two cents
good luck if you go through with it!!

Tom_ES300

That's not really true about mp3 quality. Sure, if you sample really low to get 1,000 songs on a single CD, the music will sound terrible. So don't do that. Set the sample rate up higher when you rip the CDs and in a car application (ie, with road noise, even in a Lexus!) you can't tell the difference between a CD and a mp3.

Otherwise, your plan sounds good. I'm very sure that we have to keep a dummy CD in the player to keep the HU fooled. Ask your local Lexus dealer for the wiring diagram to find out what wires to cut & re-route to the mp3 player output. I'm going to try it on my Lexus when it gets warmer.

Tom