For our family Christmas gift, we splurged and bought a new stereo head unit for my car that integrates with the iPod. Subarus have this unfortunate problem where there’s no easy way to upgrade the stereo, it doesn’t come with an aux input, and because it didn’t come with a tape deck we couldn’t use a tape adapter like we do in the Jetta. We’ve even tried FM transmitters, but something about where the antenna is in the car makes them not work very well. But Denis recently found a company that sells replacement panels for the dash and found a (relatively) inexpensive head unit which would work with the iPod. Denis hooked it up last night so we could listen to good music on our trip.
It sounds good. Really, really good. In fact, we listened to the iPod for six hours straight today. I’m not sure I like how the integration works, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. But it sounds great!
(We won’t go into the fact that 20 minutes into our trip we realized that there was hot air coming out of the vents no matter where the temperature control was set – the climate controls and the stereo head unit share a panel – and we had to turn around and go back home to fix it. Luckily, my brother has tricked out his car a bit and knew exactly what the problem was – I guess it’s happened to him before, too – and he happened to be at my parents’ house when we came home, so we were back on the road after not too much angst.)