How to Play an Ipod on a Home Audio System

Connect a portable MP3 Player at Home to Enjoy the Music on Speakers

Oct 16, 2008

There are several options to connect an Ipod to a home stereo, ranging from cheap to the awesomely expensive. Each has their place, depending on performance needs.

Listening on earbuds is great on the move, but at home it is nice to be able to listen on the home stereo in the living room with family and friends, rather than isolated. The great features of the Ipod to hold all of a collection and play any song at whim are just as welcome at home as well as on the train. Here is a collection of ways to wire an Ipod to the hifi, starting with the cheap and cheerful.

Ipod Adapter Cable (less than $5)

Any MP3 player can be connected to a home audio system by using a line level input on the amplifier/receiver. This is usually labelled the AUX input, usually on the back as a separate pair of round phono inputs, one for the left channel and on for the right.

A standard 3.5mm stereo jack to separate left and right phono cable is all that is needed – plug the 3.5mm jack into the headphone socket, adjust the ipod volume to about halfway up and plug the other end into the socket on the amplifier.

It is worth turning the amplifier volume right down while connecting the Ipod, else there may be some strange buzzes and hums from the speakers as the connectors mate. Ensure left and right are the right way round; or else the stereo image will be reversed, though no harm will be done to either Ipod or amplifier.

Connect to a HiFi system with an Ipod Line Out Dock (from about $20)

The multiway connector at the bottom of the Ipod carries a fixed line level signal, and a line out dock can be used to quickly connect this to the hifi. The advantage of this is that the volume level from the Ipod is always the same regardless of the last headphone volume used. Examples of this sort of product include SendStation PocketDock, iBasso Line Out Dock Adaptor for iPod and IPone, Logic3 iPod adaptor cables, RussAndrews GQ-24 cables, and ALO iPod cables.

Ipod Remote Control Dock (about $50)

The adapter cable is functional and cheap, but loses one of the advantages of the Ipod – the ease of selecting tracks. It does not recharge the ipod either. It would be nice to have the Ipod to hand or to be able to control it remotely, and the simplest is an Ipod dock with remote control functionality. This is a step up on the simple Ipod line-out dock, though the audio functionality is the same as a line-out dock. It keeps the advantage on the simple adaptor cable in that volume is not dependent on headphone level.

Provided that the Ipod display is still visible from the listening position this solves the control requirement and charges the Ipod. It also allows the adapter cable to be connected to the dock rather than the ipod, which reduces the strain on the fragile headphone socket of the player.

Wireless Audio (about $40-$80)

Another way is to have the Ipod in the hand, just as it is when travelling, but to send the audio wirelessly to the home stereo. There are two solutions for this – one is to use an FM adapter similar to the type of device used in cars, and using the home audio system’s existing FM tuner.

While this is cheap and works well enough in cars where there is plenty of background noise, it is usually disappointing on a home audio system due to the hiss of the FM link. A better solution is something like the Logitech Wireless Music System which is a Bluetooth link from a transmitter that plugs into the Ipod and a receiver which connects to the home stereo AUX input. The Bluetooth link is hiss-free and offers good sound.

The Audiophile Solution – 1 ($400)

All of these methods take the analogue output of the Ipod, and there is no escaping the fact that while the Ipod sounds fantastic on earbuds, the compromises that need to be made to make a reasonable battery life are not ones that would be made on a top class audio product. So even if music is stored using lossless compression transferred from CDs, the audio quality is not necessarily as good as that from a top-flight CD player.

There is no standard digital output on the Ipod. Apple restrict this so that they can charge a premium license for a digital connection. This hamstrings the possibility of getting excellent quality audio from the device. However, for a premium it can be done - the Wadia 170 iTransport transfers the audio digitally from the Ipod, presenting it as a regular SPDIF. The analog output is a pass-through of the Ipod audio from the Ipod's DAC, so this product should be used in digital mode into a suitable outboard DAC to get the higher quality. In pass-through mode it is an expensive line-out dock.

The Audiophile Solution – 2

A better high-end solution would be to use a home music server such as Sonos or Logitech’s Slimserver, which holds a library of CDs in an uncompressed or losslessly compressed format. Pointing Itunes at the same music store allows it to transfer the library of music to the Ipod, in a suitably compressed format for the lower quality requirements of music on the move.

Using the music server addresses the higher quality needs of listening at home. This is probably a much more cost-effective way to use the $2000 for the MSB Digital Link mentioned above. However, it will not work properly for songs bought from Itunes, because once again Apple’s DRM gets in the way of the customer’s freedom to listen to their music how they want.

A separate music server keeps the music in an open format that can be backed up, which is another advantage given the effort involved in ripping a large CD collection, and preserves a higher quality than tracks sourced from Itunes.

References

The copyright of the article How to Play an Ipod on a Home Audio System in Mobile Audio Devices is owned by Richard Mudhar. Permission to republish How to Play an Ipod on a Home Audio System in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.