Plug n Play Aux-in mod for 2005 6cd radios

Jazzy- You've eliminated the only thing that really bummed me out about my OBXT! Thanks for coming up with this invaluable mod. Installation was a cinch. I just took all the CD's out of my car (except for the silent CD) and now have to come up with a clever way to mount the 'pod on the dash.

You rock, Jazzy!

Did you just use an RCA-to-mini adapter ala Radio Shack?

yes i did, along with many other adapters, splitters, gender changers, fuse holders, and a gli. since i was also wiring up my sirius radio as well

This solution is pretty sweet I have to say. I see that it's only for 05 and 06 models. I have an 03 OBW. Any idea if there is a similar solution? Thanks.

~edit~ BTW, you should visit us Outback owners over on subaruoutback.org Welcome to LegacyGT though.

Just a quick note on my experience, Jazzy sent me the ckt board promptly with everything stated he would include in the latest installment. This is no surprise. Just wanted to relate the issues I had. (Forgive me if this is already done but between work and night school I cant make it through 28 pages...)

1) When I affixed the board to the bottom of my changer, I pressed it into place using a nonconductive shim (read butterknife wrapped in electrical tape). In the process I bent two of the resistors to short off one another, beware of that if youre stupid enough to push on electrics blindly with a butterknife... Like me.

2) When inverting your cd player, cds can migrate loose of their track. If this happens when you plug your reassembled unit back in, it will be unable to count the discs and will not enable the cd player. Hitting the CDin gives you nothing and the disc positions dont light up on the head unit. A little panic followed by a smoke, followed by taking it back apart, I pushed the errant disc back on track. Next I powered up the unit and ejected all the discs. I recommend doing this with all the discs out.

3) I used a radio shack male stereo to twin female stereo splitter and 2 6' male to male patch cords because I already had them lying around. The result is the volume needs to be turned up a bit but still sounds amazingly clear at 30+ on the volume scale with my RioForgeSport set to 25.

Anyway, all errors were due to my own blundering and another +1 for excellent instructions.

Thanks a ton Jazzy!

Since I put in ym Jazzy mod it's all i've used! Today I decided to try good ol' FM radio on the way to work -- gotta get me weekly dose of Lex and Terry. Anyway, I lef the Sirius unit on thinking it would only play thru if CD was selcted.... WRONG! I thought it was impossible to get the Audio to bleed into the FM... but it was there, on all the channels, and I had the FM broadcast mode off on the Sirius unit. As soon as I turned it off... nothing but the normal FM stuff...

wierd.

Since I put in ym Jazzy mod it's all i've used! Today I decided to try good ol' FM radio on the way to work -- gotta get me weekly dose of Lex and Terry. Anyway, I lef the Sirius unit on thinking it would only play thru if CD was selcted.... WRONG! I thought it was impossible to get the Audio to bleed into the FM... but it was there, on all the channels, and I had the FM broadcast mode off on the Sirius unit. As soon as I turned it off... nothing but the normal FM stuff...

 

wierd.

Normal...

Normal...

+1

This is something I'm also eager to learn. The earliest out-of-country shipment I have on record left the US on Nov 22, so that's only 14 business days to today. I wouldn't expect customs to hold it longer than 2 weeks, but since I've only ever shipped one thing from canada here & it took forever (first class), I'm not so sure.

Ya ya, I'm working on it... (if it was to me that is). I got it about a week after it was shipped, or very slightly less, and there was no duty assessed (no extra charges/tax/whatever, I mean like $0 to pick it up at the post office!).

Actually, the problem is I'm not working on it at all, or it would be done by now what with the great instructions, but I will v soon, and I'll let you know in a post here. I don't expect that our radio is any different though, I don't foresee any problems.

Andy

Well, I'm glad to hear one made it through customs anyway. I was beginning to think I was sending boards into a black hole. I've got my fingers crossed & am eagerly awaiting news on your install.

FYI on general going-on's, I just ordered a huge number of parts to try & get ahead of the game some & keep on top of these orders (enough for more than 125 boards). The current price of the boards will be valid for orders thru the end of December, but the last week I'm "closing the shop" per say for the holidays so orders received 12/24 until 12/31 won't ship until the new year. I'll try and get a big stock of ready-to-ship units to get those orders out first thing 2006 though.

It has been hella crazy around here, mostly at my real job, but also holiday shopping & traveling so I haven't had any free time to start working on reverse engineering the radio. I also have not been able to locate a VDC stereo from a junkyard & am unwilling to plunk down $700 just for a bench setup, so I'll likely buy a standard 6CD & start working on it with that (probably not until January ).

Happy Holidays everyone.

I thought this was a great solution, and the instructions were a help even though I had previously torn into the radio before. I would recommend this to everyone!!

My one suggestion for Jazzy would be to use a much longer piece of flat-flex cable (like 6" or so) in order to allow a lot of slack between the jazzy-board and the radio-board connectors. This would allow more flexibility in mounting the board (I used double stick tape to keep it from floating arount) and would also make it easier to plug everything in. It will certainly add a few bucks ot the cost, but I think it would be worthwhile.

Craig

Just found this thread tonight and WOW jazzy! I am very impressed. I will require one of those kits please (now I just need to set up a dang paypal account...tomorrow morning). 2 questions though:

1. I'm curious, how many satisfied customers do you have up to now?

2. Do you still project the price of the gen. 2 to be around 250? I know that I would gladly pay 100 to get rid of the cd thing, but 250, that's a bit steep

Hello Jazzy,

It's not a good news for Europe Customer, we have not same radio , I deassembled my HU everything was good except the ribbon caming from radio , this ribbon has 22 wires and yours get 14 wires , so it's impossible to plug your aux in card . I am really sad about that news. And now we haven't any solutions except crappy FM mod. Even we get extra plug for cd-changer but as Mario said , it doesn't work. We must buy extra cd changer and simply hack audio in....

Sad news sad day.....

Anyone know if the CD player will play 80 minutes CDs with an 80 minute silent track?

-S

If you are like me, you get tired of having to remember to hit disk repeat to keep the silent track repeating. If you do forget, the CD changer switches CDs and you have to switch back to the silent CD (unwanted CD changer wear). Well, I have come up with something that might help.

I have created a CD with a 75 minute silent track and a 5 second tone track. When you start playing the CD (lets assume your forgot to press track repeat) and you listen to your aux device. After 75 minutes it will change to track 2. Since this track is a tone track, you hear a tone for 5 seconds (it is loud enough to over power the aux device music). It gets your attention and you just have to press track down 2 times. If you remember within 75 minutes to press track down once, great. If you don't remember, you have a tone telling you to press track down before your CD changer attempts to change CD. What do you think?

Here is what I did.

1. Installed Audacity 1.3 Beta (mentioned earlier in this thread by Jazzy).

2. Created a stereo track (Project drop down -> New Stereo Track)

3. Generate drop down -> Tone

3a. Change amplitude to 0.5

3b. Change length to 5 seconds.

4. File drop down -> Export as Wav.

5. Save to file name "Tone"

6. Created a stereo track (Project drop down -> New Stereo Track)

3. Generate drop down -> Silence

3a. Change length to 4500 seconds.

4. File drop down -> Export as Wav.

5. Save to file name "Silent"

Using your favorite CD burning software burn both of these tracks to an audio CD. Make sure you have "Silent" as your first track, and "Tone" as your second.

-S