Hey all,
I'm looking for a possible solution to this problem: I want an mp3 player while keeping my stock stereo. I want to keep the factory look of the car, meaning i don't want to install a pioneer 7500MP (which i already have.. so I could.. but it would look ghetto next to all the other nice stuff).

Alternatives I've tried:

FM Transmitter: I bought a cheap 20 dollar FM transmitter that is suppose to transmit the signal from a headphone jack to your stereo. I then bought an mp3 portable cd player and plugged it in. Frankly, the quality HORRIBLE. Now if anyone has true experience with these things and can tell me one that will come in *at least* as good as the normal radio would sound (like the big stations) then I'm game.

Cassette deck adapter. Once again, there is this annoying hissing noise the whole time I'm playing it through the tape deck, and it's not gonna work if I wanna go down the road with the radio cranked up.

END of solutions tried :P

Now the solution doesn't necessarily have to be the portable mp3 player, it's just something I already had, so I tried it. So PLEASE if anyone has any suggestions on how to get an mp3 player to play with great quality on this stock deck, let me know.

What sucks even more is that when the guy sold me the car; he told me it had an mp3 player in it... so I burned the CD and went out and tried to play it... not cool .

Later, and thanks!

 

One possible solution to your problem is a product called the PhatBox made by PhatNoise (http://www.phatnoise.com). It might be more money than you want to spend but I recently met someone in the St. Louis area that had it installed. It sounded good and works through your stock head unit with the cd player controls. If you have the Sat prewire than you could use that connection. I don't have all the details but I can try to get them for you if you're interested.

6MT Coupe / Diamond Graphite / Graphite
Aero / Premium / Splash Guards / Trunk Mat
3M Clear Bra

 

The tape adapter should work without a hiss. Try using the headphone jack instead of the line out jack on your MP3 player and upping the player's output volume a bit -- not too much or the car's amp will distort the signal if it's too high. There should be a sweet spot between hiss and distorted that works well.

2003.5 G35 Sedan Desert Platinum/Graphite Premium/Sport/Aero/Nav/Winter

 

hey tik,
THANKS! that's exactly what I needed. It is rather expensive, but definately worth it in my opinion. Do you know if the guy that had it also had his sat button working? Btw, I'll PM you my email address if you can get me any additional installation instructions from that guy or whatever. Thanks again guys!

 

So if this Phat Box can use the SAT or whatever to get the sound to the HU, why cant we get some sort of adapter that would allow us to use our MP3 players directly? Isn't it as simple as SAT plug to RCA jack? Maybe we should contact Phat Noise and see if they'd be willing to just sell us the plug/adapter.

 

AFAIK, there is NO phatnoise "adapter" that plugs into the sat harness. Its made to plug directly into the back of the head unit. The people who have it installed through the sat harness rigged the wires themselves.

03 6MT coupe, red/willow, premium, aero, splash guards, alum pedals, clear corners, 15% tint

 

I see they list G35, but how does the PhatBox work with the "CD changer" controls, since our receivers have an internal CD player?

 

Redwillow is correct. There are no instructions or support for the PhatBox to be hooked up through the Sat wires. But it can be done, you just won't get any help from Infniti or PhatNoise.

I don't know exactly how it works, but I saw it working. As far as I know you can set up playlists or albums and use the buttons to skip playlists or skip within a playlist to the next song. As you do so the name of the artist and song is spoken by the PhatBox.

6MT Coupe / Diamond Graphite / Graphite
Aero / Premium / Splash Guards / Trunk Mat
3M Clear Bra

 

djrob: it tricks out the head unit to think it is just playing a CD. There is complete demo and info on the phatnoise website.

I was looking at the phatbox unit, but at over $800 bucks and having to wire/install it myself... its pretty expensive. I think i'm gonna wait for the price to come down or something else to come out.

03 6MT coupe, red/willow, premium, aero, splash guards, alum pedals, clear corners, 15% tint

 

why don't we approach this differnetly... he he he. goto the salesmen that sold you the mp3 player and state that the main reason you wanted to knwo this is because the stereo isn't removable and easy to retrofit another aftermarket unit (which it is unless you spend $$ on the jdm dash). Present the option to them that you can have a phatbox perform the same functionality and have them either pay for it or pay a chunk for it. Maybe even write a letter to infiniti corp!

04' G35 / 6MT / Tein Basic Coilovers
Volk 19" GT-7 Gunmetal

 

I understand that it makes the head unit think it's talking to a CD changer, but our G's have built in CD changers that can't be disconnected. So how does it differentiate between this "external" changer and the internal one? Searching around the forums it seems people have gotten it to work by going into the unit's setup mode or something. Very interesting for sure. To me $800 for such a beast isn't all that bad (an iPod is over $300 for a mass marketed mp3 player) ... but i'd be much more quick to bite if it came down another hundred or two.

 

dude, i have no idea technically HOW it works.... but it does. Thats a question for the Phatbox people.
Check the orig message i read on it here:

http://forums.freshalloy.com/ubbthre...rt=&PHPSESSID=

03 6MT coupe, red/willow, premium, aero, splash guards, alum pedals, clear corners, 15% tint