Are Nuvi directopns louder via your car stereo?

[TimLeunig]

I am thinking of buying a Nuvi 350. Some people in these forums (which are excellent - thanks to all you experienced people who are helping us newbies) say that the volume is not very loud. My car (Ford Mondeo 2005 basic model) has an AV in socket in the glovebox. If I run a wire from the Nuvi headphone socket to that socket, will the directions then come out of the car's speakers?
I also want to use the satnav as an MP3 player, as my old car had an 8 CD interchanger, which I miss on the new one. That is why I am thinking of buying the 350 rather than the TomTom One Europe, or the Nuvi 250. If you think I am mad to do that, just say!
THANK YOU
Tim Leunig.

[mikealder]

Welcome to the forum Tim. You can connect the Nuvi to the Ford via the Aux socket in the glovebox, if you need a cable have a look at your local Maplins store for the correct type and measure the length you need first see Here from time to time (depending on the car) you can experiance electrical interference, if this happens you might also want to try a ground loop issolator and relevent leads for connection, they are available from Here

The sound when played from the device through the car deck is very good, just load the mp3 tracks to an SD card and away you go, the nav sounds will pause the music issue the command then re-start the music all through the car deck, well worth the £6 (max) for the cable - Mike

[TimLeunig]

Dear Mike,

Wow, that was impressively quick, impressively detailed, and a perfect answer. If this were ebay I would give you ***** as a perfect person to deal with.

Even better, I walk past Maplin on my way to work every day, so I can pop in and pick one up.

Now I just have to find the cheapest 350 (which I think is the cheapest nuvi with full EU mapping - needed to find my best friend deep in the Brussels suburbs) online and I will be away. It looks as though it will be £230 well spent, one way and another.

Thank you once more - I do appreciate it.

Tim

[TimLeunig]

You have read the question and the advice, now time for the reality, namely: Mike's advice is spot on.

I bought a Nuvi 360T (£240 - Comet order online, pick up instore), and bought Mike's recommended lead (Maplin's shortest is more than long enough). I have been out driving this evening to test the different options.

The nuvi's built-in speaker is poor. The satnav voice ("Emily") is either very quiet or, if on max volume, horribly squarky. As an MP3 player it is truly awful. That gives you a problem if you like to drive to music: use your CD player and have Emily at medium volume and you will miss the instructions, have Emily at max volume, and suffer the squarks.

If you plug the nuvi into the av in socket, and have the CD on, then you get no instructions from the satnav - you need to set the car stereo to "AUX". Then the satnav works perfectly: clear, precise and any volume you want.

Of course, that means you don't have a cd player anymore, but the nuvi works as an MP3 player. I have never used one of these before, but even I managed to transfer two test tracks from a CD to my nuvi via CDex, (free download www.cdex.n3.net). Then tell the nuvi to play the MP3 files, and your music comes out of the car's speakers, and pauses when the satnav wants to give directions. I could not tell the difference between music from the MP3 player and the CD: the quality seemed the same.

For best results, set the nuvi's volume to max. Then the volume from the car stereo on sat nav is the same as from a CD, that is, if you listen to CDs at volume 6, you will find volume 6 a comfortable level for the sat nav. In contrast if you have the nuvi's volume at (say) half, you need the car stereo at 12 to get your usual volume - which will deafen you if you then stick a CD in!

The steering wheel volume controls work as normal, which is a bonus.

So if you are a Mondeo driver, pay £4.49 for a lead and route your nuvi via the car stereo - it means you get good quality speakers, more control over the volume, and the ability to listen to music and have it paused when the instructions come on. I am sure that this advice will broadly hold for all cars with av in sockets, and if I didn't have one I would investigate these new ipod/MP3 player radio transmitters to see if they would do the same thing.

Downsides
-The steering wheel seek button (which moves the CD up and down a track) has no effect.
-You end up with lots of wires: one from the nuvi to the glovebox - tediously the wire comes out the right hand side of the nuvi, not the left, plus the power cable and the radio aerial for traffic problem updates. So you car looks a bit of a mess, and it is more to put away each time so that people don't break in to try to steal you car.
-I got a dreadful hiss the first time. I pulled the av wire out at each end, and put it back in: it was then perfect. This may be the electrical interference Mike mentioned, but it went away - hopefully it will stay away (if it doesn't, I will return to this forum and let you know about it, and how I solved it).

Hope that this helps others - it was the least I could do after Mike's prompt and helpful response - thanks again Mike: if everyone in life was as helpful as you, life would be a better place.

Best wishes to everyone - Tim

[mikealder]

Glad to hear you are happy with the solution Tim.
If you want to reduce the wiring you could investigate an FM transmitter, however these do tend to suffer from bleed through of radio stations on adjacent frequencies meaning re-tuning as you progress the journey.

London area is very bad, in fact it is difficult to locate a spare channel to use a transmitter on.

As you have the Aux input on the car what you have done is the lowest cost option for connection to the stereo, but it is also the most effective in terms of value for money and quality.

I would imagine if you get an FM transmitter you will be disapointed in sound quality in comparison to the direct wired connection - Mike

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