I miss those days

Technology Connections' video on the topic:

Spoiler, they're incredibly simple and quite clever.

And this meant that car audio systems with a cassette slot were more future proof than car audio systems with only a cd slot.

Aux cable is the pinnacle of car audio sharing technology.
- Bluetooth is nice too since you can use the media controls on the steering wheel. In case your mix contains tracks which aren't fire. Ok I see where I made the mistake. Aux is sufficient.
Just have a cd player that can play mp3 cds, over 100 songs per cd EZ
- or push down an Aux Cassette, plug in your iPod/Walkman/Smartphone and listen to everything you could imagine.
- I'm kinda/sorta there now. The factory media console in my car "understands" mp3 files on a USB flash drive. Why Nissan decided to go with the most cursed UI/UX imaginable to navigate this is beyond me. It's practically useless. I would love to slap in a 1990's vintage Pioneer head unit - with mp3 capability - and call it a day.

I had one that turned 1/8" into it's own radio frequency. It was really shitty but it worked!

Edit: just looked and they still sell them! https://www.amazon.com/Transmitter-Adapter-Built-iPhone-Players/dp/B076X3GSMH

I built one myself!
~~Probably~~ definitely way more powerful than the legal limit, practically making it a pirate radio station...
- I built one, but by that time our local FM radio waves were so saturated that there was no good frequency to use.
- Kewl
  U need help? I did one myself with icecast and shit

They make these things with bluetooth now believe it or not.

Pair the tape

Stick it in a cassette player

Play music on your phone.

Pair the tape
I can't even, why is this so funny?(◕‿◕')
How does that work from the fake cassette to the player? Does the fake cassette record what's streaming to it to a loop of tape and let the player pick up the audio?
- adjusts 🤓 glasses
  So a cassette tape works by using electromagnetism. Ferric Oxide (AKA, literally rust powder) has a property that if exposed to a magnetic field, it will create a weak version of that magnetic field within itself
  So the record head of a tape machine is an electromagnet that changes its field based on the actual audio signal, translating audio frequencies directly to magnetic directions and strengths, while the read head is a passive electromagnetic coil that picks up that weak magnetic field on the rust-coated plastic tape while a small motor runs the tape past it and emits it as a soundwave.
  The tape adapter skips 90% of these steps —
  — It just has an electromagnetic coil of its own, positioned so it lines up with the play head, and when you feed it an audio signal, that audio signal gets directly translated to a magnetic field just by running it through the coil. The tape deck picks it up and doesn't even realise there is no tape running through
God damn it. Another thing I have to charge.
- I think they might use AAAs
  Down to you if that's worse or better.
- I feel like this could work using a tiny generator attached to the drive's motorized wheel, but that's probably too complex to be cost-effective for something like this unfortunately.

Grandma, what's an iPod?

scuttles out of the sewer
my linux phone had an FM transmitter so I could just override any station with my jams
scuttles back into sewer

I had an adapter like that from aliexpress because my car didn't have bluetooth.
What phone do you have? That's an interesting feature like IR blasters
- This little badboy had IR blasters too!

Those were great. They did a job for everyone that couldn’t afford the latest tech in the car. Now you’re lucky to get a head unit with an Aux plug, much less a CD player.

I drive a 2001 which luckily came with a CD player that was wired to use a 6-disc changer mounted in the trunk. For $50 I got an adapter cable that tricks the unit into thinking my aux device is the 6-disc changer. This worked great until I got my latest phone which doesn't have a fucking headphone jack. I bought an adapter but the top volume level is pitifully low, so I'm back to burning CDs to play in my car.
- I bought an adapter but the top volume level is pitifully low, so I'm back to burning CDs to play in my car.
  This is odd, because the voltage levels should be somewhat normalized across the USB-C adapter and your old headphone jack. It may be an issue with your adapter having a shitty DAC. Basically, the adapter has to take the digital audio signal, and convert it to analog. Cheaper adapters will use cheap digital-analog converters (DACs) which will either output lower levels, or will tend to change the signal as volume increases.
  It’s also possible that it is purely an analog converter, in which case your phone is actually using its internal DAC. There are benefits and drawbacks to this, but it’s possible that your phone is software-limiting its internal DAC’s power output to avoid burning out from a bad connection.

If the car was old enough you could plug a cassette adapter into an 8 track adapter.

Plug... plug it into a zune
- I actually had a Zune. They were pretty nice as far as MP3 players go.

I had one of those too. I don't miss it at all, though, because the sound quality was dogshit. Now get off my lawn, damn kids!

Strange. The quality should be about the best a cassette or aux cable could deliver. They are basically just two electromagnets controlled by the audiosignal.
They are so simple there isn't a lot to do badly.
- Yeah it's cassette quality. That's what I'm talking about. It wasn't anywhere near the quality of a direct AUX connection.

Mmmm... did somebody say pudding?

I loved these things. Never understood how they worked (still don’t) but I didn’t care!

Technology Connections has covered how they work.
https://youtu.be/dH4n8fUjtLQ
- Technology Connections is going to turn into the XKCD of explainer videos.