the I of the radio

I never thought I'd start accessorizing my iPod mini this soon, but I picked up a Griffin iTrip mini on the weekend to put the equivalent of about 100 albums worth of music to use in my car.

Including a CD player in every car was probably a pretty good idea seven years ago, but that was before portable music playing devices became fashionable again. Remember those tape deck adapters you had to use just so you could enjoy your favorite CDs instead of hastily creating a bunch of mix tapes? Now in most cars you don't have access to a tape deck, and so the FM transmitter becomes the solution.

I was always curious as to how these things work, and in true Apple-styled simplicity, you don't have to do anything beyond plugging the transmitter into the top of the iPod mini to get it going. When you press play the iTrip will automatically begin broadcasting to a station at the bottom of the FM dial, which in most areas will probably contain static. Tuning your radio to this station will begin the flow of your personalized playlist. Though in Toronto this can be somewhat challenging; I've found that almost every station on the FM dial contains something - even if it's just a partial signal from a neighboring frequency.

For those that want to avoid these problems, you can upload a series of short MP3 files that contain "frequencies" that the iTrip will recognize and begin broadcasting to when selected from a standard playlist. It's rather ingenious and completely easy to set up. According to the user guide, volume on the iPod is also important: set it too low and you won't get a clear signal, set it too high and the sound will be severely distorted. I was able to tweak these settings a bit in the car before leaving for work this morning and managed to get a pretty decent sound going through and out of the city.

For accessibility and strength of signal, my iPod was positioned in the cup holder at the front of my car. I noticed that in quieter or acoustic songs the static of the radio station will bleed through, becoming distracting at some points. Furthermore, despite having felt confident in the iPod and car stereo volume settings, the sound felt lighter, and almost blurrier than if I had been hearing it directly from the CD or a regular FM radio station.

The iTrip simply uses the iPod's battery for power. There's no noticable difference in consumption compared to listening to it normally through headphones. The price point is the same for both the regular iPod and the mini: roughly $60 CDN. Considering the software is freely available you're really only buying the transmitter itself. It seems fairly sturdy, and I like how the mini version matches the form of the device, but the overall quality of signal output leaves a lot to be desired. I know I will get a lot of use out of this device from simple convenience, but the technology seems very crude to be of any interest to those wanting to preserve the fidelity of their MP3 encoded music. Instead the iTrip seems limited to gadget status: something you'll love to show off while secretly cursing its wasted potential.

so cold in this house