Aux Input

There is nothing fancy about an auxillary input for your car audio system. It's the simple input jack that allows all MP3 players to be connected. My car audio system didn't have it till now. When I first bought my car audio system to replace the one that came by default, I chose the JVC KD-G720. I chose it because it could play MP3/WMA files on a CD and through a USB input.

The USB input is great. I can connect a USB flash drive and it can play any song that is present on the drive. It can navigate folders and it even works with a 30GB external hard disk with a USB connection, although the advertised compatibility is only 1 GB.

This is all fine and dandy but I kept having to partition the hard drive on my Creative Zen Vision W into two parts. One partition for songs to play through the earphones and the other for playing via the USB connection on my car audio system. Essentially, I was duplicating content. Not an ideal solution at all.

I feel that the aux input, as it is called, a simple 3.5 mm stereo jack should be default on all car audio systems. For some reason it's not and I had to go ahead and purchase a special adapter (JVC KS-U58) to get that.

Installing it was fun though. I had to remove the dashboard fascia in my 2006 Hyundai Elantra and had to do some arm and finger contortions to get it done properly. The instructions from here and here helped tremendously. Moreover, the installation manual for the car audio system was invaluable.