Today, April 11, is National 8-Track Day. The short-lived audio format (so short-lived we apparently don’t even have a photo of one) was once the latest and greatest way to pump tunes out of your car. Nowadays, with most audio content on digital formats — most of us don’t even own 8-tracks, cassette tapes, or CDs any more — that older cars could’ve never predicted, how do you listen to your music (or streaming or podcasts or whatever) while driving?
How do you listen to audio content in your car?
The best comment by next Monday will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “What’s your favorite 4×4 vehicle?”
Well, your list of favorite 4×4 vehicles was certainly eclectic. You offered oddball choices like Steve with his Mazda 323 GTX, or Jim Daniels with his Sienna AWD, something we’d completely forgotten that Toyota made. Even when real SUVs were chosen, you chose the road less traveled, as in Negishi no Keibajo‘s Suzuki Samurai, f31roger‘s Isuzu VehiCross, or Shaun‘s Isuzu Bighorn. Kevin H. did go with a more tried and true 4Runner and fuel10922 po FJ Cruiser, but stalwarts like the Land Cruiser and Pajero were never mentioned. In a roster of atypical answers, however, the strangest was by far kyushanerd‘s:
I really like the Subaru Justy J10. My father had a 1990 Justy and he said you could drive it everywhere. He literally drove it on an unused rally stage in the snow, because the road was blocked. also the Japanese commercial was great.
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
For several years now, I only listen to my own music on USB-sticks. I’m fed up with those horriblke DJ’s!
Since i’ve been raised in CompactCassette era i love this format. It suits car perfectly. It’s imune to road bumps, sturdy, the tape is protected inside the cassette. And that’s why i’m always trying to have a cassette player in my car. I’m still compleating my own mixtapes with my favorite tunes…
Only for longer trips i use a cassette adapter with 3,5mm jack plug to connect to my phone.
In my daily Aristo i do have a 6CD Changer, and it works pretty fine, but sound from a worn megnetic tape is just that what i like to hear in car, beside the howl of 2JZ under the hood 😉
The whole sound system is totally stock – Lexus Premium Sound System with 6 speakers + sub. I’m no audiophile, but to me it sounds great, given the fact that the car is from 1998 😉
In my classic Daihastu i’ve been thru many options for car- audio. For some time i’ve built my ultimate OEM+ style system on Clarion components, starting from base radio-recivers straight from Daihatsu’s brochure’s from 1991 all the way up to standalone deck with lifetd front, two amps’ per 4 channels, 6 speakers, DSP processor, CD changer and equalizer. But when the car became more race-oriented i’ve simplified the system and went back to my favorite audio gear brand: Fisher. Now we have a simple cassette player, 2-channel amp, 4 Sanyo speakers (two in rear doors, in place of ashtrays, and two 3-way columns under rear glass.
Well, I don’t really. Back when I purchased my brand new ’88 CRX SI I purposely didn’t get a radio in it because having any audio in your vehicle was an invitation to being broken into in the areas I worked at the time. Ask me how I know. So going for several years without tunes in the car broke me of the habit of listening, even after I moved to a much safer place.
Now I have an Accord Coupe that of course has a fairly good audio system from the factory. I have a couple CDs in the car, that I rarely listen to, and if I want some aural accompaniment I turn on the radio, but mostly I’d rather hear the wonderful sounds of that sweet V6 up front.
Still listen to CD’s, our 2015 Versa has the CD player and there are still lots of “record stores” in my part of town.
I’ve switched fully to Spotify for my driving music. In my Legacy I have an aux jack and I got a USB to aux bluetooth receiver. I had an aux jack installed in my GTO’s original Blaupunkt stereo and I did another bluetooth received there. And I installed a modern head unit in the glovebox of my ’67 Impala which has bluetooth built in so I use my phone for everything. I hope to soon own a car with built-in bluetooth, just need to find one priced reasonably, so maybe in 2 years.
All that said, I have started to get very worried about the future of music listening. As everyone switches over to streaming services more and more people are getting rid of their music collection or not acquiring/buying new music. Well, what happens when the streaming services all either go away or jack up prices? This has made me go on a buying spree for CDs of my favorite bands and the best albums that listen to. This will ensure that I forever have the right to listen to the music I love.
I have a Bluetooth attachment in the cigarette lighter plug. Mine’s an 2000 Honda Accord. I absolutely love it. Even after my catalytic converter was stolen a few days ago lol. Sounded like a makeshift hemi for a day & I did a rudimentary fix since I can’t afford another right now but.. The Bluetooth keeps up well. Even with a little more noise under the car, I haven’t had to raise the audio.
I make sure the distracting radio is off and run to the redline. Plenty of audio content there.
He who is in the driver’s seat chooses the music.
I’ve achieved my live goal: Iam mentioned in a JNC article.
I rarely turn the “audio device” on anymore. I enjoy the tranquility of just the hum from the journey with 4 wheels underneath me. So I got that going for me
FM Bluetooth transmitter and set it to a good FM station. The cell phone is hooked up to a CD phone mount and I run tunes off Apple CarPlay mostly Spotify. It sounds great in the Miata NB2.
in the car, radio is off or playing classical – or just car sounds – i like car sounds Growing up, my dad had albums of races – literally, i used to put the 12″ LP called “the big sounds of the drags” on and listen to the announcers talk about the car you were about to hear. All recorded live from (i think) Pomona in 1964…
Sony transistor AM radio. JDM audio. Pre-dates 8 track.
I have a 10 CD changer in the trunk of my 97J30t. I have never used it.
AM radio! The only appropriate way to listen in a classic car!
I only have the original radio in my 1976 Datsun 280z.
Depends on which of my cars we’re talking about, but my favorite audio setup is in my A70 Supra. I built it for cross-country road trips, and equipped it with a Sony double-DIN touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto hooked up to the factory optional top of the line audio system.
The 70 Supra was a technological tour de force when it came out, and having the latest in-car entertainment still fits with the character of the car.
Last September I took it on a road trip with my dad from Wisconsin, through the Badlands, Yellowstone, Seattle, Whidbey Island, the Olympic peninsula, Portland, San Francisco, Carmel, and finally home to LA.
On that 3600-mile trip (a shakedown after its resto-modding) it was so nice to have things like navigation, streaming internet radio, podcasts, audio books, gas price and weather predictions, and bluetooth phone calls all at the tips of my fingertips. With the cars freshened mechanicals, and new coilovers (set to soft), grand touring tires, and working AC, it was like driving a fully modern GT car.
It’s a stark contrast to my AE86 and S13 where the ancient CD players barely drown out the rattles (and occasional parts jettisoning themselves), or my S30 where the only in-car entertainment is hearing yourself sing because the old tape deck is just for decoration.
I hope you have documented that trip somewhere. Sounds epic!
My M30s… they don’t have radio or CD players… nothing.
I play on my phone… but most of the time, I just drive and think.
I roll down the windows (manually, natch), drop down a gear or two, and pin the throttle to the carpet. Four throttles honking to 8400 rippums a few inches behind your head is a hell of a drug.
I have an elaborate, late 1990’s, JDM double-din Pioneer deck with a motorized face and CD/cassette but that’s just for show. AW11s don’t have much space for speakers, which is totally cool with me.
Very, very occasionally I’ll plug my iPhone to the aux input, but 99% of the time, nothing. Just White Line Zen.
When I first purchased my 1994 Isuzu Amigo back in 2016 one of the first mods I did was replace the dated aftermarket headunit with a new Kenwood so I could easily connect to Spotify. But as I spent more time behind the wheel of this neglected 20+ year old convertible SUV I realized there’s practically nothing it did better than my daily driver 2001 Subaru Forester.
So if the purpose of the Amigo is be a fun gimmick car, I wanted to lean into it. One trip to Pick-n-Pull later and I snagged a factory tape deck from a late 90’s Isuzu Rodeo and now, not only does the top leak, the suspension creak, but the tape deck also squeaks when I take her out.
I don’t really.
Winnie the Pooh famously said (note: origin disputed) ‘Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits’; that pretty well sums up my driving.
I still listen to all my music through IPods. Because its just what im familiar with. I still use my very first one I got in the 7th grade. After working at a thrift store for many years I must have accumulated like 30 of them. My Ex-girlfriend used to call me “Baby Driver” because I would use different ones for different days of the week/ different genres/playlists/albums/whatever. Ive made it part of my bucket list to collect one of every single model of Pod there is. I have 5 more left to get. Gotta catch them all.
Also I recently got a new radio in my 80s honda; a pioneer 9600-something, because it was the only current gen single din unit that didn’t have a full color LCD or a calculator display. it has this 150×40 monochrome pixel display. I also color matched it to match the nuclear green color of my dashboard.
This was definitely a popular QotW.
My parents’ cars were all originally AM radio. Only when we got the old Ford Taurus did I lavish in the luxuries of “AM / FM / Cassette with four speakers.” The Taurus was my first car, and I was ready to make good use of that radio / tape player.
I had a stack of TDK 90min tapes that I used to record songs off the radio. I’d have that “record” button on standby as I wait for the mouthy DJ to finish talking and let me press “start.” I rocked those tapes so hard in high school, making sure I rewound them to the perfect song starting point as I was rolling into my high school vicinity.
In college I was assigned the ol’ Grand Voyager, and eventually got a hold of my friend’s old Sony tape deck. I was still rocking the tapes, as I was now recording MP3s onto the tapes to get full songs. The tape deck had a feature that recognized breaks in between songs, so it made for easier searching. I got a hold of the CD / cassette adapter, and started playing CDs from the Discman into the tape deck. My roommate had a CD burner, and that opened another world of song customization. CDs titled with “Slow Jamz Mix” or “Highway Pumpin” were constantly on playback rotation.
The format transitioned from audio CD to MP3 CD when I bought an Alpine CDE-9845 for my Miata. Having the audio CDs was still good, but just didn’t spoil me with a huge selection of music at my fingertips. The radio station was still good, but I had my preferences towards 90s music. I would still make my own audio mix CDs, as I felt it was more “personalized,” selecting a carefully-reviewed list of songs for this privileged blank CD to be burned with.
As the CDs started getting scratched, the sound output would skip or freeze, and I started playing music from an iPod. USB inputs started appearing and I started storing music on that medium. My current car has an SD slot as well, so I have been playing music off a little SD card. How times have changed.
HOWEVER, when I get into my old Prelude, or my old 300ZX, or even the old M3 (which I upgraded with a better TAPE deck), I will reach into the door map pocket and grab one of my mix tapes and relive the 1990s. Keep it real.
The fact is.. I don’t anymore.
Not after my old Pioneer headunit killed itself after turning up the volume a little bit while going past a bump on the road lol