A good use of the factory cassette player
 

Today I decided that I wanted to be able to connect an MP3 player to my X5 factory radio. I wanted something neat with no visible wire and a good sound quality. I wanted to keep my CD changer so I did not go for the Icelink solution. I thought about the FM modulator, tried it and did not like the sound quality. Since my X5 2000 radio unit was equiped with a cassette player which I do not use (the last tape I listened was more than 10 years ago) I decided to give the cassette adaptor solution a try. 15$ only the adaptor at Target was worth trying. Well, to my surprise the sound from my Rio player came out excellent. Much better than with the FM modulator and about the same as from a CD but I had to hide the wire. For that I removed the radio unit to pass the wire behind and then thru the central column up to the central column box where the player is now located. The only tricky part was to unsolder and solder the wires back inside the cassette adaptor. I had to do that because the jack would not pass thru the little intertices I needed it to go. No visible wire, a great sound and only 15$ spent. Now I have the mp3 played when I select TAPE. Sometime simple solutions work great.

Sounds like a great idea for folks with cassette players. Hope the sound is very good : )

The only drawback with this setup is that sometimes the cassette adaptors can be noisy when the wheels are spinning around the plastic as its` trying to turn the tape. I had one once and it drove me mad!

Right now there is no noise at all coming from the cassettes adaptor. I was a little bit suspicious about the sounds quality before testing it but the sound quality is great. As I said I do not hear much difference in quality between a CD from the CD changer and the MP3. Actually since the MP3 player comes with a good egalizer I can even twist the sound from the MP3 to make it better/deeper than the one from the CD.

I wonder if, as the tape heads wear or get dirty, your sound quality diminishes.

Cassette player heads get dirty from the tape deposit. There is no tape here so would it get dirty?

And that's when you pop-in a cleaning tape, and you're ready to go in 60 minutes!

Could you please post few pics for soldering part ??? This would be a great and inexpensive mod. I too have a cassette player which is not being used...

I dont quite understand: doesnt the cassette portion have a wire extending out of it? Wont this wire show, at least partially before rerouting it?

Sorry I did not think about taking picture while the cassette adaptor was opened but here is what I did. The headphone connector jack at the end of the cassette adaptor's wire was too big to pass it thru the intertices. I had the choice to cut the wire either at the jack end side or unsolder it inside the cassette adaptor. I decided to go for the second solution since it was neater. Inside the cassette adaptor there are 3 wires which go to the head, one for each channel signal and one for the ground. I just unsoldered the 3 wires from the head and soldered them back after having passed the wire where I wanted it to pass. Since there is no tape to dirty the head there is no reason why the the head would get dirty.