The Alpine head unit was specifically manufactured to work with Apple's interface and hardware. It takes advantage of Apple's proprietary dock connector and displays artist name and song info on the head unit itself. Essentially, you can hook up the iPod and leave it in the glove box because the head unit would control every function of the iPod.

Musicmatch will work with the iPod but it is very buggy. You are better off using iTunes. The syncing features are much better and more reliable. Plus you can take advantage of the iTunes music store at 99 cents a track.

There are software conflicts between Musicmatch and iTunes. This happens because both software suites want to be the interface between your PC and the iPod. It really is better to uninstall Musicmatch completely and just use iTunes.

Remember, these tips are for the iPod only. If you get a differnent mp3 player then disregard the whole Musicmatch vs. iTunes paragraph.

Good luck.

[soapbox]

I second that.

itunes works great with the ipod (and im on a windows xp pc). i tried other 3rd party software, and found i didnt need it. I cant speak about buying music with it, as i havent done that and dont plan to. If we were able to by => cd-quality digital music files at ¢99, Id be in on that, but this crap of buying < CD quality @ CD prices is for the birds.

musicmatch is a ripoff, imo.

[/soapbox]

while looking at that alpine link, i found this which makes me wonder if i really should have upgraded, once cost is invloved.

http://homepage.mac.com/danielturek/PhotoAlbum50.html

So if you cant do it with the rockford i am going to guess you cant do it with the XE simple set up. Has anyone been able to do anything with this set up

Look, don't settle for a band aid fix. Just get a new head unit with auxillary inputs. I would also recommend getting a head unit that is XM or Sirius satellite radio ready. You may not want it now but you will, I guarantee it. You can pick up units starting at $150.

I know you guys are fighting with the reasoning of buying a new aftermarket head unit since you just purchased the upgraded stereo in the Xterra. Just do it. Or you can troll the boards for months and years trying to figure out a way to magically create auxillary inputs in your Rockford Fosgate factory head unit.

Thanks for the great pictures. Just curious where the Sik cigarette lighter is in your photos. Have you hidden that behind the radio console or something? If so, how did you wire it up back there and did you have to disconnect one of the existing cigarette lighters?

Thanks so much,
Kenny

I disassembled the cigarette lighter plug and hard wired into the electrical system.

• Take apart the cigarette lighter plug
• Apply soldering iron to wires that attach to the plug, not the wires that attach to the dock connector. You do this so the solder will liquify and you can remove the stock wires from the circuit board.
• Insert new/longer wires into the same existing circuit board holes and resolder. I soldered 6ft wires into the circuit board so I would have plenty of length to reach a ground point and the fuse box.
• Attach black wire to chasis for your ground.
• Attach red wire to empty slot in the fuse box. You can go to any auto parts store and pick up a handy gizmo that has the standard fuse prongs on one side and a slot for a fuse and a wire on the other. This allows you to connect the power wire from the iPod circuit board and insert a fuse. Match the fuse amps to that of the fuse in the SIK cigarette lighter adapter.
• Wrap circuit board and at least 2 inches of the protuding wire with electrical tape.
• You have now hard wired your iPod into your X's electrical system.
• I added a power switch into my setup. If you want to do this then buy a switch from Radio Shack that is rated to match the iPod's power ratings. Attach the switch wherever it pleases you. Atach the wire from the fuse box to prong 1 on the switch. Attach wire from iPod to prong 2. Now you have a power switch to control when your iPod receives power.

I hope this helps. Be sure to make detailed notes of the location of the wires you remove from the circuit board so you can resolder the correct color wires back into it. I remember there being 3 wires on the cigarette lighter side of the circuit board, a power wire and two grounds.
In the case of the two grounds I took two 4 inch pieces of black wire and soldered them into the circuit board. I then soldered the free ends together and finally soldered a 6 foot long piece of black wire to the two joined wires. I finished this off with heat shrink tubing from Radio Shack to protect the soldered connections.

Good luck.

FWIW - I'm going to embark on a poor-man's approach to something similar.

I ordered this in-line FM modulator from Crutchfield:
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-YRRTWlc5ocL/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=227750&I=026EFM01

I ordered the Panavise car mount thingy. However, I have an older 20gb iPod that I keep in a Marware sport case. I ordered one of these to put on the panavise:
http://www.marware.com/cgi-bin/WebObject...Z9b2tM7dWRkCVbg

I plan on wiring in a std firewire car-charger similar to how "Mac" did it. I'll wrap the fw cable and the aux-cable together.

The total I spent is about $100 but I fully expect the results to be less spectacular (sound-wise).

As recently as 5 years ago I had a 6-disc CD changer connected to a factory car stereo via in-line FM modulator and I don't recall being put-off by the sound quality but I could be looking back through rose-colored glasses.

I'm not ready to replace the Rockford Fosgate setup *yet*. Maybe next year.

I don't want to replace my set up either, but I tried the Monster Cable FM Modulator and I was instantly reminded why those things are so unpopular. Hope you have better luck but its back to CDs' for me!

Are you referring to the FM transmitter device like this:
http://www.monstercable.com/productPage.asp?pin=2084

Yes - they suck unequivocally.

The unit I'm using is physically wired between the antenna and the head-unit.

We shall see.

If any one has a Pioneer unit, they are coming out with a iPOD adapter for it. It supposed to be release this month, and be backward compatabile with older radios, plus have some of the same features as the Alpine with some of this years models (ie. controlling the iPOD and getting the song/artist information displayed on the radio).

I haven't seen one yet, but am eagerly looking for it. The model number is CD-IB100

I completed my install last night.

The wired FM Modulator sounds much better than any FM transmitter I've tried. That said - it's still a poor substitute for an AUX-IN. It sounds about as good as a decent local FM station, but no-where near the quality of an physical Aux input.

I tapped into the 12V plug on the front to get power for the Firewire charger (and my radar detector too, what-the-heck). Nothing I did is permamennt, I basically hard-wired a 2-plug 12V cigarette-lighter adapter behind the dash. I can plug anything in there as the years go by.

I'm hoping against hope that something like THIS will be made to work with the Rockford Fosgate so I can replace the headunit while keeping the amp, speakers and steering wheel controls.

The Alpine Control Interface for iPod is already here...$99 from Crutchfield. And to answer the other question, it does allow you to hide your iPod out of sight since all features are controlled from the Alpine Head Unit. If you're really slick you can rig it to keep the iPod somewhere you can still get to it if you want to (the top of the center console, perhaps? Can't fit much else in there).

See it here: Alpine KCA-420i iPod control interface at Crutchfield.com

The alpine interface sucks. I took it back after 2 weeks. Trying to get thru a long list or artist or albums could take several minutes. I switched to a set up similar to the first one in this thread. I used a Belkan charger with a line in. I have the plug coming in the 4X4 shifter boot. I let the Ipod sit on the leather boot. It fits perfect and I can easily see the screen and use the great ipod inface rather then the Alpine hack job interface.

I'm leaning strongly towards getting a pretty basic MP3 head-unit with AUX-in, and hooking it into the Rockford Fosgate Amp & Speakers via the PAC-OEM adapter.

The H/U-iPod interfaces don't look very appealing.