Why Do FM Transmitters Suck?
Chances are, if you've got an MP3 player of some sort, you've considered what it would take for the music from the MP3 player to be played through your speakers. To solve that problem for myself, I recently picked up a Philips Digital FM Transmitter (Model SJM2306/27) thru a recent Woot-off. It sucked.
Granted, the product actually does what it says: takes your MP3 player and pumps it over nearly any available FM channel. This device in particular has three memory locations for you to store the stations. The trick is: finding a truly dead FM channel to use.
The Seattle area's radio waves are fairly packed. Finding a dead space in the spectrum to try and use this device is, to say the least, challenging. To make matters worse, if you drive a long distance, spaces that were free are suddenly not free anymore, meaning you need to find another one.
I did manage to find a dead spot in my neck of the woods and was able to use the FM transmitter ok. Here's the problem: even with that dead spot, there was a bit of interference. Sitting next to a bus at a traffic light added to the interference.
And this, my friends, is why FM transmitters suck. They are not immune to interference and, often, you can't find dead space in the air waves to use it.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I agree! I do love love love my transmitter. It’s allowed me to take my CD collection out of my car. (If that got stolen I would be devastated-almost 300 CDs!) I can listen to almost 8 GB of my favorite tunes. Yay! Unfortunately, however, the quiet parts of the songs end up sounding static-ridden, and the power needed to send the signal meant that I had to buy a car charger. (Battery life prior would be awesome; after two days in the car my Ipod would be dead with the transmitter.) Luckily finding a blank station wasn’t too hard where I live. I can imagine that would be frustrating! Still, for $35, it’s a lot less expensive than adding a new stereo system and it does the trick… even if it’s not as nice of a trick as I’d like.