iPods & vintage audio

fiddlefye

AK Subscriber
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I bought my 14 year old daughter an 8 gig iPod for Christmas (lucky kid) and she loves it, but she's also been panting after my vintage receivers. I'm planning on making up a nice package for her birthday (extra lucky kid), but would like to be able to seamlessly integrate her iPod into the system once it is done. I've seen the Apple Universal dock and it looks like it would do the job, but has anyone had any experience with these docks (or others) that they'd care to share? I'd like something that will power the iPod and has RCA outputs (as opposed to mini jacks), if such a thing exists.

BTW p*ssed me right off that Apple requires me to upgrade from my OS 10.3.9 (which is working just great and does everything I need at the moment) to the newset OS in order to communicate with the latest Nanos, yet it talk to her mother's PC without a hitch. Arrggggh! Upgrading is H*ll!!!!
 
I have a dock for my Philips player. It powers and charges the player, connects to the stereo and adds remote control. Most docks use mini-jack that I have seen.

The only thing I can think of to look for is that the dock is weighted enough that the cables hanging down the back won't pull it or tip it over.
 
I have the DLO HomeDeluxe iPod dock. Works great and you can output the music/video right to a TV if you have one. Check out the pics starting on page 49 of affordable audio:

http://www.affordableaudio.org/aa2008-01.pdf

That is a review I wrote on some cables this month. Nice thing is the dock has a remote so you don't need to keep going to it to change the music.
 
I use the apple dock and recharge the ipod separately. It's inexpensive and works really well for me. The upgrade to the new apple os was really easy by the way.
 
I use the apple dock and recharge the ipod separately. It's inexpensive and works really well for me. The upgrade to the new apple os was really easy by the way.

I'm hoping the upgrade to the OS isn't painful, but experience tells me to be wary. I've been using Mac OS since 5-point something and so that's quite a few upgrades back. Virtually every time I haven't gone to the bother of backing up everything I've lost email, addresses, all manner of things important to me. My upgrade technique of late involves cloning the drive onto another one, wiping it all and doing a clean install and then returning what I want to the drive, then upgrade any missing drivers etc. In other words, it's a full day's job. No, I don't look forward to it, especially as 10.3.9 has been running flawlessly for me. It does help to weed out what I don't really need, though.

A couple of people I know (one of them my 82 year old father) have done the upgrade lately and both lost a lot of information in the process. No, it still isn't a foolproof process, sadly.
 
I bought my 14 year old daughter an 8 gig iPod for Christmas (lucky kid) and she loves it, but she's also been panting after my vintage receivers. I'm planning on making up a nice package for her birthday (extra lucky kid), but would like to be able to seamlessly integrate her iPod into the system once it is done. I've seen the Apple Universal dock and it looks like it would do the job, but has anyone had any experience with these docks (or others) that they'd care to share? I'd like something that will power the iPod and has RCA outputs (as opposed to mini jacks), if such a thing exists.

BTW p*ssed me right off that Apple requires me to upgrade from my OS 10.3.9 (which is working just great and does everything I need at the moment) to the newset OS in order to communicate with the latest Nanos, yet it talk to her mother's PC without a hitch. Arrggggh! Upgrading is H*ll!!!!

I'm on my second Apple dock, and about to return it. It plays through the receiver, but it doesn't charge the iPod, and the remote doesn't work either.

Can't imagine what I might be doing wrong, but I've tried three different iPods and have had the same results with both docks.

I think I'm going to be looking for one of those Wadia devices that cropped up here last week. That might be a bit high end for your daughter.

bs
 
I have an older 3rd generation iPod and original dock it charges and plays through a mini-pin wonderfully. My daughter uses the dock with her 2nd generation Nano with no problems too.

I'm feeding the iPod through a Cary tube pre-amp/Marantz Quad in two-channel. The old and new works pretty good.

tube_iPod.jpg
 
I got one of these which makes it sound better as opposed to using a stereo jack adapter plugged into the headphone jack.
 
Slightly OT but if anyone wants help flawlessly updating Apple computers/backing up data/reinstalling, send me a PM, it's basically what I do all day while reading this site.

I went to Apple school and don't mind helping if I can.
 
You guys know about Senuti right? (iTunes backwards) Senuti is shareware that allows you to backup your songs from iTunes onto your computer. Completely essential if you're going to use an iPod with your Apple computer.
 
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