MP3 players on GPSr

My nuvi has a speaker out jack. It is hard to hear the gps directions over the radio so what I do is load my GPS up with music or audio books then connect it to the mp3 input on the stereo. The sound quality is surprising good and each time the gps makes an annoucement for a turn, it cuts the music off just for the directions. (only the nuvi speaker quality is poor not the headphone jack)

Also, If you use you nuvi walking, you can hook up headphones to it and listen to music while walking in a city etc...

I have created a bunch of tourguides and you can use the nuvi as a walking tourguide. Like when walking through an area, you can pre-record the history of each location and when you get within a certain range of the POI, it will automatically play. Similiar to the walking tourguides you get in a museum except they play by coordinates.

An audio CD holds about 14-16 songs. Even with a 6 disc changer, you only get a couple hours of play time. Discs are bulky to carry around and store (I have several old zipper cases of discs, even out of their plastic cases).

I bought a Sony audio adapter that connects the Garmin to the car's stereo system. I have loaded hundreds of songs on a single 4GB SDHC card the size of a postage stamp and when installed in the Garmin, takes up zero room.

I just drove 2 days from Tampa to Indianapolis listening to music the whole way doing nothing more than starting the mp3 player each morning as I headed out. For me, it is way more convenient that all those discs and with the adapter, the sound quality is great.

Can you guys tell me how many mp3 songs (files) you have in the SD card?

According to Garmin tech support, it would not read than 999 songs (files). It seems to be true! I loaded up the SD card with audio Bible which has 1000+ files. Garmin is totally lost as it's not able to read the playlists and files correctly. To qualify what I meant, it is not able to read all the playlists and files I put on the SD card. I don't know if there is any logic.

BTW, I've updated my 360 with the latest firmware and it's the same problem.

I only have about 400 songs so I am not even close to the limit.

Some of us also like to listen to podcasts that change weekly. Why spend money on CD's? Books on DVD might take 60 CD's for a big book. If all you want to listen to is half a dozen music CD's, your way is great. No big deal if you miss a few seconds of a song because of an navigational alert, but it is a pain if you miss something important in a novel, or can't hear an alert.

With an MP3 player, the gps could tell you custom alerts. I will use the mp3 player as a backup to my 16 gig Ipod Touch.

OK, I see what you are doing. Makes sense to me.

To Gary A, tell me more about the Sony audio adapter that allows you to connect your GPSr to your car's radio. I have a Nuvi 350 and factory installed radio with a CD player in a Ford Explorer. How do you make the connection?

Some newer car stereo systems have an Aux input. If you have this type, all you need is a male-to-male audio cable.

In my case, both my cars have CD/cassette combo players, so, based on recommendations from others on this forum, I got this from Best Buy:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=3510454&st=cas...

These topics go into more detail and also offer solutions that other members used:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/8703

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/13514

You could also do a wireless FM transmitter like this one.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_I...