FM car radio to hear conversation ?

Joined
May 28, 2009
Messages
7
Hello guys,
My first post here, just bought a 530 Go...

When I am driving, I can listen to mp3's on the Tomtom by the FM radio connection, but when someone calls me or if I make a call, the music goes quiet (good) but the conversation comes out of the Tomtom instead of the car speakers. I am hoping there is some setting or something that I am missing because a phone conversation ouf of the little Tomtom speaker is really not good enough to be adequate.

Can I hear the person I am talking to through the car stereo?

Thanks,
Mark.
 
Nope. There is a HUGGGGGGGGGGEEEEE thread out there somewhere here on the forums about this. It REALLY sucks that we can't hear them out of our car speakers. There used to be a hack you could do, but that was LONGGGGG gone like 10 to 15 navcore versions ago..
 
Thanks Sageuvagony,

That's very disappointing... when driving on the freeway, there is no way I can converse with someone using the Tomtom's tiny speaker at the back of the device.

I wonder why they did that and if there is a new hack to make it work the way some users would want.

Cheers mate,
Mark.
 
I added one of These to the car to get the handsfree through the car system, better still you can also use it for Bluetooth Audio from the TomTom through the car system.
Great device, but you would have to source one from Europe as there isn't a USA based supplier as yet - they can be found far cheaper than the price on the web site though - Same kit on e-bay was going for around ?60 - Mike
 
Thanks Sageuvagony,

That's very disappointing... when driving on the freeway, there is no way I can converse with someone using the Tomtom's tiny speaker at the back of the device.

I wonder why they did that and if there is a new hack to make it work the way some users would want.

Cheers mate,
Mark.
Rumor has always had it that TT had some concerns (legitimate, I think) that your phone conversation - at least one side of it - would suddenly become available to any car near you, or anyone else nearby with an FM radio.
 
Rumor has always had it that TT had some concerns (legitimate, I think) that your phone conversation - at least one side of it - would suddenly become available to any car near you, or anyone else nearby with an FM radio.

Very very good point. At a stoplight, a car would be close enough to hear your conversation, or even bits of it.
 
Hello guys, and thanks for the replies.

I see the point about the conversation being picked up by other nearby cars, but apparently other manufacturers allow this, so surely one could sign a waver or something to take responsibility for using that feature... oh well...

Another thing has come up. I bought the 530 because of the MP3 via FM transmitter ability, but the audio quality is very poor, especially when a singer says the letter S for some reason. The sound also breaks up as an FM radio would in poor reception area. I have, as an experiment, held the Tomtom at the sunroof glass, right next to the radio aerial, so there really is little reason why there should be poor reception. Regular radio in my car is perfect, clean, sounds good.

I went to the iO site bout could not figure out how this bluetooth device would connect to my car stereo. I am now thinking of retuning the 530 on the grounds of the poor audio. any suggestions very welcome.

Cheers!
Mark.
 
That's strange..... My music via FM comes out crystal clear. It's certainly not the TomTom since I have tested my TomTom in 3 of my cars. In fact, I even posted youtube videos of me testing music using the FM function.

Edit : Have you made sure that you are broadcasting on a FM station that is free?

What's funny is that my Civic doesn't even have an antenna since the antenna wire broke, and I cannot connect it to my car's stereo deck, and still the sound comes out pretty darn clear.

Here are the videos. The digi cam doesn't do much justice for the sound quality. You'd have to be here in person to hear it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckRHSYtRFc8&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQFLQW7U_pQ&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bMK_J22vXo&fmt=18
 
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Hi sageuvagony

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply.
I tried 92 and 107 as well as 100mhz, all of which just play noise in my area. I dont know if when driving, they pick up other stations, I guess I should find a channel which is completely clear in all of the UK to be sure of that. But the problem seems intermittent, sometimes really bad and other times acceptable.

Have you had a look at the io device spoken about in this conversation thread a couple of posts up? It talks about bluetooth connection from your ipod etc but not how it connects to the car.

Cheers mate,
Mark.
 
Hi there,
It sounds to me that on your pathfinder test, 56 seconds in, there is distortion on the S just like I have, but mine is worse.

whatzzz your dream...

very thick and sibilant and unclear.

im sure you would be able to hear it much better on your camcorder...

mark.
 
Hi sageuvagony

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply.
I tried 92 and 107 as well as 100mhz, all of which just play noise in my area. I dont know if when driving, they pick up other stations, I guess I should find a channel which is completely clear in all of the UK to be sure of that. But the problem seems intermittent, sometimes really bad and other times acceptable.
Wild guess, but I doubt that your newer unit works any differently than my 720 in this regard. At first, I couldn't figure out why my reception quality was all over the map. I came to realize that much of the RF seemed to be coming off the power cord! The way the cord was oriented with respect to the car's antenna was making a huge difference in reception. Unfortunately, the way it worked best was with the power cord looped up and around the rear view mirror -- not exactly an acceptable approach ... at least not to me.

For grins, also place your hand in the lower right corner behind the TomTom when your reception is a bit weak. I think you will be suprised at how it improves. The boys at TomTom seem to need a refresher course in antenna theory.
 
Wild guess, but I doubt that your newer unit works any differently than my 720 in this regard. At first, I couldn't figure out why my reception quality was all over the map. I came to realize that much of the RF seemed to be coming off the power cord! The way the cord was oriented with respect to the car's antenna was making a huge difference in reception. Unfortunately, the way it worked best was with the power cord looped up and around the rear view mirror -- not exactly an acceptable approach ... at least not to me.

For grins, also place your hand in the lower right corner behind the TomTom when your reception is a bit weak. I think you will be suprised at how it improves. The boys at TomTom seem to need a refresher course in antenna theory.

Heh heh, well i will try some variations on the theme tomorrow...
Actually most of today I had the tomtom running on battery power, so perhaps that made the reception worse!
I will report back tomorrow after some cable experiments.

Cheers
Mark.
 
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/vacant is what I use to find unused stations. Enter your zip code on the box on the bottom of the page, not the top (like I did by mistake)

And trust me, if there is anything more I hate is when the "S" sounds bad. I have Verizon Fios (Fiber Optics) for my TV service which supposedly is supposed to be the best. Well for whatever reason, there are some channels that SOUND like complete ass. An example would be Comedy Central. Many users have complained that the sound quality is HORRIBLE using Fios with this channel. All of the "S"s sound like "th" or "shhhh" and it bugs the crap out of me hearing the letter "S" being completely messed up.

I can assure you that 99% of the time the sound is crystal clear, or else I would be using MP3 cds since I dont have to use normal audio CDs'.

You'd have to be here in person to hear the quality. Before I used that website, I was using which I "thought" was an unused station, and my audio quality sounds exactly as you describe. You do have to expect a tiny bit of distortion of times, but not as much as you describe. One thing that amazes me is that absolutely no bass is lost while using the FM transmitter. If you have good bass speakers on your PC, you can feel the hard bass from my videos even though I recorded the videos using a normal Samsung 6 megapixel camera. It wasn't even a camcorder. Just a digital camera that happens to record videos :) Good luck :cool:
 
Hey there sageuvagony,

Thanks again for the reply...

Yeah, I believe you that your sound is good...
Im in the UK so that site does not work for me, I had thought just tuning the radio to a station where I could not hear anything but static would be good enough, is that not true?

I was listening to my car radio today and actually the radio is not perfect. There are some of those ssssst interference sounds when I drive, but the S'es are fine on the radio, but not fine when using the tomtom, go figure. I tried all sorts of things with the power cable, but it did not make a huge difference.

I wish I knew of a GPS with a more powerful fm transmitter. I was looking at garmin, but I think users find as many, of not more FM issues with Garmin.

Do you reck finding a "completely unused" channel will make all the difference?

Cheers mate,
Mark.
 
I went to the iO site bout could not figure out how this bluetooth device would connect to my car stereo.
Sorry for the delay in answering this Mark, I have had a few days away and missed it earlier, the device simply plugs in between the car deck and the car wiring assuming that the car deck is using the ISO standard connectors, if its a factory fitted head unit it probaly isn't ISO compliant, but most of the after market decks from the big names such as Panasonic, LG, Pioneer, Kenwood etc all use ISO connectors these days.
Edit ti add, have a read through my post in This Thread which details how the iO unit fits and works in a little more detail - Mike
 
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