I'm no electronics expert, but unless you have Klipschorns for speakers, I
doubt you'll hear that mp3 player without a substantial power
amplifier.  As I understand most portable players, they produce
milliwatts  of power to the headphone jack and I would guess to hear your
factory speakers in a Vanagon(or even decent aftermarket speakers), you'd
need 10-20 watts of power.  Not even sure plugging the mp3 player to an
external poewer amp would work with potential impedance mismatches.  The
Audi World group has a separate forum for audio freaks and they've been
toying with your concept and they have suceeded.

Yeah, it's Friday, so burn some holes in my thinking here!!

Max

At 10:05 AM 1/28/2005, Aaron Pearson wrote:
>my stock radio/tape player doesn't work very well (the tape player
>doesn't work, even after numerous cleanings, and the antenna is gone so
>the radio reception is poor).  i don't listen to tapes or radio anyway,
>so my new plan is to remove it entirely, and plug my mp3 player directly
>into the speakers.  the idea is to wire in a potentiometer between the
>speaker plugs and an 1/8" audio jack.  that way i can plug in whaterver
>potable device i want.  this seems like a good idea to me.  can anyone
>think of why it's not, or have any suggestions to make it better or more
>reliable (or why it's a bad idea in the first place)?  this is the
>cheapest way i can think of to get what i want.
>
>fyi, i'd bring along a portable weather radio on trips for emergency.
>
>aaron
>'87 syncro gl