iLounge forums, in-car accessories.

My iTrip doesn't do the thunking thing, but its signal strength sucks. And it recently picked up the habit of changing transmit stations randomly.

I don't know of an iPod forums (screw that Latin plural crap ;-P).

However, I have an iTrip and I've never noticed such sounds. Although all of the FM transmitters I've tried pretty much suck, by design (I suspect that to make a good one, the power needed would exceed that allowed by the FCC).

Just for a third data point, mine sucks as far as signal strength but it never makes weird noises other than my weird music.

agropyron's link pointed me to the Scosche Audio Transmitter FMTRNS01. It's less than half the price of the iTrip, and doesn't exhibit any of the problems I enumerated.

The Scosche plugs into a car's cigarette lighter, and only transmits on 4 frequencies (88.1, 88.3, 88.5 88.7). The switch is physical, and there's no LCD display.

Unlike the iTrip, it only transmits in one mode (the iTrip can transmit a more powerful mono signal or a weaker stereo); however experiment ("Till Then" from the LP of the play 1776, which features "Abigail Adams" balanced mostly toward the right speaker) demostrates that it does transmit stereo.

Oddly, there's no way to turn the Scosche off except by removing it from the cigarette lighter. This is annoying.

The take home message is that the Scosche transmits with very little extra noise compared to the iTrip. There's no noticeable noise on track change, and to hear even minor background noise requires increasing the the radio output volume beyond anything I'd normally play.

So the big, feature-lacking inelegant Scosche wins over the slim elegant configurable Griffin iTrip.

One big down-side though: I had to break a long-standing resolution and go, for the first time in my life, to a Wal*Mart, in order to buy the Scosche. I feel dirty.

Jessamyn and teece: what kind of iTrip (the one that plugs into the headphone jack or the dock) and what kind of iPod?

For comparison, I've been using a dock iTrip on a 60GB video iPod. I wonder if other iPods are less noisy.

Wow, the Scosche sounds great. I'll have to grab one of those.

Before I got my ipod, I had an iriver player, and I bought an iriver FM transmitter to use with it. It's completely tunable with three presets of your choice, has a small screen, turns itself off when there's no input signal, and sends pretty clear sound without any audible (to my ear) glitches. I use it with my ipod with no problems.

Damnit. Apparently there's also a Scosche that charges the iPod. will buy that tomorrow and post a review.

I've got an old iPod, one of the biggish ones when they just started putting out the 20GB ones, and an iTrip that plugs into the headphone jack.

Please follow up, I've been shopping for a FM transmitter myself.

I have the little, tubular iTrip without the LCD, and use it with a 4G iPod 20GB. No noise from the iPod -- lots of noise from the iTrip signal getting squashed by the *many* stray FM frequencies floating around Denver.

I actually hacked the iTrip, too. I pried it apart with a razor blade, carved a tiny notch in the plastic case, and put the short piece of copper wire (which is the antenna), on the outside of the case. I then wrapped it in some more copper wire in attempt to make a better antenna.

My wife is convinced it sounds better since I did that -- I'm not so sure. In any event, I don't *like* the way it sounds, but it beats listening to the radio.

I don't think it's a matter of the signal strength. I can get the iTrip to transmit a strong signal up to several yards.

I think it's a matter of electric noise: I suspect the iPod's dock allows the iPod's electrical signal bleed into the audio output signal.

I think it's a matter of electric noise: I suspect the iPod's dock allows the iPod's electrical signal bleed into the audio output signal.

Oh, I understand you on that. Oddly, I don't get that problem with mine. *shrug* Dunno what's the difference.

But, signal strength is also an issue with all FM transmitters of the sort (because of FCC regulations). I wish I was an electronics hacker, as looking at the iTrip when it was apart, these things are damn simple. I'd love to make my own powerful transmitter (*ahem*, what regulations, sir).