It's a bummer to void that out of my commuting repertoire. I'm almost finished with all the book on cds at the library.
You can buy gizmo that will connect with the earphone output of a portable cassette player and allow you to send an FM signal to your radio on an unused frequency. Sound quality isn't that great especially in urban areas with a lot of clutter, but for a book on tape, it shouldn't be a problem. Try Radioshack.com.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jun 1 2006, 06:32 PM) [snapback]264386[/snapback]</div> Converting them to CD on your computer is fairly easy. I have done it several times including a very special fishing trip in Montana where I transferred the book " A River Runs Through It". If you have never read the book or properly novella, you should it is one of those where prose and poetry blur in my opinion. It is one the really great works of English Prose in my opinion, but I am a fly fisherman, so I may be a wee bit prejudiced. I would guess that most people who love the written word will like this work.
Audible.com sells electronic copies of audio books at pretty good prices. They can be burnt to a cd, then played in the car. Alternetively, look into the aux-in options. Any one of these can use the output from a walkman or other portable tape deck. 1. Wireless FM modulator - Pretty poor sound quality, but very easy to use. Price varies, but around $30 dollars will probably work. 2. Wired FM modulator - Better sound, requires accessing the back of the radio to plug in the antenna wire. These can often be found for less then $20 dollars. Try Walmart. 3. PAC AuxBox - Line-in sound is very high quality. Requires accessing the back of the radio. Their website currently says it is not compatable with the Prius. I know, however, it will sort-of work with a 2005 6-disk changer (it overrides the factory 6-disc so that you can't play cds without major hoop jumping) and is reported to work well with the 2004-2005 single disk versions. I have not heard of anyone using it succesfully with a 2006, so buying it would be a bit of a gamble, but Toyota seems to be pretty consistent about the plug for an auxillary cd-changer on their radios. These are running between $90 and $120 on ebay right now. You will most likely need the regular Toyota cable as well as the Y-cable. 4. Vais Soundlinq - www.vaistech.com - Line-in sound is very high quallity. Requires accessing the back of the radio. This company is offering an aux-in for the 2006 Prius. They are the best integrated of anything but the factory aux-in, so I fully expect it to work. These are at $269 for plain aux-in and no ipod controls. You can also get one to control an ipod or a satellite radio throught he MFD, if that intrests you. For use with just cassette tapes, I think I would go with the wired FM modulator. Its cheap and easy and enough more reliable then the wireless to justify the install work. It can be done by removing the right passenger vent, the lower glove box, the left passenger vent, then moving the white plastic wireing box. You can then just squish your arm in far enough to get to the FM antenna on the drivers side of the rear of the radio. It passes the cars antenna through, so when the unit is off, regular FM radio comes through. If you have any likelyhood of moving to a digital audio player (ipod, ect.), you might want to consider option 3 or 4. These will allow you to get the most of your digital recordings. Good Luck!
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jun 1 2006, 09:32 PM) [snapback]264386[/snapback]</div> I know the feeling. Gave my brother more than 200 books on tape when I sold the car with a tape deck. I borrow from every library in town and rip them into MP3's and throw them onto a CD. I generally get ten CDs worth of books on each CD and I have over 250 CDs in my car now. You can also download some audiobooks online. Project Gutenberg does TXT files and has links to many audio versions, as well.
