Rock your DS's sound through the car stereo
by David Hinkle 
{ Feb 22nd 2008 at 12:45PM }
We actually enjoy playing our DS in the car quite a bit. In fact, one of us even went so far as to enjoy playing Puzzle Quest at red lights while behind the wheel. It's a dangerous obsession that not only threatens our own lives, but those of everyone else in the world. It's the nature of the beast, we suppose.So imagine our surprise when we read this little piece and totally realized we could output our DS's sound to our car speakers, almost providing a surround sound experience. Sure, we have headphones for when we're trying to get our dual-screen on out in the wild, but sometimes they're uncomfortable. This just seems like an incredibly obvious thing we never thought of ourselves. We can totally picture playing Ouendan or Elite Beat Agents in this manner.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
NeverSage @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:07PM
Hrm... methinks I should have written that article. I have a headphone>rca connector hooked up to my stereo for ipod reasons. I used to encourage my last girlfriend to play Super Princess Peach and Loco Roco through it.
"Eventhough the audio out jack on the DS is proprietary..." what are they talking about? No it's not.
Steve @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:29PM
I like to let my kids play electroplankton through the car stereo on car trips. They take turns being the dj!
Nushio (NDF - Blue) @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:31PM
I used to do the same thing with the Electroplankton E3 demo that had the Mario Bros theme song.
That, and Advance Wars Dual Strike.
Red Light! Time to take a pair of turns.
Brent @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:32PM
Jam sessions + car stereo + roadtrip = great success!!
Steve @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:45PM
Also... NitroTracker the homebrew app...
Aside from a potential learning curve, might be an awesome roadtrapplication.
I'm copyrighting that word if it isn't already...
Paul S. @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:57PM
Hmmm, hasn't this been possible for like the past 15 years? Cassette adapters?
Steve @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:13PM
OMG They had DS's 15 years ago??? What the hell was I doing wasting my time with the stupid Gameboy?!?
TheCoats @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:14PM
i have used Jam sessions and EBA in my car while my bro. was driving. I used a tape deck convertor and annoyed the crap out of him
grahamulax @ Feb 22nd 2008 3:03PM
A year or so ago while I waiting for traffic to disperse at my college I figured instead of getting stressed out waiting for everyone to leave in this horrible parking lot that I'd just play some ouendan 2 and plug it in with my cassette adapter.
Instant success!!!!!!!
Though, I can't say I wasn't stressed...........
On another note...er game....I did play Jam sessions in the car which was loltastic. Put the mic setting on to sing and basically you now have a megaphone to shout at people......tho feedback sucks since the mic will pick up the audio from the speakers and yaaaaaaaaa!
Hannah montana was.....a good game to play too...... with.....the stereos................the......drums........
......I'm gonna get flamed.
Ralph @ Feb 22nd 2008 3:41PM
The R4 allows me to use my DS as an MP3 player. That's great since my car has just a tape deck and radio sucks balls. A 10-dollar cassette adapter and I have instant surround sound. BTW... Mario Kart DS is awesome in pseudo-surround sound.
ZEBRA NINER @ Feb 22nd 2008 4:23PM
I have an R4 in mine... honestly I use it as an mp3 player more than a gaming device. My stereo has the input on the front. Too bad it can't use bluetooth to stream audio, that would be cool...
The Theory @ Feb 22nd 2008 5:24PM
I'm not sure there are many games I would WANT to hear through car speakers. Particularly Puzzle Quest, which I generally play with the sound off because the music annoys me so much. I mean, the game is fantastic... it is just that after a short period of time the music just gets really repetitive and pointless.
RootiePatootie @ Feb 23rd 2008 3:24PM
oh I could NOT agree with you more. some of the worst game "music" I've ever heard is in that game....I didn't leave it on for long. UGH.
James @ Feb 22nd 2008 7:44PM
I sometimes hook up EBA and fire up the Replay for some of my favorites as a ghetto MP3-player. I also play Patapon through my stereo -- I go out and eat in my car on my lunch break =-)
Tamakun @ Feb 22nd 2008 8:34PM
I have to note that I tried this as my Cobalt has a Mini-plug (i.e. "External") input, so I gave it a shot, it was cool to hear...
but immediately after trying out that trick (about 3 months ago), the speakers on my beloved DS Phat died. I have no idea what happened, but I'm wondering if it was an electrical backfire or something. The headset port still worked, but I had to replace my DS Phat because of it. :( Haven't tried it since, since I don't want to replace my DS Lite...
Kaizoku Risu @ Feb 22nd 2008 8:42PM
I've totally done this in my car! (With my Super Mario Subwoofer of course: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7683567@N06/sets/72157600893289906/)
We would plug in the DS on Saturday nights rocking out to K.K. Slider's live performances! Also, Phantom Hourglass sounds great through the stereo. So epic!
chispito @ Feb 23rd 2008 2:17AM
I have run the sound through my headphone amp before and used my K701s. Of course, the fidelity is so low it's not worth it for anything sampled. Sounds good with synthesized music though.
Egon Pax @ Feb 25th 2008 10:40AM
I did this with my GBA SP with some Castlevania. I just used a FM transmitter (since my car has neither a cassette player or an aux input.)
When I got my DS lite/M3 I played MP3's all the time. I don't do it anymore because the FM transmitter sucks (it would randomly turn off and it's not powerful enough for the big city.)
AngelusMortalis @ Feb 27th 2008 4:24PM
Wow, I can't believe how many people are still using tape adapters. Or, y'know, tape decks. I was fortunate enough to end up with a car (a car that i paid about $400 for) that actually has an input jack built into the cd player, so When I plug in my ds/gameboy/cell phone it actually sounds good.
You can do the same this with a home theater system, you don't have to use your car. when I'm at my desk I like to take the audio cable out of my laptop so I can play using my computer sound system. Very fun.