In my truck I listen to my ipod via an FM transmitter I plug it into the cigarette lighter (run off the car battery). This works fine unless I have my ipod charger plugged into the cigarette lighter and my ipod. Then the FM signal gets terrible. If I just have the charger plugged into the cigarette lighter and not in the ipod it works fine, only when it is plugged into the ipod does it give me problems. Any ideas on how to fix this? My guess is it is having a problem with a common ground, but I don't really know.

Thanks

 

I think its more an interference caused by the chopper frequency in the charger. If the charger is just plugged in by itself it does not do any work and most likely emits less interference.
Have you tried other FM frequencies or does your gadget just have one? the FM gadget I use on my boat has 4 frequencies to choose from, some FM gadgets can tune over the whole band.
I found that the short lead from my FM gadget to the Ipod also contains the antenna and locating this at different orientations could minimise interferance on my boat.

In my car I use a lead from the car Ipod charger to a 'disk' input of the stereo which eliminates the need for the FM transmitter. The lead is plugged into the jack sound output socket at the side of the cig lighter style charger (Belkin) and there is also a tiny level control. Of course, to do this you need an older cassette type car stereo with a front panel socket for walkman style CD players :wink:

I find the Ipod a marvellous idea for those very long drives where one is mostly outside radio reception range here in Australia. 11 days of nonstop music is stored on my Ipod, played back randomly there is never a need to fiddle with stereo controls while driving.

Happy listening