Adapter cassette
A Cassette Tape Adapter or Car Kit ( English for Car -Einbausatz) is a way to connect audio devices to the radio and speaker system of a car. The cassette drive of the car radio is used for this: The car kit consists of the housing of a compact cassette which, instead of the magnetic tape, also contains a sound head , which is attached where the read head of a cassette player picks up the sound. This sound head is modulated by a device connected to the car kit (e.g. MP3 player or smartphone ) . The connection is made using a cable attached to one of the shorter sides of the adapter cassette. The car kit makes use of the fact that on most car radios the cassette protrudes from the device with this side. As the number of car radios equipped with cassette players declines, the importance of car kits also decreases.
In order to bypass the auto-stop function of the playing device, the more complex adapter cartridges also have a mechanism via the purely electrical function to transfer the rotary movement of the capstan belt drive to the winding mandrels: The movement of the winding mandrels is used in the more sophisticated playback devices as Used indication for a running belt. The end of the tape and the resulting tape salad are recognized and the cassette player is stopped. Car radios that stop the tape for traffic information cannot transmit this to the sound source behind the adapter cassette.
The term car kit is also occasionally used for other installation kits for cars ( e.g. for mobile phone hands-free equipment and navigation systems ).
