Gomadic Blog

The tutorial posted below, by Austin Vaughan, originally appeared in its entirety on iaudiophile. It's the perfect rig for all you DIY-ers interested in making Line-In/Line-Out cables for the X5 that clip in securely without the need of the subpack.

A baseport connection is much better than connecting in to the headphone jack. The headphone jack is suseptible to volume increases... ie. the louder the volume, the louder the sound comes out on the stereo and also the more distortion. Going out a baseport connector gives you a constant audio line out connection which is optimum for sound output. This way you have distortion-free sound no matter what your device volume is set to. It's a much better way of doing things becasue you don't have to tweak the volume of the player.

Tools Needed:
- Gomadic Connector (Item #ICP-21)
- Stereo RCA Cable (no thicker than the rubber grommet hole)
- Wire Cutter/Stripper
- Needlenose Pliers
- Soldering Iron
- Solder

1) The Gomadic connector comes in 8 parts. They are:
Bottom casing
Top casing (the one with the arrows)
2 Metal Clip Arms
2 Square Plastic Clip Arm Covers
Rubber Cable Grommet
22-pin Connector



2) It is best to assemble the connector housing first before you lose all of the little pieces. Start by slipping the plastic clip arm covers onto the metal clip arms as pictured below.



Insert the metal clip arms into the bottom casing as shown.
Note: There is a left and right clip arm (they are not identical).
When inserting them, make sure that the clips are facing downwards.





You have finished assembling the connector housing. Set it aside for now.

3) Cut your stereo RCA cable at desired length and slip the rubber grommet piece onto the end. This is not necessarily easy if your cable is too thick, so keep this in mind when selecting an RCA cable to use.

4) Split and strip your wires. You will end up with a left channel wire (white), a right channel wire (red), and bare ground wires. Twist the ground wired together as shown and only strip a few mm off of the ends of the left and right channel wires.



5) For a line-out cable, carefully remove all pins from the 22-pin connector except those shown below in red (pins 10, 13, and 14) with needlenose pliers or your wire cutter. (For a line-in cable, remove all pins except for 10, 15, and 16).





After removing the pins, your connector should look like this:




6) Solder the twisted ground wire to pin 10, the right channel to pin 13, and the left channel to pin 14.



7) Once your solder has set, insert the connector into the bottom housing by inserting the clip arms into the holes in the bottom of the connector. Make sure the connector is right-side up. (It will snap into place.) Next, insert the rubber grommet into the bottom housing.



8) Snap the top casing on, plug in, and enjoy!