SoundMan Car Audio is definitely the leaders in iPad installs. In this install a customer made quite a trip for one of SoundMan's custom dash panels. This truck came to the shop with a pretty cool Apple Mac Mini install. The customer decided that it was time for an upgrade, so he brought his 3g iPad and let Doug and the gang take care of the rest. In the video you will see that the iPad is removable. It slides into the top of the dash and gives a very clean, Stock like, appearance. Upon interviewing Doug Bernards he said "I'm glad to see a lot of people installing iPads in dashboards. I think these installations are sending a strong message to product manufactures. People really want more in there cars, such as internet connectivity."

We asked Doug what he thinks about the rumors of 5.7'' and 7'' iPads. He says "A smaller iPad would be huge for the car audio industry, who knows if Apple will ever make such a think, but if they do it can impact our industry just as hard as iPods did, if not harder." With so much innovation happening in the mobile space it will be an exiting time for cars and pockets around the world.

Our shirts, hats and stickers are finally available for purchase on-line. With many requests from our YouTube fans we ramped up the production of the high quality gear worn by the SoundMan team. Our shirts feature a large SoundMan logo one the back and a small logo on the front left breast. Our shirts are slim fit and they come in four sizes.

Our hats are "FlexFit" with 2 color embroidery (white and black). The hats come in two styles, a flat bill, and a curved bill. The hats also feature our website in small embroidered lettering along the bottom rear.

Many of you will also be pleased with the release of our classic SoundMan stickers. This particular sticker was at one time exclusively offered to only the higher end signature SoundMan installs. But it is now available to everyone. 

We finally have the digital out working with the iPad. With a lot of suggestions from out community and much trial and error we were able to find a perfect configuration.
parts needed.
1. Apple camera connection kit $30.00
2. CablesToGo USB Audio adapter $30.00
3. TrippLite TOSLINK cable
The USB audio adapter supports 16bit 48Khz audio which will allow for bit for bit digital audio to be connected to the Audison Bit One. All the music on the iPad was ripped into iTunes from CD using Apple's Lossless Encoding. Doug says "Wow, the difference in sound quality is staggering." The Apple camera connection kit supports USB audio. A standard USB cable goes from the camera connection kit to the USB audio adapter. A TOSLINK cable then goes from the adapter to the Audison Bit One where the signal is then equalized, time aligned, crossed over and converted to analog for output into the Audison LRX 5.1k amplifier.

In this installment of the iPad Tacoma Build, Doug works through some of the issues he has been facing with using an iPad as a car media center. Doug uses an Apple iPad dock to get a clean line out for the Audison Bit One processor. The iPad dock also solves the issue of charging, because it has the ability to connect a iPad vehicle charger (Griffin). Allyn sold Doug's McIntosh amp and convinced him to use the Audison LRX 5.1k. In the video you'll see a quick glimpse of the Bit One processor being setup. Hybrid Audio Technologies gives Doug a set of Legatia L6 and L4 to try, and Scosche generously donated 4 boxes of Accumat sound deadening material for the doors of the Tacoma. Doug ordered more parts to further his quest of obtaining a digital signal from the iPad. Doug says "I may just be going overboard because i hate to fail. This thing sounds amazing as it is, I'm actually pleasently surprised. but i'm not giving up on the digital out."