I have been playing my music from my Ipod ever since i got me IS. Today I just happened to pop in a cd in the dash, all i can say is WOW!! my sub hits 10x harder/clearer and the sound is louder and clearer!! is this because the indash CD player is amplified and the ipod is not??
all i can say is if you have a system and is running on your ipod, try playing CD

 

all i can say is that my ipod is on par with cd's.

all i can say is you should try listening to songs higher than 128kbps on your ipod. and getting the SiK adapter.

 

cds will always be better than mp3.

 

i agree with you on that hapaboy! i have the Sik adapter and it sounds great with my ML system.

 

192kbs: The sound is not felt as the original recording. It is however totally impossible to tell in what.

256kbs: The sound is indiscernible from the original. It is impossible to make the difference with the original recording.

320kbs: The sound is indiscernible from the original. It is impossible to make the difference with the original recording.

 

You are comparing 128kbps (or less) compressed audio to a CD with a 44.1K sampling rate. That's uncompressed audio sampled 44,100 times per second. That's like comparing the video quality on Youtube to a 1080p BlueRay shown on a 65" plasma TV. Try DVD audio or SACD on a real home audio system and you will be blown away.

-Robert

 

Slightly OT, but play old fashioned analog vinyl, even on a moderately priced turntable, and it'll blow DVD-A or SACD out of the water.

 

I'm not sure I'd go that far. I think you need a very good turntable and the key is that you need a well mastered product. Records, CD's, DVD-A's and SACD's all have to be mastered and any one of them can get screwed up there. A well mastered CD can blow away a poorly mastered LP. It's all about the mastering.

OTOH, I have a Squeezebox in my IS-350 feeding the Aux input. The Squeezebox generally sounds better than most CD players for a variety of reasons. However, CD's played in the ML in dash player sound better than the same CD played through the Squeezebox pluged into the Aux input.

Granted the difference is not that major, and in fact I've been listening that way since installing the Squeezebox. Of course I'm willing to compromise a tad to have the convenience of 3500 CD's worth of music in full CD quality with me.

I should add that the OP hit the nail on the head when describing the difference between the in dash CD and the same CD through the Aux input, though he was referring to mp3's and a iPod. None the less his description fits my observations to a t.

There is no more amplification per se between the CD player and the aux input. An iPod is just not going to sound as good as a CD unless it is playing wav files and routed through it's line outputs. mp3 files just don't sound as good as CD's to me, no matter what the bit rate.

Once you learn how to easily spot mp3 compression artifacts you'll be cursed. If you don't hear the difference consider yourself lucky.

 

I had the same impression when I first installed XM radio and than I realized that the sound settings are adjustable separately for each source. So after changing the settings for the Sat radio the difference was not as obvious.

 

I had the same impression. I have an expensive video ipod that just sits because I think it sounds like crap.

 

Anything I play through the DVD changer sounds better than my Mp3 player, whether a CD or DVD. Additionally, I always have to turn the volume all the way up on the Mp3 player, as well as turn the ML system's volume up by about 10 more to get the same volume as when playing directly from DVD or CD. The auxilary input simply degrades the sound quality. It's still pretty decent though and most people won't even notice.

 

In my opinion, the aux input slightly edges playing MP3's from CD's. However, this wasn't until I switched to a line-out cable instead of connecting to the iPod via the headphone jack. The line-out cable provides a cleaner and much higher volume output.

Although I have experimented with various bit rates, MP3's from CD's lack punch. I haven't tried a conventional audio CD.

 

The volume difference has little to do with the degradation in sound quality. They are totally independent. It depends on a lot of factors. For example, my Squeezebox through the Aux input can be just as loud as a cd in the changer, but it depends on:

1. How loud the output of the aux device is. Line out. vs Headphone out can result in different output levels as well. Different devices may have different output levels with the same music being played.

2. How loud the CD has been mastered. Two different versions of the same CD can have radically different output levels. Many newer cd's are mastered very loud and compressed and often these CD's sound terrible regardless of the system they are played on. Some old CD's can have 10db less output than remastered versions. MP3's or other rips of these CD's will also have varying output levels.


Once again, the sound degradation and the difference in volume level between the dash unit and unknown devices plugged into the Aux input are not necessarily related.

I should add again that there is most definitely some degradation, but when a high quality source is plugged into the Aux input, that degradatin is surely not major, and as Maz suggests, quite likely not noticeable by many. Hard to say for sure since I seem to hear many things that most don't.

Of course comparing a MP3 to a CD is generally a pointless effort as the CD should win easily just about every time.

 

Yes, there are independent settings for each source, but XM radio will never sound as good as a well made CD. It uses quite a but of digital compression to allow them to present so many channels on a limited amount of bandwidth.


When I switch from my Squeezebox or in dash CD's or DVD's to XM, I instantly hear all the digital artifacts. If you don't make that comparaision, or listen for a while one may get used to the XM sound and possibly not notice these artifacts.

But they are definitely there. I've noticed that some XM channels sound better than others depending on many factors but largely due to the amount of digital compression employed.

No amount of playing with the equalizer will lessen this problem. That said, I love XM but not at all for the sound quality. I like it for the variety.

Btw, to me, XM can sound a lot like a low bit rate MP3. Once again, if you can't hear these problems consider yourself blessed. Do yourself a favor and don't try to hear them as you'll likely never be able to unhear these issues once you discover them.

I feel that FM can sound far better than XM but it has it's issues as well. FM (and AM for that matter) use a lot of dynamic compression when they broadcast for a variety of reasons. This is quite different than the digital compression. The former is designed to protect the transmitter from spikes and actually makes many songs sound better in some ways. The digital compression that XM (and Sirius) uses is designed to fit as much data as possible in a limited amount of bandwidth. Of course satellite radio generally has much better reception. FM is well known for having dropouts and other reception related issues, and only can be received from relatively short distances from the transmitter.

 

i think if you have a regular factory or ML audio system you might* not hear that much of a difference in audio output level, to the untrained ears that is. But if you do have an amp+sub combo, you WILL notice a significant difference in the output of bass, even to an untrained ear