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Aux input sound low quality compared with playing from CD question

philsv6

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Just a quick Q, Is it normal that if you copy a song to say and ipod or phone, and connect it to the auxin of the head unit the volume, and quality is lower than if you were to say copy that same song to a cd and play it?

Volume on the phone and ipod set to max. Assumption is Ipods and phones are designed to play through tiny headphone speakers, not 12inch subs therefore the difference in volume and quality???

Then comes the question if its normal, is there a device out there that plays music (such as an mp3 player) that transmits similar quality as to if you were to play from a cd?

cheers
 

[QW-11-KE]

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mines the same mate... i think it looses sound quality connected via aux.... thats y cd sounds better n louder... sucks i know
 

flyjoe180

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Quality of the playback is probably only as good as the reproduction. I notice varying volumes in some songs copied from CD's compared to some downloaded from iTunes etc.
 

acarmody

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Stuff like MP3 and your 'normal' file types are very lossy formats. Usually between 128kbps to 256kbps. Whereas a proper audio CD is about the ~1400kbps. So CDs will nearly always sound louder and clearer.
 

Astranomical

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acarmody's got it...I'm assuming that the music on your iPod is in MP3 or AAC format, they're compressed formats that are lower quality than the music on audio CDs. I bet if you ripped a CD to AIFF, WAVE or Apple Lossless format, and then put that on your iPod, the sound coming from the iPod would be almost identical to the sound coming from the CD. For the record, I have my iPod hooked up to the AUX input on Dad's VE Berlina on a regular basis, and it sounds great. :thumbsup:
 

UFO

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what's already been said regarding different formats is correct, but you need to be aware that its also device reliant.
when I first got my iphone I was ripping at a higher kbps because i had intentions of using it with my home audio setup.
but unfortunately the iphone isnt exactly an 'audiophile' machine- actually very far from it.... so even if you did transfer content at a higher bit rate to the iphone, it will never sound as good as directly from the cd because the iphone simply cant reproduce it. that being said it's not like the VE standard equipment is terrific either, but horses for courses it'll be better at reproducing the higher bitrates itself than relying on the iphone to do it any day.
dont get me wrong, I love my iphone- best phone I've ever owned by a long shot... but when it comes to audio it's built for a particular purpose (low foot print, portable, decent storage, but not very great SQ), which it serves very well.

to try and improve the sound to your personal tastes, have you tried playing around with the ipods inbuilt EQ?
settings>ipod>EQ.
personally I have it all off, but there are over 20 different setups in there that may improve what you are hearing to more your personal tastes (for instance Loudness, Vocal Booster, Acoustic etc).
connect it all up as you would to Aux In and start playing a favourite song. now just work your way through the different EQ settings and see if one of them improves anything.
 

nathanVY

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Depends on whats on your CD and what quality your MP3s are.

For example if you have an album thats mp3s say 256kbps, and you burn them in audio format to a CD. Then there won't be any difference in quality there, but if you have the original CD and rip mp3s of it, the CD will always sound better especially in car stereos.
 

philsv6

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Yeah I understand if you rip a song from an original CD (convert it to mp3) and you copy it to the ipod and then play it through the aux in at the car you will get less quality, thats to be expected yes. (due to less kbps)

BUT this isnt the case im talking about. If you rip a song from an original cd, in original format (makes each song huge ~20mb) and copy this file to the ipod, connect the ipod to aux in at the car, the quality is still lower, and the volume is still low.

Another way to put it, if you copy your mp3s on your pc to a CD and play the CD in the car the quality will be significant higher than if you were to copy the same mp3s to your ipod and play it via aux in at the car.

Think UFO got what i meant.

Point being the quality seems to be significantly lower playing any song through the Aux in than if you were to play it through the cd player.

Just trying to find a way around burning every song to a disk just to get half decent quality out of the sound system which i have been doing in the past, and just connect an aux device and play the music from there instead

cheers
 

philsv6

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And p.s the stock head unit is capable of delivering some real good sound, with the stock 4 door speakers, and a sub/amp in the boot. (after the center dash speakers removed)
 
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