[leetennis]

Hi guys, can't say I'm an audiophile or I wouldn't have to ask this question, but I do love my music and appreciate it as a good undistorted sound.
Am I right in thinking the best quality media would be to use a cd written as a music file not data? Are all other media types available are compressed therefore of lower quality?
Via iPhone/external device and prof nav hard drive all compressed?

Any knowledge greatly received
Lee

[the_rangdo]

Not quite right, having music as a digital file isn't necessarily worse quality than CD (in some cases you can get a lot better)

But keeping it simple, if you want to keep at CD quality to minimise distortion then avoid mp3, aac, wma (non-lossless) and a fair few others but they're the popular ones. They're compressed files, to compress some information has been removed. The more they're get compressed, the more they lose.

Lossless is what you're after, i.e. nothing is lost In it's most basic format, music extracted from a CD would be in WAV form and would be roughly 10MB per 1 minute of music. So an album would be about 700MB (compared to mp3 at about maybe 100MB depending on compression rate)

From there though you can apply various forms of lossless compression, i.e. they sound the same as the CD, nothing is lost. Popular ones are FLAC, APE (monkey audio), WMA Lossless (Windows Media Audio), Apple lossless and quite a few others. Album size for these is roughly 300-400MB

Your iPhone will play Apple lossless, so you could load some music up and depending on the connections available in your car you could then play it through your stereo.

I've got the USB connection which accepts WMA lossless, so I have a big hard disk full of those files (210 albums on a 120GB disk and still got about 30GB free)

It's the sort of subject that sounds more confusing to start with than it really is

[leetennis]

Great info thank you! Is apple lossless available on iTunes? Or do I need software to decompress the files?
I'm guessing once I have lossless files on a device I would need to play back via the auxiliary cable not USB?
Thanks again!
This all came about btw because I thought i could hear a difference between the stored files on the cars hd so I'm assumming theres a little too much compression/space saving going on

[the_rangdo]

I'm not an iTunes expert but I don't think Apple lossless is available on there. You'd need software to make them yourself.

I use DBPoweramp, it's a superb app that has plug-ins for just about every music format.

Your iPhone will play Apple lossless though, and you could use the AUX connector to play them through your car stereo, bear in mind as that's not a digital connection it likely won't sound as good as if you had a USB or iPod connection. It'll be the iPhones internal amplifier doing the output, don't know how good that is.

I don't know anything about the car's internal HDD as i don't have iDrive, hopefully someone can step in here regards that part.

One big advantage to lossless compression is as you haven't lost anything, you can easily convert to any other format without having to re-rip the music. So if you had your whole library as lossless and you needed some mp3 for whatever device, you're starting from a lossless position.

All mine is FLAC, the CDs are stored in the loft - I don't even have a CD player in the house any more!!

[leetennis]

Ok, sorry for all the q's!
Are you using a large flash drive to play your music and the car reads directly from the flash drive?

I think even using the USB with an iPhone/iPod the music is played down the wire not read. I could be wrong.

I will get looking for your software suggestion.
Thanks for your help

[the_rangdo]

No worries

I was using a 32GB memory stick, then wanted more space (was bound to happen) so it was a toss-up between a big memory stick or a hard disk.

Large memory sticks I find a bit hit'n'miss for reliability so I got a 120GB solid state hard disk (i.e. no spinny things inside ) which can be powered solely by the USB socket. Effectively it's just a large flash drive but read/write speeds are quicker than big sticks so it's not painfully slow adding music.

I'm sure I read on here somewhere that with a USB connection and an iPod you can either use the iPod to control the music playback so it uses the analogue output, or you can connect it as a hard disk so you get a digital connection but the iPod loses playback control, it's all done via the car stereo only. It's not a route I've followed so I may well be wrong on that.

[leetennis]

Just downloaded a trial version of dbpoweramp I will burn some high quality CDs before trying to get to the bottom of playing via iPhone or any other device.
You have been great help, if it's ok can I drop a pm to tap into some more of your knowledge
Lee

[the_rangdo]

Sure, fire away although I'm shutting down for the night, long day tomorrow.

[jonl1983]

Apple lossless format is on iTunes. Before you import a cd click import settings on the bottom right and select 'apple lossless' from the options, job done.

Some may not notice the difference between mp3 and lossless format on standard stereos/headphones but run it through a proper stereo or your car and the difference is massive. No more 192kbps crap anymore!

[the_rangdo]

Originally Posted by jonl1983

Some may not notice the difference between mp3 and lossless format on standard stereos/headphones but run it through a proper stereo or your car and the difference is massive. No more 192kbps crap anymore!

+1

Home setup is FLAC all the way, including some high def stuff.

I started using 320kbps mp3 in the car, then tried WMA-lossless for a giggle not expecting to really hear it (I'm on the standard speaker setup) but it's still noticeable - roll on the Alpine upgrade, when Germany finally has some stock to send over the channel.