Can Anyone Please Walk Me Through This?

I dont think I am as rigid as the tone of my post might have suggested. I am glad, however, that this has inspired a lively discussion and thank you everyone for your thoughts.

I am not trying to brag about my golden ears, and perhaps I was listening to 128 MP3s (which many of you have suggested are far inferior) during my test which actually was in my car.

To further shock and astound you, you would see from the "what car do you drive thread" that the car is a Porsche Boxster S with a stainless racing exhaust. Somehow -- even with the roof down -- a harder and more fatiguing quality was apparent on the MP3s vs the WAV files.

The system consists of a Nakamich CD-400 using low level outputs to an a/d/s amp, with a/d/s woofers in the door panels, addl soundproofing, and mediocre upward firing mid/tweeters in the dash. The iPod connects through a cable -- not cryogenically treated -- as the Nak has an aux input switch on the front panel.

Obviously, I am not trying to debate resolution, transparency or inner detail most of which will be lost in a car environment, just the sensation of listener's fatigue.

I dont necessarily expect the Ipod to be a high end device, and I am happy to listen to music casually on things that are not "high end".

But why not pursue the best when experimenting with a new format?

Sorry if my earlier post come off sounding like I was bashing you. It just seems to me that you're being unrealistic with what the iPod is capable of doing. Just my opinion.

You're real lucky that you Porsche/Nakamichi has a front panel aux input. It makes hooking up the iPod much easier. I'm reduced to using a cassette adapter or an add-on FM transmitter. Both work, but neither is a particularly elegant solution.

Onhwy61

The Nakamichi CD400 has RCA inputs on the BACK, not the front, but the front panel selects the source radio, CD, or aux.

A RCA to mini jack cable is permanently installed and hidden under the center console, so the Ipod can be easily plugged in and kept inside the locking center compartment.

If you are using the cassette style or FM transmitter with your Ipod, I would agree that none of these differences should be meaningful.

But hard wired to the system, I was amazed by the differences -- even with the top down.

Thanks for your comments. No offense was taken.

My comments regarding sound quality comparisons were based upon listening through my bedroom system (Panasonic XR45 receiver, Sony SM7 speakers with a Apple G5 computer via optical cable as the source).

UV, we may be in violent agreement. I seriously doubt Dibrom was opining to people in the same category, in terms of critical listening and in terms of marginal value, as most of the people in this forum. You are talking to an audience that feels they can tell the difference between brass cones and mahogany cones under their CD player. That would not be me.

And, I have listened. I don't recommend alt preset insane, for example, b/c it doesn't make sense to me based on my hearing and the cost/benefit I see out of digital compressed audio. Before undertaking the not-so-small task of ripping over 1K CDs, I did some pretty extensive testing.

On the other hand, I'm probably not your average mp3 listener. Everything piped through my system is stuff I've ripped off of my CDs and run through LAME. In my study, my computer feeds a Theta Pro Basic IIIa through a Edirol USB to coax converter, from there it goes into an ARC LS-16 II, into an ARC D400 II into a pair of ProAc RS2s. In my main rig, the mp3s go from an Audiotron via coax to a Theta Casablanca into a pair of ARC VT100s into a pair of ProAc 3.8s. In those systems, I *can* hear the difference, and I can hear the difference between alt preset extreme and a real CDs--the mp3s are, in those systems, strictly for background music and convenience. I will admit, however, that in my garage, where an Audiotron feeds a little Henry Kloss table radio, and in my bedroom, where a cd30 feeds a little Nakamichi clock radio, and in my iPod, I manifestly *can't* tell the difference. Frankly, I might be able to tell the difference in the iPod with the ER6s, but those things make me nauseous. Haven't really spent much time trying to tell the difference in the stereo upstairs, which is somewhere between the extremes.

B'sides, UV, I wasn't trying to elevate or bash mp3s, alt preset whatever. The point I was trying to make was that its a compromise. Listen, and put the marker where you want in terms of sound quality versus file size. You raised a valid point that I hadn't thought about with respect to battery life and WAV files. I'm guessing, in fact, that you would have the same problems with alt preset insane for the same reason.

For me, the compromise happens to fit nicely at alt preset extreme. Even with my (now small) 20GB iPod, I've got more tunes on tap than I ever want to be forced to listen to on an airplane. Gives me sufficient choice until the batteries run out, and that is longer than I want to fly anyway. Frankly, if I was really freaky, I'd probably advocate fiddling with all the command line args to get exactly what you want. That is also my compromise--I don't want to fool with it, and I'll trust the coding community to give me as optimal audio quality under a specified set of parameters for compression under the alt presets.

YMMV.