Ipod to Digital Out

and it does appear like the Monitor Audio unit takes digital out of the ipod.

I don't know; I seem to recall that Vinnie was very skeptical as to how they might achieve that, and why more companies do not do the same thing. You might write to him if you want to get his input on the subject. That said, my car stereo has an iPod interface that I plug into which requires a separate box to achieve. I don't understand what the box does and why the stereo isn't just taking the line-out from the iPod and amplifying it (why would you need an interface for that? Other than to get another $100 from your customer.). In the case of my car deck (an Alpine), the CD player does sound superior to the iPod playing the same material for whatever that's worth.

OK - I've got an email in to the technical i-Deck person at Monitor Audio. I'll report back if I get an answer.

Peter_s

The Ipod is capable of digital out. BUT it takes software to do that. The new Itunes interface will read the songs from your Ipod and put them on your hard drive. Before this there were 3d party applications that would acomplish the same thing. So I think it is a matter of knowing which pins output the digital signal from the Ipod connection, fireing up the Ipod and reading the info from the Ipod. What this digital signal is I have no Idea so software may be required to convert it. But it seems logical that one could make a cable to go from the Ipod connector out to an RCA connector if the pin outs were known.

Just my 2 cents.

Contact HeadRoom, Moon Audio, and Stefan Art Audio to see if the can help.

Good news! I hope this means that those with circuitry skills will jump right on this! Perhaps an iPod-SPDIF adaptor...

I just got this response from Monitor Audio:

"The i-deck uses the analogue line output from the iPod. The digital/ audio over USB protocol has only just been released to us by Apple in September, which will mean that products in the future may use the digital data stream with local D/A conversion. At this moment there are no products on the market that currently use digital audio conversion for iPod."

for the following question:

"I would like to know whether the i-Deck does its own conversion of digital signal downloaded from the iPod (i.e. using a DAC built into the i-Deck itself) or whether it takes the line-level analog audio signal from the iPod and just amplifies it within the i-Deck. I have heard that the i-Deck is a large sonic improvement over many other iPod accessories, and I am especially interested in whether it uses a digital or analog signal from the iPod."