Any Car Stereo Gurus Here?

[dartanion]

Mark, I did not call your sister-in-law yet. Mea culpa, I'll do it tomorrow.


Sorry, we don't own iAnything. I have a Blackberry and my wife has a regular cell fone. If music sounds on iEquipment like it does in the MP3 format, I'm not interested either. MP3 sound quality is totally inferior to a wide bandwidth analog signal.

And don't even get me started on CDs vs. Vinyl.......!

Apple's AAC encoding is lossless, so it is not crappy sounding like MP3s. It just might be time to plunk down for an iPod. The Shuffle is $49, Nano is $149, or you could pick up one used for cheap. I use my old iPhone as an iPod now and it works great with the iPod adapter in my car.

[vibratoking]

BTW, I put our only remaining cassette tape in it (remember those?), for something to listen to. The bandwidth and smooth analog high end was far superior to any CD except the ones I have that are remastered and have gold plated signal sides.

Huh? Gold plated signal sides enhance the sound quality? I would strongly disagree that gold plated disks sound any different than aluminum plated ones. They may last longer and cost more, but the sound is the same if the coating is in proper working order.

Apple's AAC encoding is lossless, ...

AAC is not lossless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

[dartanion]

Apple's AAC encoding is lossless, ...

AAC is not lossless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

Okay. I was wrong. Still doesn't sound horrible though. So, install a tape deck

[Colossal]

There is an Apple Lossless import option for iTunes which captures all of the information for a song. It eats a lot more memory of course but you can select it if you have a big hard drive and insist on having no degradation. To hear the difference however between the standard 256Kbps/44kHz sampling rate and Lossless formats, you'd need to have a higher end preamp/poweramp/ D/A converter.

[David Root]

vibratoking, it's more the remastering than the gold plate I think. All my gold plate CDs are special issues remastered.

[NickC]

vibratoking, it's more the remastering than the gold plate I think. All my gold plate CDs are special issues remastered.

Many of the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs line of CDs had gold plate but, as you say, the real magic was in the remastering for digital.

[boots]

David,

I just saw this post - don't know if you are still trying to fix that 12 CD changer or not. I used to work for a Pioneer service center in the early 90's, and usually cleaning the lens (NOT with alcohol!) helped. There are also some pots you can tweak to maximize the sig coming from the laser pickup, but I don't remember which one is which any more! Possibly also, if the grease on the pickup carriage is old and crusty, that will also keep it from working right. If cleaning/lubing & alignment don't help, probably the laser pickup assy is toast.

Also, if it is trunk-mounted, make sure the changer is getting plenty of voltage & current. It will have troubles if it doesn't have a good regulated power supply voltage. I wouldn't use anything smaller than 12 gauge wire from the battery to a trunk-mounted changer.

[David Root]

Thanx boots, I tried most of that, and had to conclude that the laser assembly was toast. Mechanically it worked fine, you could hear it cycling the disks. It would identify each disk correctly BUT it would not ID the track or start playing it, then I got an E30 error.