TC.

Thought I would pass this onto everyone.

I currently have the prof. stereo and standard speakers in my 330d (below average system IMHO in this day and age); I have however had a recent music revelation! I bought myself an 80GB iPod Video in anticipation of the USB2 interface on my forthcoming 535d; the 80GB pod now has all 60GB worth of my music collection on it. I have encoded a carefully selected number of albums (Floyd, Zeppelin etc etc) in the Apple Lossless decompressed format - oh my god!!, if you play a standard CD through the stereo and then the equiv. track through the iPod via the AUX input the sound quality difference is amazing - I never thought that MP3 could sound better than source CD but I have been proven wrong, sound quality is now far better than average. I can not wait to hear it via dedicated USB2 and Logic 7..

In terms of the rest of the music, this also sounds very good, better than standard CD - It is all ripped into iTunes 7 at 192kbps, this seems to be a high enough bit rate to see an improvement over most standard CD's. To be completely clear, when I say improved quality I mean far crisper base response, more clearly defined mid range and far more realistic vocals. I would be very interested to know if others have had similar experiences?

TC.

another point to add, the file size difference between Lossless and standard MP3 is significant - average goes from around 5mb per track to 30mb per track - only decompress files if you have the storage capacity!

aybeesea

Well I'm extremely confused. I don't understand what has Apple Lossless got to do with how MP3 sounds.

And as for MP3 sounding "better" than the original - great - we have perpetual motion and contravention of the Laws of Thermodynamics and Information Theory rolled into one!

Someone's due a Nobel Prize!!

Seriously though. Listening to audio is a psycho-acoustic process. It just depends where you are on the scale!!

ABC

ipp

He probably ment the Apple Lossless file (.m4a), not MP3.

uglybear

AAC is not MP3. It is Apple compression format that comes in lossy and lossless form. MP3 is always lossy. That is why files in a lossy format are much smaller - information was dropped from the original file and - important - it CANNOT be restored back. Hence the LOSSY name. Lossless compression does not drop anything, like a ZIP compression on a computer makes files smaller, but after decompression they are identical to the original.

Now, if iPod sounds better than CD - something is wrong with your CD player. iPod does have decent digital to analog converter, maybe your CD player uses cheapo DAC.

Wiu-Bimmer

I don't think so.... How could your digital files sound better than the actual CD which is in the original digital format? On Apple iTunes you can modify the sound volume and it might depend on the equalization given by your iPod that their sound is different and you are identifying that as "better". Besides you are not even using the iPod iDrive interface but the Aux input which is supposed to have an inferior signal quality

swajames

It's perfectly possible - using the same reference disk, no two CD players will sound alike either. The same CD (or any other lossless digital data source) can generate audio output that sounds radically different on player A compared to player B due to any number of factors. Some players simply retrieve and decode data differently than others but whether A or B is *better* is subjective, and depends exclusively on the listener. The iPod does have decent DAC's, a point that wasn't lost on What Hi-Fi in the UK which consistently rates the iPod as one of its preferred digital audio players. BTW, the line-level output through the dock on your iPod (to my ears at least) can be markedly better than the headphone jack when connecting to an external amp.

aybeesea

The confusion was the introduction of MP3 by the OP into the comparison.

Others have pointed out that this terminology may have been made in error.

ABC

swajames

I was responding to Wiu Bimmer's question about something sounding better when it was in the "actual digital format", and observing that the same source material can and will produce different output due to differences in players - which is often a greater influence on the end product than the source material. I wasn't specifically commenting on any of the digital formats mentioned in the thread.

uglybear

Format in which data is stored is irrelevant as long as digital-to-analog converter receives same bits. In CD player data in CD format read by a laser and as pits and bumps and fed to the DAC. In iPod data is stored on hard disk, where processor reads them, decompresses and, provided that format they are stored in lossless (AAC lossles or WAV) produces excatly same bits as would be read from CD by the laser. Bitstream is then sent to the digital-to-analog converter.

Now, every CD player or media player employs different digital-to-analog conversion schemes. They are not the same and you can hear differences depending on music material. Also, there are different manufacturers, like Burr-Brown (best), Analog Devices, discrete DACs in high-end players like Mark Levinson, etc. All DACs require post-conversion fillters to eliminate ringing at high frequencies (discussions where they come from is beyond this topic and requires basic knowledge of spectral analysis of signals and digital audio). There are many types of filters, some filter better but affect signal phase distribution across frequencies and some filter worse, but leave phase unchanged. They all affect sound quality in different ways.

iPod probably sounds better than $100 CD player or a boombox. $1000 CD player will sound better, provided you also match it with decent amplifier and speakers. $10000 player may sound even better, but it will require properly acousticaly treated room similar to recording studios and will you hear the difference or not will depend on the music type, recording quality and your ears

iDrive/iPod interfaces pick analog signal from doc connector. You can purchase a cable that plugs into the doc connector and gives you line level signal out. You can connect this signal to aux input and get the same quality as with iDrive/iPod adapter (some recommend removal of low pass filter from aux input though).