Both preinstalled and retrofitted AUX from BMW are female jacks. One is in the back and one is in the glove box, respectively.
To see if your AUX jack is suffered from gain and bass loss, try to play the same song on both CD and your iPod. If you see the bass significant reduce on iPod, AUX has cap and resistor.
However, if I were BMW electrical engineer, I'd still have to put cap and resistor b/w aux jack and CCC/MAS-K. Without this, turning on/off MP3/DVD/external device will cause popping sound. This is the price you have to pay for eliminating the gain and bass loss.
For those who wants to connect external DVD and CD player, do not remove cap/resistor or you'll experience popping noise whenever the track is changed.

 

Correct, my dealer offered an installation date in August. Anyways, since I got mp3 enabled i'm having seconds thoughts now....we'll see.

 

If I can play MP3 on DVD, I would not bother to do anything with AUX input.
I agree w/ Andy that I'd have a 2nd thought for iPod adapter retrofit. My dealer charge $500 for 3-series iPod adapter retrofit. It's a cut throat price.

 

I'd agree, trouble is at least 95% of my 40 Gb plus of music is in AAC rather than MP3 so I'm kind of stuck with the aux in or converting some of the files over to MP3.

 

swajames,

Don't worry. Open up iTune, select all files and convert to MP3. Do it over night
However, with DVD, nav will be unavailable. Oops. So go back to CD MP3

 

 

There is a difference. To be honest I only listed to the output from my headphone jack for about 15 seconds (in the E60) before switching to a line level output. I have both the monster and the pocket dock. They both work well. For another car I used the Belkin but it's built in amp counters any bonus you get from getting your audio from the dock plug. As others have said here, you want line level out with no cheap amp in the way.

 

Thanks for all the advice. It'll be interesting to see if the preinstalled aux in 07 models is loud enough for direct line-out connections. I have yet to see an E60.net member report on this. Maybe I'll be the first as my new 07 is due this week.

Thanks again!

 

The aftermarket aux input is equally quiet on line-out as it is using the headphone jack.

After I followed the advice of my530i and cut out the in-line capacitors and resistors the volume and bass response increased.

However, having taken out bits that were specifically supposed to protect my system I was concerned that I might damage it.

Therefore - with these removed - you really don't want to be using any pre-amps - so line out is the only way.

I have also normalised the volume of all of my mp3's with a programme called MP3gain to 89db.

The aux in is quieter than the other inputs so I have to remember to adjust the volume when switching back to the radio - but I don't particularly mind this - I have to do a similar exercise when switching between radio 1 (music) and radio 4 (talk).

See what you think when you get the car - I think I would be pulling out the cable pretty soon to do my530is mod though.