Why does my ipod sound so bad in the car?

2005-08-04 21:08:31

Evening all

I am hoping that the collective expertise on this forum might be able to help me understand using my ipod in the car.

My CD's are ripped using itunes into 224 kbs AAC files, which when listening through the ipod headphone socket with Shure E3c headphones sound pretty close to the original CD.

But when listening in my car using an Alpine CDA7998r headunit and the KCA410 ipod adapter the sound quality is pretty bad - nowhere near as good as playing CD's though the headunit or changer.

I'm about to start re-ripping my entire collection using EAC to produce either apple or flac lossles files because I'm setting up a digital home network audio system.

Now, i'm hoping that the quality of these files will sound much better in the car, but need to understand the ipod car set up better.

Is the Alpine AInet a purely analogue system?  If so, how is the signal outputted from the ipod?  Is the digital signal on the ipod converted from digital to analogue and then run straght through to the alpine and onto the amplifiers, or does the headunit reconvert to a digital signal, which is then decoded again?

And why would I hear so much difference in the car with the current settings than through my Shure headphones, which are extremely good in terms of sound quality and transparency.

Any information or ideas would be welcomed, not that I'm exactly sure what to do?

Cheers

Steve

Why does my ipod sound so bad in the car?

Reply #1 – 2005-08-04 21:46:38

My first thought is that the adapter unit between the iPod and the Alpine is the culprit.  Can you sub another unit for it to see??   

Why does my ipod sound so bad in the car?

Reply #2 – 2005-08-04 22:15:45

The audio coming out of the iPod when you are using the KCA-420i adapter is analog. It should be piped straight to your head unit as an analog signal. Admittedly, the KCA-420i may screw around with it, but the signal coming out of the iPod is line level analog. 3 wires carrying a stereo signal (LR and Ground), in fact. Yes, I can prove this.

Now, whether it's the iPod's problem or not, I can't say. How does the sound quality coming out of the iPod dock's line level output jack sound? If it sounds good, then it's not the iPod's problem. Could be the cable, could be the KCA-420i device, could be the connection... no easy way to say without testing each of them.

The headphone socket on the iPod is amplified, BTW. The line level output hidden in the dock connector is not. So you really can't compare the two, as they come from different places on the board internally.

Why does my ipod sound so bad in the car?

Reply #3 – 2005-08-08 03:31:29

Mine sounds fine. Have to check the model numbers for the head unit, amp, etc. Only real problem I have is that it forgets the mix setting when I turn the car off, also it takes ages to scroll through playlists, etc.

headunit is CDA-9851 running through a MRV-F345.

Why does my ipod sound so bad in the car?

Reply #4 – 2005-08-08 04:29:56

If you have more than 2 speakers in the car, what happens if you listen to only the front  pair?