*Batman*

Those charts are great. But isn't it always the case that wireless technologies trade off quality of connection for convenience?

I think you will find a similar loss of signal quality with over-the-air radio, over-the-air tv, cordless phones, and cellular phones.

Cell Phones are a good analogy. I sometimes use my cellphone at home because it happens to be in my pocket instead of walking to the countertop to get the landline. I think bluetooth in the car is something I might use the same way.

I leave a corded iPod in my car all the time. But when I download some new music - it's on my iPhone but it won't get to my in-car iPod for a while. So if I want to listen to that latest album, or to Pandora, instead of having to open the armrest, dig out the iPod disconnect it and reconnect the iPhone, I can just switch to bluetooth and play from the iPhone.

It's a secondary connection that adds convenience. I don't want to touch the wired connection to the iPod. I leave that alone. if I want to play from the iPhone I would use bluetooth.

ASILVER

don't get me wrong there's something weird going on I agree with your assessment but I have to laugh my butt off that you'd even list THD as a qualified comparison.


What's the lowest % THD the human ear can actually hear?

I'm not a huge audiofile anymore but it's been at least 10 years since anyone really thought THD was a useful comparison

google found this thread on the uselesness of THD

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=119653

NAK

THD itself is absolutely useless. But THD, IMD, frequency response, phase delay and crosstalk together give you full picture.

kevintown

3-4 years ago, i used ADP bluetooth to listen musics in my phone on subway (when I was in asia, where you have signal in subway so ADP comes handy to pickup phones while listening music).

The sound quality of bluetooth is way worse than wired ones. But hey, if it's Pandora (OTA), I don't think it matters.

For me, I would have a 32GB thumb drive (if a 500G notebook hdd works its better) linked to the USB, and my iphone thru bluetooth so that i can either listen to pandora or pickup phones.

ASILVER

ok more updates

seems as though the ticking sound is specific to pandora, when I listen to my droid via bluetooth and just listen to mp3s it's fine, when I listen to pandora there's ticking but its only noticeable at lower volumes, I think its perhaps relational to the compression ratio of pandora itself.

I also installed the 4080 enclosure (very nice quality) along with a temporary sub I had laying around until my JL arrives...this gave me another opportunity to hear sound quality differences.

When playing identical mp3 off a CD versus the same file Bluetooth, the bass response is reduced by about 50%...i'm sure the rest of the audible range is reduced as the graphs already showed.....however at least the volume isn't as much of a reduction.

lastly

I plugged in a usb thumb drive I borrowed this sounded much more like CD but I didn't use the same exact song to compare so this is just an opinion...it would have shown the titles but apparently there weren't any for the songs he loaded on the usb drive...d'oh

Aristo82

Be careful with these DICE units. I can't say much for their MB-1500s, but I bought their other product (MB-1000) and ended up returning it after spending almost 30 days with it.

-My unit hated ignition cycling. If I turned my car off with my IPOD playing, at next ignition cycle my radio would turn itself off. I could turn it back on but my headunit could not access the DICE interface (so basically my radio acted like the box wasn't even there). I would either have to disconnect/reconnect the main harness or turn my car on/off until it started acting correctly.
-Shuffle feature was buggy. If I put it on shuffle mode, I sometimes could not get sound to come out. I would have to reset the unit to unfreeze itself.
-Sometimes it would play a song for 5 seconds then skip to another.

Regarding the first symptom, I know of 2 other people who had the same issue as me (one had a 06M, another had a 07M).

Tech support was not much help. I kept on checking their website every single day and upgraded to the latest software and situation improved somewhat (froze less frequently), but I did not get a good feeling about my purchase and ended up returning it.

Just my 2 cents on my experience with their product...

*Batman*

Thanks. One of the custom electronics shops I talked to also raised concerns about the Dice being buggy. He was strongly encouraging his customers to go for USA Spec or VaisTech.

It's a shame one of the moderators scared Serggus of the forum with some accusation that he was a Dice agent. serggus was doing a detailed and comparative test of dice against others. He seemed to be pretty kosher to me. Would have liked to have had his review as well.

That said I'm intrigued by the SL2iC from Vaistech right now. It is using iPod out functionality from ioS4 which gives a much more Apple like interface in the Lexus.

ASILVER

FWIW I don't have ML or SAT which probably makes it less buggy.

The instruction manual specifically address that you have to adjust the dipswitches on the dice unit to work with your specific factory setting

for example 2 switches down is for no ML and no sat.
then there's another setting for ML with Sat ML with no sat and sat with no ML

Did you mess with the dipswitches.

I'm not going to propose that the dipswitches would have solved your problem, but that's what they are there for and factory setting is both down, which is not correct if you have ML.

The guy I purchased from states "authorized dealer" from ebay, he was very helpful b/c he had originally listed only the 1000 but I wanted the 1500 and he got it for me without issue.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWNX:IT

perhaps send him questions you might get better answers then the tech support.


also I did call the tech support, they couldn't tell me whether the droid would be charged by the USB, when in fact they should test their product with popular phones...had they done this they would have known it doesn't work via usb AT ALL it must be bluetooth or headphone

Aristo82

My GS is same as yours - no ML/SAT.

I tried mine with SAT/CD emulation (both dipswitches up and both down) and I had the same issue either way. I asked another Lexus forum about dipswitch settings and found out about another person that had the same issue.

I hope you have better luck with the MB-1500. It is possible that they have completely diff software which eliminates these issues I ran into. Gonna take a look at the PXAMG or Vaistech unit next.

ASILVER

OH I see, that's a bummer, perhaps the 1500 is different....it's very annoying to get a product that's all buggie.

*Batman*

If you bought the Dice Silverline, that product is known to be buggy and unreliable. Very few professional installers will carry it because of the bugs. They do a good job with BMWs but any other car has problems.

People should stay away from the Silverline.

ASILVER

next update.

I have installed the JL 12w6v2 in the 4080 enclosure....huge improvement..

and also purchased a 16gb usb stick and plugged it in, definitely the best sound quality.

it displays folder and song title AND scrolls the name if it's too long WIN

in order to change folders you push the TEXT button which will switch between song title display and 6 channel options, channel 1 is song (which means your FF and RW operate only 1 song at a time) channel 2 - 6 are identical as folder, select any one of these and now your FF and RW change folders...pretty cool

kevintown

Emm, sounds very interesting. Will wait for the reliability report after 1 month, then i'll pull the trigger.

Now the cheapest MB1500 on amazon is only $230.

BinaryJay

Looks spiffy, but still pricey compared to GROM. The jury is still out on the latest firmware from GROM for startup stability but I'll report back about that later, so far it seems like they just may have finally swept away the gremlins though.

Looks a little bit big/funny shaped so mounting options will probably be more limited than the GROM device as well.

Of course the significant missing feature from this new dice unit compared to grom is A2DP but if you really think about it, with how cheap, spacious and tiny USB drives are there is pretty much no reason you can't keep your whole music collection in the car directly hooked up all the time, I know I do (also the typical audio quality issues that come from A2DP are another deterrent of course).

*Batman*

Of course with 32gb USB sticks for $20 it makes sense to leave one in the car at all times. I think the benefit of the A2DB isn't for pre-stored music but streaming of internet music from a phone - e.g. Pandora, internet radio, etc.

But that said, I'm skipping this Dice unit. The upcoming Vais unit which offers Apple iPod out UI on the Lexus screen is what I want. Beats the hell out of this CD and SAT-mode emulation garbage!