MythBuster

CDs, Ipod, FM transmitter


Which method has the best quality, or being digital all of them have the same quality??

many thanks

astrotoy

For me, the best quality are DVD-A's (not DVD's - but look like them and are only audio) which play in the ML system. They are the highest resolution, double the CD or normal wav files (best in iPods). They also are often multichannel. Unfortunately, they are not common to get. You can google DVD-A. The competing SACD high resolution discs only play in their CD layer (most SACD's are dual layer) on the ML and record that way on the ML HD. I am looking into converting some of my prized vinyl into wav files onto my iPod - that may be close to DVD-A and I'll have a much better selection to play in the car. The iPod playing back CD's in wav files (uncompressed) sound as good or better than the original CD's to me. I can easily hear the compression of the HD at 256K sampling - not bad but not as good as the original CD.

A very nice DVD-A that is fairly easy to get is the Beatle's LOVE album (based on the Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas). It comes with both a DVD-A and CD versions. To play the DVD-A at home you need a special player - some DVD players will play them and universal players play them. I have one of the latter - a Bel Canto PL-1A which does a nice job.

MythBuster

I am trying to justify buying ipod

Astrotoy
Are the wav files better quality than the mp3

many thanks

LAMark

Astrotoy,

It sounds like we both have the audiophile hobby (curse?) in common as well as 460s. Agree with all you said, just wanted to add a little about the ML system. As advertised (there was a positive review in...Stereophile I think) this is a sophisticated, highly resolving setup for CDs. And I get to hear my DVD-A collection in my new car! I've got about 50 of those and they are some of my favorite discs. I have found the bass in the "neutral" setting to be way overemphasised on many CDs and I've turned down the bass tone control 3 notches. Still a little boomy but great sound staging, very enjoyable. I use Apple lossless on my iPod (equivalent to WAV) and I keep a dock in the console so I can run lineout thru the Aux input. Still, CDs sound much better to me, maybe I should try one of the aftermarket conversions? Wonder if there is S/PDIF input into the head unit which would enable use of a Wadia iTransport. Probably not. Definitely everything sounds better with the DSP disabled. XM radio is not too bad and there is a lot of variety. As for FM transmitters, don't go there unless you have to...all digital is definitely not alike.

Mark.

P.S. I sat in the car the other night and watched one of my favorite DVD scenes (the "you shall not pass!" scene from LOTR). The sound was quite a treat, and made me wish for a bigger screen. Took a while to fiddle with the aspect ratio to get it right, the touchscreen seems to have a non-standard ratio but there are some controls for it on one of the menus. Anybody have experience with the quality of the rear seat LCD?

rominl

iTrader: (4)

fm modules are joke, that can never be good. i use cd, and the ipod aux input isn't that good neither. if you can, go dvd-a

jettie1767

Satellite radio or cd.

MythBuster

Many thanks

For some reason I thought all digitals consisting of binary data are the same, but I think there is more to it than that.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

lol definitely not the case. put it this way, you have never had better FM reception than CD right? so fm modules for ipod won't help any, coz' it's just tranforming the ipod audio into a FM frequency. tons of loss there

the aux input on the car is pretty much an analog input if i am correct, coz' that's just like your earphone. so there will be loss there as well

and technically when you convert a CD song to mp3 (ipod), there will be some rate loss as well, although both are digital. and on top of that, of course with the dvd-a, it's also digital but you can store tons more information for clarity, etc...

astrotoy

IMHO, the wav files are much better than the mp3. I think they are better than the Apple lossless - which I started using on my iPod. Unfortunately, the wav files are also the biggest - so you can store fewer CD's. The new iPod with 160GB HD makes the larger files less of an issue. BTW, really good headphones on an iPod also make a difference (not in your car!) I like the sound quality of the Shure Ec4, but they cost about the same as an iPod and are not very sturdy.

MythBuster

Many thanks
rominl, astrotoy

very clear now

Luxofreak

I'm a recording engineer and trust me, you don't want an iPod or mp3 player at all if you're into quality.

If the ML was capable of reproducing 96Khz files that's all I would have it play through a CD or DVD. On a CD we're all stuck at 44.1Khz which is plenty of "resolution" for the average user.

For a while studios were recording everything at 48Khz and then downsampling it to 44.1Khz to be able to play everywhere. Today 48Khz is amateur studio format, 96Khz being a more professional resolution. There are higher sample rates too, but it starts getting expensive storagewise.

Anyways... I always listen to music in my LS-460 either through CDs or DVDs. Never ever HD or FM or Satelite.

BTW if you want top-notch in-ear monitors, buy the UE-11 Pro from Ultimate Ears.

LAMark

Luxofreak,

Agree that the iPod is inferior, but there have been some attempts to bypass the weaknesses of the amplifier (via lineout from the dock) and even the DAC via some very recent products, the first of which that I know about is the Wadia iTransport which takes the internal digital signal from the iPod and bypasses both the DAC and of course the little amp. I suspect that with an optical connection to a good DAC (Bel Canto, dcs, EMM) that it could sound pretty good but we're talking lots of $$. Too bad Apple never offered digital out from the iPod but I suppose there wouldn't have been much of a market for it, since it flies in the face of portability. Agree on the UE11's too but I'll stick with my Shure E5c's for now because I'm too lazy to go to the audiologist to get an ear mold made. At home I use my Senn HD-650s but that's a whole different topic and not at all about the Lexus. I am curious about the "other connection to the ML in the 460, the aftermarket one. Not sure exactly what the physical connection is, is it likely to be better than the AUX in?

Mark.

P.S. It's really too bad Lexus doesn't allow lossless encoding on their internal hard drive. I wonder if it's a hardware limitation or something they could upgrade via software/firmware.

Luxofreak

I won't hijack this thread talking about sound files, but I believe that even bypassing the DAC on an iPod wouldn't matter because the source file is already low quality? WAV files is the best people can use nowadays because of standards, and it's already crappy IMHO.

I believe Lexus didn't offer direct WAV storage (lossless) purely based on the size of the HD and also how much time the ML would take to rip. It's all software I agree, but they would have to offer at least 500Gb hard disk to let us store WAV files....

On a side note, Blu-Ray disks have an audio sample rate of 192Khz....

Nospinzone

..... SACD high resolution discs ....... S/PDIF input into the head unit which would enable use of a Wadia iTransport ....... the compression of the HD at 256K sampling ...... recording everything at 48Khz and then downsampling it to 44.1Khz ..... bypasses both the DAC and of course the little amp .....

I love it when you guys talk dirty!

LAMark

At the risk of further thread hijacking, or diversion anyway, I wanted to clarify something. All lossless encodings are just that, lossless. The AIFF files on a CD, WAV, and compressed lossless formats such as FLAC or ALAC (Apple lossless) are essentially bit-for-bit identical (of course the compressed versions need to be expanded for that to be strictly true) and so are capable of sounding exactly the same. Differences then become a matter of what happens after the bits are read in terms of converting, amplification, etc. Luxofreak has a professional view that they all suck compared to what can be produced in the studio, and he's absolutely right. After all, it's a 20+ year-old format. Anybody got any 20 year old PC's around?

So, as far as what we can realistically get in our Lexi, the hierarchy of sound would be from best to worst:

DVD-Audio>CD>256kbit MP3>128kbit MP3

I would put iPod, even with ALAC encoding via lineout thru the AUX input, toward the right, certainly lower quality than a CD. Same for XM radio, FM radio, and iPod via an FM transmitter is off the chart to the right.