because of the LS, I'm buying cds again
 

very odd, huh? there are young un's in my office who say they have never used a cd before. One guy goes, I obviously know what they are, just have never used one (dvds don't count). then I said have you ever used a cassette? Ever held one? He goes no, but I know my parents have, so I do know what it is, just never personally touched one. :D

I have never really had an issue with paying for music, so since the LS has a changer, I have purchased some. I don't even have a pc that I use daily that even has a cd/dvd rom anymore, so downloading and ripping isn't practical....

i have an iPod with tons of music, but it can't interface with the LS....

My first car had an 8 track player...

u know i really enjoy my LS alot... just because of the CD player and cassette .. i still have my cassette from my younger days and cd's..

i do still play them from time to time.. even though i know i can listen to it on my IPHONE ... i have the SL3b BlueTooth module in my LS... so i can stream anything

my next mod will be two headrest screens with apple TV... that way i can stream my phone to it... for movies :D and internet through air play...

Edit: i still remember hitting the record and play button to record songs off the radio... hahaha!!

My first car had a transistor radio. That's what was printed on the face of the radio ... "Transistor Radio". Cuz it ws so much better than a tube radio. AM only. I thought I was a badass when I added an 8 track player and some speakers!

We installed FM receivers to our AM-only cars to get higher fidelity FM radio sound (mono or stereo, depending upon the FM receiver's build quality).

hate to admit this, so please delete after reading....I remember taking out my dad's Sansui reel to reel, and putting a mic up to a AM radio, and recording the beach boys. Luckily my dad got me a cassette player from Sears, so I could switch to cassette! Heck, in my college days, the Richey Rich's used Sony D'5s and a pair of Sennheiser mics to record the Dead shows. Them mics were like 3 grand back then. and the D5's supposedly were way better than the digital D6's......memories! :D

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-TC-D5PRO-II-professional-stereo-cassette-corder-recorder/122272040281?_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3D342174da55c44a39a78c8d0a9854fc1a%26pid%3D100011%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D261270907786
Nowadays I hear them youngin's would use something like this....very modern!

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...C&Q=&A=details

It can interface with aftermarket equipment. I've had the MML for years and it works well.

http://www.vaistech.com/

I agree that legitimate CDs sound amazing with the Mark Levinson system. I have a few, and the quality is very high.

For audiophile-grade music, you should find and/or create music rips that are in the .FLAC file format, with a rip log file indicating 100% quality. The FLAC format is lossless, meaning it is bit for bit exactly the same as the source. So long as the source is high quality, the FLAC version of that source will be identical.

Most common audio formats (ie. MP3, MP4, WMA, AAC, OGG) are lossy, meaning quality is lost during the compression process, and with a high-end audio system, most people should be able to hear that most MP3s sound much worse than the FLAC version. Now if someone converts an MP3 to FLAC, you will not hear any improvement, since lossless is only as good as the source. This is where the FLAC encode logfiles come useful, so you can see it was ripped from a real CD.

If you have an iPod or other device that doesn't play FLAC natively, just convert the FLAC file to WAV using a program like FLAC Front End.

Anything going over an FM or AM frequency will sound like garbage, even an iPod broadcasting through an in-car FM transmitter using with WAV files converted from FLAC. Direct non-wireless integration with the ML system's minidisc or CD functions is essential to maintaining high quality with an external music source.

I found one of those Cassette-AUX adapter doo-dads in one of our workshop courtesy cars, snagged that and now it sits in the LS playing music off my busted iPhone

Audiophile is definitely something I will never experience, I accept it....a HS buddy has a 6 figure stereo, and when I busted on him, he said, hey, you guys have your BMWs and Porsches, I have my hi fi. As soon as he said McIntosh, he had my attention. I once went to a store to look, and scurried out as the salesperson approached... Like most others, they did license out their name to cars, I saw some Subarus having McIntosh audio, but I question if that really is....

My car has satellite radio installed at the port way back when, per the paperwork, and the trial channel that it gets, sounds better than my wife's car, that has a GM 9 speaker Bose with a subscription....

That is awesome you are buying CDs. Keep your eye out for DVD-Audio (ML system supports the format) discs as they are a whole another level higher. DVD-A can support up to 24/192 in two channel and the surround discs sound amazing as they are discrete. That is each channel has specific information for the surround just like how Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 work. (and the newer stuff) Problem is they have been out print for some time and many of discs are now worth a small fortune.

Check out Amazon for DVD-A discs as I think some might not be too expensive and it really is pretty darn impressive.

My bad. Thought I was on the 460 forum as the 430 does not support DVD-A. That said, CD's sound awesome on the 430's ML system.

I listen to a lot of classical music and I do enjoy using a compact disc for classical. Not sure why, but it just sounds better than the iPod with similar music. If I'm listening to Ambient or Trance, the iPod does just fine...

My son bought a new radio for his truck and... You guessed it... no CD player.. Just a jack for the iPod.

What's this world coming to?

Another question on this.....if I were to buy a commercial CD, doesn't it have roughly 4X the kb/s than a mp3? Meaning the mp3 would have been compressed from the CD itself, so it does not sound as good....so I don't know what my options to rip are say from online on cds that I have purchased, but I assume that I'd be ripping to mp3 which is not as good as the original disc....

Oh you bastage you! You had me about ready to go get my DVD-A Acura sample disc to try out in my LS430... ;)