Hello all. I've recently finished ripping all of my cd's to my ipod and am now using it as my source for listening to music on my home stereo. I purchased a dock that connects it to my receiver, but it just does not sound as good and as loud as a cd. What can I do to improve the sound and volume coming from the ipod going to the stereo speakers? I do realize that one thing I should do is to maybe re-encode my cd's as wav files (or lossless???) instead of .mp3 files @ 320bps as I have done previously. Will this solve my problem, or am I doomed to have poor audio quality from the ipod on my home system? Thanks for any help or suggestions! ~Carl
Once I heard that Dave Wilson of Wilson Audio got cd quality out of mp3s from an ipod. But he used Krell power amps and preamps with Wilson Maxx speakers. That rig cost about $70,000 I know this defeats the purpose, but it states you can recover from mp3s cd quality.
Without knowing what you are using I would blame your audio manager. iTunes has its own agenda. They make all their money selling low bit rate music. They complain that that quality is too low but the music industry doesn't care. So they have to contend with selling trash and are doing great. However, they degrade music quality so the public thinks 128 sounds great. I suspect if you play any music on itunes it degrades the music to 128 br when it plays. People that use itunes too much are under the delusion 128 sounds the same as a CD. It does on itunes. I do know when it moves high bit rate mp3s to your ipod hey are compressed to 128 m4as because all you have to do is look. iPods will faithfully reproduce 320 BR mp3s if they can get there. To hear HiFi music on an ipod you need to sync with something other than itunes and get some real ear phones. Stock ear buds are designed to reproduce 128 BR music. Price has nothing to do with the range. I bought a pair for $7 that blows away the expensive isolation plugs for $250. Mine look like crap but have great sound. The $250 pair look great but sound like crap. I would also suspect that docking stations are not HiFi either. Anything associated with an ipod is usually not HiFi. Do yourself a favor, connect directly to the sterio. Eliminate all the bad links in your audio chain. 320s should sound the same as the CD. If they do not something is wrong. Lastly you might need to check into your ripper. That is the least likely weak link. Most rippers including freebees can rip at a constant bit rate OK. Top of the line rippers will do better than freebees but you need quite an ear to hear the difference. The difference between 128 and lossless is huge and anyone can hear that difference. I find it quite annoying.
I would also suspect that the corded connection could be a source of the loss. Unless it has optical or even an HDMI, there could be substantial loss here. My guess is that there is a mini jack going to RCA's. Is this correct?
I'd suggest that the iPod, like all the other iCrap (and most other tiny playback systems)just ain't gonna put out CD Quality sound. I'd also suggest that you're confusing volume with quality. MP3 @ 320kbps should have adequate quality, the iPod just doesn't have adequate output level. Have you tried a cord from the headphone jack into your receiver?
Teddy, I think this is the first time we disagree. The ipods can put out HiFi. I agree on the other items. I suspect all the mp3 players use pretty much the same chip. The consumer reports all agree mp3 players have HiFi specs. 20 years ago sound was rocket science but not any more. I know my nano has fantastic sound but none have much . After saying that Apple does what it can to degrade music to 128 kbit level. Just because your ipod can play HiFi doesn't mean you are going to hear it. itunes makes their money selling 128s. Apple has complained about having to sell such low quality music. Apple does everything in its power to insure you only hear 128 bit quality. Most itunes users are convinced CD and 128 BR are about equal in quality. I believe if you play a CD on itunes it degrades the sound to 128. I know itunes used to take high bit rate music and degrades it to 128 during the sync process. I stopped using it once I figured out itunes was trashing my music. That is why I suggested using descent audio manager before. Most ear pods/phones are crap as well. Anything sold for an ipod is likely to be garbage and could ruin your sound. You need to go directly from the ipod to the amp if you expect any quality at all. The ipod out put is so low, if you have a turn table input on your stereo you might want to try that one. Audio quality is as good as your weakest link. What did you rip the CDs with? That might be meaningful especially if you used itunes. Normalization has NOTHING to do with fidelity but you can bost the loudness that way.
The OP already said he ripped at 320 Kbps. That is about as HiFi as it gets. My remark re tiny playback systems is that most of them run on less tahn 3 Volt batteries (or less). 'Normal' line level is a nominal 1 Volt. A 3 volt power source just can't produce 1 Volt audio levels, hence my remark that he shouldn't confuse Volume with Quality. His amp has a volume knob, I doubt it has a 'Quality' knob...My bad, I appologize for dissing his 'SteveNess'...
I just wanted to make sure the real problem was understood. 320 BR is HIFi. The ipod will faithfully reproduce that fidelity when it plays it. Those are not part of the problem. If itunes is used to sync the 320 BR mp3s to the ipod, they are converted to 128 ma4s. THAT IS a real quality problem. If you do not fix that problem you will NEVER hear HiFi out of your ipod. Most itune users can't tell the quality difference because if they did they would not use that software. Because itunes is sneaky about the process, rename then hide the music few realize the music or at least mp3s are systematically down-graded. I suspect they do not mess with Apple formats. The other universal problem is mp3 players do not have much power in their output so they can run on batteries. That is a seperate issue.
I would also have to agree with some of the comments here and say that most of the little MP3 players just wont pump out great quality. look at a CD as being a piece of paper. Now fold that piece of paper up smaller and you get an MP3. when you open it back up it will have wrinkles in it and wont be as good as the unfolded piece of paper. Just invest in a multi cd changer; they sell them dirt cheap now. or rip them to your computer at top quality, they are large files but worth it for the quality.
Looks can be deceiving; the professional audio community believes the high end MP3s should sound as good as the source. I say should because some encoders are not so good. But something like an extreme quality mp3 produced by LAME is supposed to sound identical to the source even with the best human ear. Extreme would be 320 CBR or at the extreme setting for VBR. I just take their word for that. If you look at the specs mp3s produce HiFi music well beyond the ranges of the human ear with about no noise or distortion. The issue is not the quality of the music but the quantity. The mp3 players run on tiny batteries for hours. Common sense tells you the out put has to be tiny. If you want more power get a boom box. However, they do not have a fraction of the quality of an mp3 player. The biggest problems with mp3 player quality are files you play and the ear buds you use. Kwantsu makes a great suggestion for the wrong reasons. I don’t plug my ipod into my stereo either. Not for audio reasons because it plays great. I play DVDs or CDs because they are easier to use. To tell you the truth I HATE that stupid scroll ring! I don’t use my ipod in my car either even though I can plug it in to a device that allows you to control the ipod from the car system. Disks are much handier to use while ipods are a pain in the ass to navigate. If you have a DVD player hooked up to your stereo it will most likely play CDs and DVDs. CDs will hold 100-150 mp3s on one. DVDs much much more. That is plenty of listening time. Just burn them. I realize that sounds moronic. Taking them off CD then putting them back on. However, the mp3 CD can be large play lists or other stuff that you might want to hear on an occasion. They are like a mini mp3 collection. VDVs hold more than a 4 G flash drive. If you just want to pick every tune to play it is the only way to go.
No the ipod doesn't do anything but itunes sure does. At least while I was using it. I am sure they haven't cleaned up their act. Itunes will degrade and convert mp3s to m4as as well as scramble the names. To test me have someone with an ipod and a PC search the entire disk including hidden directories for an mp3 file. Then just to make sure your are doing things correctly search for a m4a file. You ought to find plenty of them. The players are not crap but itunes is.
carlvo, you can always buy a preamp. They are more expensive than a docking station but will maintain great fidelity. They all have turntable inputs since only extream audiophyles use that kind of equipment. You would output the preamp to your amp. Your amp should have no problem amplifying such a powerful input.
Carlvo: This is what you need to know! Using the Headphone Jack would be the worst thing you can do. Getting a true line out is the whole point of using a dock. Without it, you'd be double-preamping the iPod's signal, causing your A/V receivers and/or car head units to sound crappy. Questions: -Are you going from the dock's 1/8" mini plug to an adapter with dual mono RCA jacks? And if so, is this plugged into an open input (or auxillary channel) on your receiver? [Make certain that it's not plugged into a phono input which has too strong of a preamp. It doesn't matter if it's a DVD, CD, Tape, or VCR, input. All analog inputs, with the exception of the phono inputs, are of the same quality and output identical amounts of gain]. -Have you made certain that Sound Check is set to off in the iPod's main settings? I'm a recording studio engineer, and when I use my dock's line out it sounds just as good and sometimes even better than playing a CD in a player with analog (composite RCA) outputs. But songs must be stored as 16 bit 44.1 K WAV files (CD quality) in order to be capable of sounding like CDs. Sometimes, I even store music that's higher than CD quality on my iPod (24 bit 96, 192 K), but without a digital output the files are automatically converted back down to CD quality (16 bit) in the output stage. And of course, no analog dock regardless of the type of audio system it's connected to, will ever sound as good as playing a CD in a CD/DVD player with a digital output connected to a receiver with a digital input. However, I have read about a dock coming out featuring a toslink (optical) digital output, making them capable of reproducing 24 bit audio (SACD, Blu Ray, and HD DVD quality).
And why would that be? What difference should it make if I use the Digital to Analog convertor that's in my CD player (or DVD player, or iPod or...)or the one in my $99 K-Mart Digital Surround Sound receiver(or any other receiver for that matter)?
And why would that be? What difference should it make if I use the Digital to Analog convertor that's in my CD player (or DVD player, or iPod or...)or the one in my $99 K-Mart Digital Surround Sound receiver(or any other receiver for that matter)?[/quote] olyteddy: I'm not sure I understand what you are are asking. Is your $99 K-Mart surround sound system connected digitally from the CD/DVD player to the receiver? And if so, are you comparing that sound quality of that system to that of a superior one (i.e. a system w/ a better receiver, amp, speakers, etc.) that has only analog connections? If that's the case, the analog system may very well sound better, but not necessarily. This can vary greatly depending on the quality of the components in your system. I probably shouldn't have said "any" system, because a cheap digital system probably won't sound as good as a great analog one. For instance, the overall sound resulting from a system comprised of a pro quality CD player, w/ balanced analog outputs (XLR or TRS), going into a pro mixing console with balanced inputs and outputs feeding a high quality amp w/ balanced inputs powering studio monitors (speakers), will blow away the sound on almost any consumer audio gear, even if it's a newer high quality receiver with all digital connections. But, if you're talking about using the same (or equivalent) system for both digital and analog connections, the digital one will be of much higher quality.
That's the crux of the matter. The digital connection won't necessarily be better. You have to have a D/A conversion at some point and the odds are the D/A in the media player is as good as the one in the receiver. It's misleading and naive to believe that just because a connection is 'digital' it has to be better.
JimBurt, You can have your opinion. I have amped my ipod before and it sounded just fine. I think maybe you should try it before you go on line saying it will sound poorly. In the olden days and in very goo system they have thing called preamps. They use preamps. They boost the music up before it is amplified. In fact that is what my system does. It sounds pretty good. It has verious inputs for different watt signals. The ipod puts out about as much power as a tuner. I really doubt that Teddy has a crapy system and I probably have a better system than you unless you paid huge. This is not about who has a better system but who is thinking clearly. Teddy is right and you are wrong! My advice is if it doesn't cost much try it and keep doing it if you like it.
Hi all, Glad I found your site. I did the search on my iPod for mp3 files vs. m4a files and I found my hidden mp3 files - F:\iPod_Control\Music\F**\filename.mp3. (F** for multiple F folders, F00-F49) I'm using iTunes 7.7 to import my CDs with the mp3 encoder. The hidden files have coded names - example file ZVQK.mp3 has the following info in the advanced summary: Music Artist: Incognito Album Title: Who Needs Love Year: 2002 Track Number: 7 Genre: Jazz . . . Audio Duration: 0:04:04 Bit Rate: 202kbps Channels: 2 (stereo) Audio sample rate: 44 kHz I wish my older unit had not crashed so I could have checked that one - I was using a much older version of iTunes. What headphones are you using that give the great sound? I've got the Shure SE-420s and a pair of Bose QC2s that sound pretty good but I'd love to compare.
