Better quality music files
- Thread starter Rudeboy1
- Start date
Upgrade you iPotato nano to the bigger model which has better sound quality.
I used to have the Nano:
When I upgraded to the 2 potato 3 potato 4 potato more model the sound quality was CD level. No pics as it's in the car and I and a lazy potato to go get it.
I know this is probably a stupid questionI just want to know if I can make the sound better quality through an aux?
Yes, as Acme said, better quality music files. Putting them on CD won't make a single bit of difference. That's like taking a turd then carefully gift wrapping it before inserting it into your enemy's letterbox. Same ****, different format.
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If you know whatever media device you're using outputs with good sound quality and the cable wasn't bought for 50p on ebay then it'll be the car radios el cheapo auxiliary ADC or internal sound processing so buy a better car radio. My car radio aux sounds awful too but then it's the stock cheap one it came with.
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You need to get music in FLAC or APE format. Then you will need a music player in your car that supports that format. Converting mp3 or m4a to flac will be pointless, you need to get in flac directly or rip an audio cd that you own to flac format.
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Vague info is vague.
There are a huge number of differences and reasons why it may sound different on CD vs an MP3 player connected via the Aux input! Via Aux you are using an MP3 players DAC, headphone amplifier stage, possible EQ/headphone volume limiting features and then passing through the analogue Aux input circuitry of the car radio, which is of unknown input impedance, frequency response and gain/headroom. It'll work of course, but there's a lot of margin for error.
Putting the same files on CD you're delivering the digital data straight to your car stereos DAC and through it's associated (and hopefully optimised for purpose) circuitry. There's some room for mistakes in the creation of the CD though, if you elect to use replay gain style gain adjustment and during the conversion from MP3 to Wav which your burner software will have to do. Give it a try, CD-R are cheap and the more expensive ones just last longer
There are some truly awful encoders out there which will produce horrible sounding results even at 192k+, but with a good one even 128k should sound quite good for in car use.
From the OP description it sounds more like a gain structure issue when using the Aux, you'd at the least need to set the MP3 player to full output when using it like this since portable battery powered devices typically have low voltage drive (no problem for common 32 Ohm phones). You'd think the car radio manufacturer would consider portables the primary input source and design it as such but when it comes to consumer analogue audio there really are very few standards. Let us know what your files are (bitrate, source) but I expect you'll get a big improvement by missing out that analogue stage and all those unknowns.
From the OP description it sounds more like a gain structure issue when using the Aux, you'd at the least need to set the MP3 player to full output when using it like this since portable battery powered devices typically have low voltage drive (no problem for common 32 Ohm phones). You'd think the car radio manufacturer would consider portables the primary input source and design it as such but when it comes to consumer analogue audio there really are very few standards. Let us know what your files are (bitrate, source) but I expect you'll get a big improvement by missing out that analogue stage and all those unknowns.
I assume he's got a phone connected to the aux, perhaps a better option will be to use bluetooth streaming to the car stereo. It's an aftermarket stereo as he's said so may well support it and if not perhaps it's an option if op really does want better quality sound with minimal faff.
Modern head units will support apt-x and cost not that much more than what he's paid for his current one. A modern smartphone from one of the big names will support apt-x as well and together will deliver CD quality audio.
Modern head units will support apt-x and cost not that much more than what he's paid for his current one. A modern smartphone from one of the big names will support apt-x as well and together will deliver CD quality audio.
That's just overkill for a car stereo. That and each song would be about 40/50mb in size too. 320kb/s will be perfectly fine for car use.
OP Are you ripping the music yourself of downloading from an online store, or dare i say, illegally?
I'd hazard a guess you're using something like youtube to mp3 converter which is really poor and will rip an already bad quality song to 128kb/s to even poorer quality.
Either way, you need to be downloading or ripping at 320kb/s, not 128
I've not found an acceptable one of these online converters, they're all awful. Much better results using the 'wave out mix'/'what u hear' and recording into Audacity! Not very efficient time wise though.
Some music is not readily available in FLAC. Most is only available in formats up to 320kb/s.. You only get FLAC quality if you rip directly from a CD in that format, or if your digital download has the option, which not all do.
FLAC also isn't widely supported yet. But it is getting there. I can't play it on my phone for instance, without hassle. iPods and iPhones don't support FLAC, but they support ALAC, and then, most desktop music players only support one or the other.
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Many phones don't have an abundance of storage space and the larger files take much longer to transfer from PC to phone. Plus there's no noticeable quality difference so no real reason to use FLAC over MP3 anyway.
I use FLAC on my head unit. I rip it to flac put it onto my htc one and bluetooth stream it using power amp which as a good built in eq and it sounds great. Just need to finish upgrading my speakers to get the most out of it