AUX Port/Zune/Cd Audio Problem

[therockchild]

Hi there,

New to the forums. I saw another thread with an almost similar situation.
I have the 07' Yaris Sedan where the AUX port is to the left of the glovebox below the "change holder things" whatever they are called.

I play a CD in the car adjusted settings to my liking. CDs are a pain when you have alot of them, and they get hot/cold left in the car. Zune is easier to deal with.

Anyway here is the issue I am having. You can tell there is a MAJOR base difference between the zune and the CD. I have mp3s ripped at 320K on my zune device. I was doing a comparsion of the same song from zune to CD and you really can hear a difference. It almost sounds like the stereo changes its settings when the zune is plugged in (ie the base etc). I checked and all the base settings etc are all the same whether cd or zune is plugged in. There is no visual change, but there is def an audio one. The car audio sounds way better than the aux port.

I have heard rumors to use FLAC, MP4...but I can't imagine there would be THAT much of a difference in codec. Alot of people have said you can't hear the difference between 320k mp3s vs Mp4 or FLAC. Its just you can hear a huge difference when you change from cd to zune device. Its like the device overrides the car stereos settings and the zune equalizer sucks in comparsion to the cars equalizer.

My AUX cable is also like 3" or 4" long too and not gold plated. Would it make any difference to have a shorter/gold plated cable instead?

Is it the zune device?? Because when I put my zune equalizer on none, there is HARDLY any base when its at the same level of a CD. Put in the CD and there is a ton of base. I have to put the zune equalizer on acoustic to get CLOSE TO the same amount of base as a CD but you can still hear a difference.

So does the aux port suck? or is it the zune? If I have to up the quality of the mp3s and start ripping at mp4 for the zune I can try that. But it seems to me like the car stereo is ignoring its settings and allowing the zune to use its own settings (and the zune equalizer is terrible). I wish it would just play the audio from the zune and use the car stereo equalizer settings.

Sorry if this is long, but I have been trying to figure this out for a while now.

Thanks, :)

[talnlnky]

mp3's take out data from normal cd audio... you don't hear all the same frequencies... Some of what is lost is in the upper & lower octaves. This means bass won't be as loud (or good) as well as treble like cymbal crashes in rock music.

there's more to audio compression than this... but that is part of it.


EDIT:
can you really expect a mobile device like a zune to have the bass producing capability that a cd player does? I mean... the device that produces the sound in the zune (an op-amp) is the size of a tic-tac or an m&m mini for refrence. Plus, they are ment to be played with headphones which are extremely close to your ear drums and therefore don't need much power to make bass notes.... bass dissipates exponentially over distance.


when it comes to electronics... the smaller they are, the less capable they are. Desktop vs Laptop, pocket digital camera vs SLR, etc.

[Spades]

might also depend on the quality of the equipment too...if you are running stock speakers and a stock deck (i am guessing you are),that further limits the reproduction. I am running a kenwood x792 with a USB port plug in and mp3 player controlls, and running a ipod into it with a usb cable.

the sound isnt as good as a CD, but on my higher kbps mp3 files the sound is almost as good as a CD...one almost cannot distinguish a differance in the two.

but yeah, a zune to stock system probably wont blow you away as far as audio clarity.

[therockchild]

Thanks for responding.

Hmm, I guess I expected more out of the zune. I think if they included some kind of better equalizer on the device, it might sound better. I didn't really think about the Zune only being meant for headphones. I guess you are right. Certain kinds of music are going to sound better obviously, I tend to listen to rock.

Yes I do have the stock deck. I find the stock stereo really isn't that bad! However I suppose in the future I SHOULD upgrade the thing. Really USB huh? So is the usb connection better than an aux connection?

[talnlnky]

Originally Posted by therockchild

Thanks for responding.

Hmm, I guess I expected more out of the zune. I think if they included some kind of better equalizer on the device, it might sound better. I didn't really think about the Zune only being meant for headphones. I guess you are right. Certain kinds of music are going to sound better obviously, I tend to listen to rock.

Yes I do have the stock deck. I find the stock stereo really isn't that bad! However I suppose in the future I SHOULD upgrade the thing. Really USB huh? So is the usb connection better than an aux connection?

I would guess if you can do a USB connection that it would be better because it most likely would mean the mp3 device isn't doing the audio amplification, and just transfering the signal bit by bit to the deck and the deck is then doing the amplification (and hopefully any other audio processing). The deck SHOULD do a much better job of any processing & amplification than the portable device would do.