So I am kind of picky when it comes to sound. I feel like CD or MP3 on CD sound best. How do you all stream or play your music in your car? Do you lose sound quality when audio is streamed via bluetooth or aux?
Wireless bluetooth. Buy a decent one ($25+) and you'll be unable to distinguish the difference between aux cord. Not to mention, no more tangling with aux cords and you can have the phone anywhere in the car. A godsend when trying to manage your playlist in cities like ATX banning handheld use of cellphones...
I have wireless bluetooh in my car. I need to set it up.. would you say the wireless is better than aux?
Built in bluetooth fersure. Bluetooth does not typically add data compression to material that is already compressed. If both the source and synch devices support the codec used to encode the original audio signal, the audio will be transmitted and received without degradation. Thus, if you're listening to MP3 or AAC files you stored on your phone, tablet or computer, Bluetooth doesn't have to degrade the sound quality if your Bluetooth receiving device also supports that format. This rule also applies to Internet radio streams that are encoded in MP3 or AAC, which covers most internet radio stations, including Pandora and Slacker. The big exception among streaming services is Spotify, which uses the Ogg Vorbis codec.
Hmm... This is a bit older article discussing compression (not that old and still current techniques), and what was mentioned about further degradation not happening was correct by Disciple (as long as the source material was compressed etc) http://lifehacker.com/does-bluetooth-audio-still-suck-1505063323 there's an avs link in the article further discussing what people think about BT. I feel... unless you have some crazy aftermarket audio system in your car or at home and are playing true source material (and have decent to good hearing...) Yes, you will hear degradation. However... Since you mentioned listening to mp3 on cd... It makes what I'm talking about probably not as important. I think in the car for convenience Bluetooth makes a ton of sense over aux, but if you can tell the difference in good recording on a CD (not new loudness war post processed stuff) vs mp3 then you will easily hear the difference between Bluetooth vs cabled (again this would have to be uncompressed audio being utilized). As with everyone else here, I feel for convenience factor and since you'll be using compressed audio on your phone BT works really well. Sorry for the long reply, I'm into audio and in the car BT is great, but at home if you have a good setup then I'm more interested in quality instead of convenience. I know compression has come a long way, but on higher end sound it stills isn't there.
Aux cord is cheaper and there is no difference in sound quality from the cheap brands to the expensive brands, in my personal experience. Bluetooth is more convenient, but it is more expensive and if you go too cheap the sound quality can get very bad; but since you already have wireless bluetooth then why would you buy the aux cord? Forget the CDs, not worth the effort. Spotify + aux/bluetooth all the way.
Wireless Bluetooth, but my car also has two SD card slots that I have full of music as well - that I rarely, if ever use.
slight tangent, if anyone could answer.. in my VW, i can't see album art or fast forward/rewind songs with bluetooth and spotify from my phone. do i need to get a MIDI cable and hook it up to my phone to do this? there's a MIDI input but i'm not really sure what it does.
If your VW is like my Audi - album art, play time and other functions are only compatible with iOS devices (and native apps). Since Spotify is a 3rd party app, you won't have that functionality. I have a Windows Phone, and my Audi S6 displays all of the song details, but not the current play time when streaming from Xbox Music and/or Pandora.
http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-FHX-7...&sr=8-3&keywords=pioneer+bluetooth+car+stereo I bought this 2 months ago for my 2010 Corolla, use the Pandora/Bluetooth function for it, love it, has USB port so I can plug-in a USB stick with MP3 files to play, but haven't got around to try it Have no issues with streaming over Bluetooth, sound is great with my factory speakers
I just ordered an aux cable and the coding software to enable it. There is a product called Air Enabler which lets you do air play in your car. Airplay is lossless and you can plug in a little DAC if you want to have even more improved sound. Waiting for it all to arrive.
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CDs will always give you the best high fidelity sound. MP3s are lossy audio formats that reduce the music file resulting in a compressed audio output that's not the same as the CD. Streaming music is digital music so there will be a difference in quality. You can actually hear the difference if you play a track on a CD vs one digitally. To the average listener, it's won't make much of a difference.