Where Is Car Audio Going?

weird22person ,

You're one of the smartest people on here. I love your set up too. I'm all about Inifnity. My whole car is Infinity.
6x8's in the front, 6x9's in the back, and 2 12 inch 12.1 DVC perfects in the back.

 

*blushes*
Speaking of my setup...what happened to the signitures?

Edit: Opps i think you need to be logged in to view sigs. You may want to rethink that ibanez

 

My thing is I want function and form. I got a CD7000 and I love it the SQ is in the range I want it (I know there is better). It uses controls that are damn near the same as the click wheel on the iPod. It also has a nice flashy display to impress yo peers =D

 

okay.. this is one that always makes me smile..

why do people want a great sounding head unit with emphasis on sq, but then they want it to be mp3 compatible?

mp3's are horrible sound quality.

kids...

 

lol maybe the 128k mp3's on your computer but the 320k lame ripped ones that fill my library and I notice no audible difference on my system. Like I said in my previous posts I know there is better gear, untreated paper cones, silk tweeters, $5 a watt amps, etc. With my setup I cannot hear a difference between my cd's and mp3's.

*edited for clarity

 

mp3....err.....not my first choice of source, regardless of "k", the compression sounds just that, compressed. FLAC or "lossless" ripping on the other hand.....thats the way to go, or if you have the HD space just do wav files. A difference might not be heard(sometimes is more obvious than others), but it can be felt.....from my own personal experience the lesser rips fatigue my ears quicker than "pure" sources.

Either way, I am sure that the carputer will be the future of car audio/electronics. The technology is all there, it just a matter of getting the right software with reasonably priced hardware. Sure, if you wanted to go out and drop a few grand(or more) you could come up with a working "headunit" processor that had phase/time alignment, FIR active crossovers, source material, gps, and any other programs you may wanna run on the run(sorry for the bad pun....and the rhyming...lol). I'm too cheap/broke for that option, so for the time being I'm going to work on a desktop version for a home system, running linux and brutefir...as well as a few other programs that I've yet to find/decide on. The critical component is undoubtedly the sound card. While I've read that it is possible to use a "lesser" card, I think it kind of defeats the purpose of the whole idea. We want it to sound BETTER right? That leaves "pro" sound cards, the more outputs the better, especially if you want to go active on surround sound.

Anyway......dats my 2 cents

 

it is most definitely obvious that there is a difference in sound quality between cd's and mp3's.

take a cd, and turn it up until your ears hurt.(then note the volume level)
then take an mp3 and turn it up.. you will be annoyed by the distortion before your ears take a beating.

 

voice recognition that will be the next step. every song ever made will be saved on a cars radio hard drive. you say a song title or an artist or anything like that and the drive starts playing the song!

 

i have an ipod in my car and sat radio along with a cd player. ipod would have to the most used thing since i know what is on it and i can listne to whatever i want when i want. but then when sat radio is on i hear new songs that just came out. then i put them on my ipod later.

also, my ipod is the loudest part. its louder then sat, radio, cd, and my dvd player. it comes in the clearest too. this is on a pioneer head unit, with the adp for ipod and the adp for xm radio.

 

i have an ipod vid too sounds LOUDER than anything else but i agree the cd player sounds cleanest...

 

i use itunes to turn the vols up on the files before i transfer them to my ipod. i still think an actual store bought cd sounds better than a mp3 file, and yes i do know all about having a good large file vs a small compressed one aka compressed you lose sound quality

 

where is car audio going? The way of the dodo.

We have the highest resolution audio format ever available (DVD-A), and people won't buy the media. People won't buy the media so very few make a head that will play it.
WE have the least expensive prices vs. performance of audio gear ever and an overabundance of product... and that may just be what has killed it. When anyone can afford it, it's no longer elite, no longer something to be proud of.
When you can't stop in a parking lot to talk to a friend without running the risk of arrest, or play your car stereo for some friends to check out for the same reason... well you know. People simply aren't gonna spend big money to have the best, because no one will ever see it or hear it, it doesn't BLING and get "props" like 22's or video screens and they don't have educated ears to know better anyway..

People'd rather download some decent audio quality 320 mb/s mp3 off the net to play on their ipod or mp3 head unit. It sounds great compared to their little 3" computer speakers, so they think it's wonderful. They can't really tell the difference between it being merely adequate instead of exceptional like the the cd because they don't HAVE the cd to listen to at home nor a quality system that is properly tuned and will reflect that lack of ambience on a good quality stereo system.

I think solid state music and video media will be the next big thing, NO hard drive, no discs, no degradation, no damage. Very Star trek

I also hope the format war for HD DVD and BLU RAY gets settled soon, or that will go the way of the dodo just like SACD and DVD-A are.

 

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

That could explain it much better than I. There's all kinds of sites and programs, just use what your comfortable with. I havent messed with it much since the audio is out on my laptop and my HT is only partially assembled(no computer). So my audio is limited to cd's..... and vinyl, of course.