greetings, new here, but had a question:
anyways, so some background before i hit you guys with my question (if you havent figured it out from the title already). my current head unit is a clarion nx500 dvd/nav, was a gift from my gf, and is a pretty cool deck, not the greatest, but cool. however. my biggest gripe by far is that reproduction of mp3/aac (including my beloved ALAC!) is HORRID.
here's what i know:
- seems that the deck uses separate dacs for CDA and ipod/usb music files, the latter being pretty bad even when playing my ALACs. CDs sound great. pretty good clarity and staging.
- the deck it seems pulls a digital stream from the ipod/iphone/usb stick when playing the files--i can sort of confirm this by saying that a) if line out were used, i would have to have a different ipod cable and b) i use the stock charging cable that is only 4 pins, +5/ground and usb+/usb-. (a true line out cable has 2 different pins than the usbs, such as with the composite cable).
- line out from the ipod using a composite cable with rca plugs actually doesnt sound THAT bad, not nearly as bad as usb. headphone out actually doesnt even sound that bad either, but still not as good as line out
- playing from a usb stick as opposed to ipod yields the same bad results
so my question! am i tripping? (haha j/k) and are you guys familiar with any decks that might have taken into consideration the use of ALAC/WAV files to be used over usb/ipod link--and therefore spec'ing a better DAC?
(my other route was to just use aux in with an outboard DAC that can do a digital link to my ipod, but i tested it, got a ton of distortion that i couldnt figure out why. might need to take a second shot at that.)
CD is great and all, but its hard to beat the convenience of an ipod =\
thanks in advance for the answers guys!
- fred
