Tablet sound quality

[cfox10 10+ year member]

I've been searching and seeing many different answers to this question... so, figure I'd ask here.

Does 3.5mm have an audible difference between separate rca's? Any idea on how to minimize the sound here? Put my pioneer double din in my girlfriends car and planned on using a rooted/rom'd kindle fire hd with dolby 5.1...

If 3.5mm does have degraded sound quality... what budget amps out their support digital input? (I could go from hdmi to coaxial/toslink to amp?)

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[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Aux inputs for head units usually have a bad reputation because cheap cords will wear out, and it will very badly affect the sound quality. Digital input on amplifiers is almost nonexistant. Audison supports it in a very expensive amplifier with an optional digital input section upgrade. If you can get digital output into a high quality DAC and do a balanced signal into an amplifier that has balanced inputs, of which there are many, this gets you 99.9% of the way there. You won't be able to distinguish a difference, especially when the vehicle is in motion.

 

[chefzane]

Dac?

 

[cfox10 10+ year member]

Aux inputs for head units usually have a bad reputation because cheap cords will wear out, and it will very badly affect the sound quality. Digital input on amplifiers is almost nonexistant. Audison supports it in a very expensive amplifier with an optional digital input section upgrade. If you can get digital output into a high quality DAC and do a balanced signal into an amplifier that has balanced inputs, of which there are many, this gets you 99.9% of the way there. You won't be able to distinguish a difference, especially when the vehicle is in motion.

So... in other words, time to break out my old school Coustic amps again? Sitting in the closet, all of which accept balanced inputs. I can grab an external DAC and run it. Is it that the internal DAC of the tablet is no good, or the simple fact that it would be running through 3.5mm?

I wish digital was more common in the car audio world. I had an old headunit (excelon 911?) that had digital optical out... and balanced RCA outs. Sq was great.

Any suggestions on DAC's?