Hi hi. So as the title states, I'm currently (still) using a JVC KD-SH99. I bought this HU about... 6 or 7 years ago? I've loved it dearly and certainly got my moneys worth out of it; however, it's definitely starting to show its age. It still sounds wonderful when it plays, but the SLIGHTEST scuff/mark on a CD and it will skip/refuse to read it. I pretty much burn a new CD off and keep it in my player until I'm done listening to it, as the moment I remove it and store it in a CD case, it becomes too scuffed for my poor player to read (Slight exaggeration, but not by much!)
Anyhow, as I haven't had the need to stay up on current units, there has been a slight lapse and I assume a fair amount has changed/improved over the last several years. My main concerns are as follows:
With my current HU, if I burn a CD with MP3s on it the player will play them, but the sound quality is greatly degraded compared to when I convert the MP3s to .WAV and burn a true audio CD. The same song played from the .wav burn is much louder/harder hitting bass at identical volume levels/settings. Obviously, this means I'm still juggling tons of CDs as I'm restricted by the 80 min media. I can only assume that this is due to the quality of the decoder that the SH99 has, is that correct? Will a modern HU have these same issues?
I would like to get away from CDs altogether, but I'm not willing to take the hit in sound quality. Ideally, if I could simply use my iPhone as the source of all my audio, and have it maintain the level of quality, that would be great.
With this in mind - would anyone have some basic suggestions/directions to look in for a single-DIN unit? The KD-SH99's specs were appropriate for my sound system at the time and I currently have no plans on replacing either the subs/amp so I'm sure any modern HU's specs will be more than adequate for my needs. The priority here is the sound quality - if I have to stick to CDs to get this I will. The $250-$300 price range seems about right.
