It seems we are very close to having the Iphone have a single plug and it it control a car stereo, use as a gps etc. Are regular car stereos on the way out? it would seem like all you need is a nice speaker system and a jack to plug in to your iphone to handle just about everything you need

Here ya go
http://www.iroconline.com/iRoc/

awesome name too

thats cool!

Very cool! However, the sound quality you get from an iPhone or iPod/MP3 player etc... isn't as good as the sound quality you get from a CD. Until the quality catches up, there will still be a market for CD players or to at least retain that function. I could be wrong, but I didn't see a CD slot on that unit?

i already use my iphone with my car stereo.i have all my cds on it plus pandora.it sounds fine to me.i have a radio with an added input jack.

I have a sony cd/mp3/iPhone/USB head unit in the Camaro. I use my iPhone hooked up to it all the time, just doesn't sound as clean/loud as a CD is all.. Even in my new silverado, cd's sound much better through the factory system than playing MP3's off of my iPhone plugged in.

How is the device hooked up? Is it hooked up via the 1/8th" stereo mini plug or the Apple to USB adapter?

Check to see if you have "Sound check" enabled, or an EQ setting enabled.

Soundcheck looks at the gain level on every track in iTunes then sets "gain" variable in each MP3 tag. This means that every song will have the same peak gain level setting so they are all the same volume. To avoid distortion iTunes searches for the lowest peak volume in the library and then reduces the peak volume of all other tracks to match. This will make the pre-amped signal of a lower volume.

The EQ works the same way. If you want to boost the bass of a track it instead reduces the trebel so the base is "loud" but the end result is a quieter signal.


However in the end loudness does not denote sound quality! Most CD's are recorded today with high gain levels because the public thinks that. Much of the dynamic range a CD can produce is washed out with this high gain mentality.

Lastly, a CD is uncompressed 44.1khz audio. ALL of the common compressed formats are lossy codecs that remove audio data that humans can't normally hear to reduce filesize.

In my car i can't tell the difference between a 192kbit MP3 and a CD. In my home stereo I most definitely can, but the speakers and sound stage with that system is much better, including the fact that its been calibrated for as flat of a response curve as possible.

iPods generally dont have the sound quality of a CD. thats true. for most folks, on a car stereo, the difference is minor. My system is a high end Alpine CD Head unit, Memphis Amps (50x4 and a 200 Watt Class-D Sub amp), Memphis Speakers and Reference subwoofer. I still use my ipod often for general listening.... Totally acceptable. I generall rip my own music though rather than downloading the crappy low bit rate iTunes music.

AAC 256kbit is pretty decent. I really have to listen to a specific section of music to hear the difference between that and a well mastered lossless track be it CD or FLAC encoded. Mostly I notice it with sibilance distortion.

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_...by-iPhone.html

Here's a site that sells it free shipping. I think its a cool stereo.

the main downside is where its mounted in the car.an iphone would be pretty hard to see.

Maybe if the brightness was turned all the way up??

Look into App radio. Made by pioneer they released the first version this year, the only downside is the lack of preouts, it only has a single preout so dont expect to get a 4 channel amp and subs on it.

Your iphone links to it and the screen pretty much becomes the iphone, navigation, audio all of it.

As far as audio quality goes for ipods it depends WHERE you get the music and what you ripped it with. If you toss a cd in your computer and do a fast rip it skips things to speed it up, if you do a slow rip then youre fine, its not quite the same as a cd but the differtence is so minor you wont notice. If you mass download off frostwire/limewire/kazzaa(if that thats even around) anything like that then you will get crappy files its that simple.

The industry is begining to lead away from cd's anyway. Digital media is the future and wether anyone likes it or not CD's are going away. Theyre unreliable and damaged easily, drives fail, eye's fail you name it. everyone and their mother has some form of digital media wether its an ipod a zune droid phone or even music on a usb jump drive.

Just wait until droid systems are standardized and aftermarket manufacturers can interface with them.... then itll really be interesting.

cerberus, i know you are about originality, but I would suggest you have your stock radio modded to accept a MP3 input, that will be about the same as what you are describing, I think

Regarding the quality issue, it all depends on the format and the bitrate of the music.

As far as MP3's go, unless It's some sort of rare underground music where I have to take what I can get, I always encode my stuff at 320kbps which is still considered a lossy format, but the difference would take thousands in home stereo equipment to pick out.

Via USB or SD card, most head units nowadays are capable of reading lossless WMA.

the app radio looks promising but it seems to be real limited to which apps you can use.i have the free mapquest gps app on my phone and it works fine so i don't want to buy another gps app.also if the phone plugs into the radio why must the phone have to be connected by bluetooth?

IIRC the Bluetooth is for your contacts and phone portion, the app radio is designed to send information such as audio, apps and navigation along with videos through the iPod cable, the Bluetooth portion is for calls, it has an external antenna to boost your GPS too because we all know how annoying it is to hit navigation and wait and wait for your location, the Bluetooth link has no negative effects such as battery drain because the cable charges the iPhone while its plugged in, and also locks the phone out so there is no use while it's plugged in. Saftey features and all that jazz since the screen becomes the phone the use of the phone is pointless so it locks it until you unplug it.