MaineMDX

Assuming many of you listen to your iPods in the TSX, what sounds best - AAC 192, 256, etc or lossless? Can you hear a difference through the car stereo system?

Most of my songs are recorded from iTunes (AAC 192) or burned from CD's at a speed of 192 Kbps. The CD's I recorded many years back were encoded as MPEG files. I'm thinking of redownloading those. Any suggestions as to what might sound better? Is lossless cleaner or warmer sounding?

I have also downloaded all the lyrics and artwork to each song. Will any of this show up on the nav screen or is it just the artist and song titles that appear when playing?

What do most of you listen to in winter months if the temps are too cold for iPod or USB drives? Many nights push -20 degrees and December through February usually never reach 32 degrees. Is it back to CD's and MP3's?

ctwickman

I rip to Apple Lossless only. I believe our stereo is clear enough to hear a difference, especially in the highs. I think lossy compressed music is a thing of the past--the only reason people did it was because of space concerns, but there really is no reason to have lossy compressed music anymore with IPOD's of 120GB or more on the market.

cmasterchoe

I believe when Apple had their DRM-update, many of the songs were upgraded in terms of sound quality as well. I just checked all my purchased songs and they were all 256. I'll have to look into lossless though.

chibianh

I encode mine at 256kbps AAC. I'm no audiophile, though, but they do sound better than some of my old 128kbps MP3s.

espdollar

you can change the quality of your imports through the itunes prefs as high as 320 kps. AAC is the best in my opinion but ull have a hard time burning mp3 cds with songs in AAC. so i have mine set to 320 kps and import in MP3 format so i can burn mp3 cds.

swt2c

Can the TSX stereo actually play lossless songs? I didn't think I saw that as a valid format in the manual.

ctwickman

That's all I have on my ipod.

swt2c

I'll have to give that a try, then.

ctwickman

I can tell you that it absolutely sounds amazing. And if I ever want to convert them later to some other format I can without any loss in quality. I will never want to though because storage has just gotten so cheap. IPOD's are now 120GB which is enough for any lossless collection, and storage will only continue to increase.

I have been waiting for a system like this in a car my whole life. I have my entire CD collection all 100% CD-quality at my fingertips in my automobile without any loss in quality and without having to switch discs ever again.

swt2c

Well, it did work for me as well! Thanks. This is good and bad news for me. The bad news is that I'll have to convert everything over to ALAC format (having just encoded everything to FLAC, which Apple can't read). Fortunately, I think I should be able to do this without having to feed all my CD's through my computer again.

MaineMDX

I just picked up my 09 TSX yesterday. The 120GB iPod encoded with lossless plays perfectly and sounds great. It was as good as the DVD Audio demonstration disc. I have encoded 31 playlists on my iPod and with 2900 songs and I'm using only about one third the capacity. About 75% are lossless, 15% 256Kbps and the remainder 10% 128 Kbps. I now have no desire for DVD Audio and I can't seem to locate any good ones out there anyways.

I am completely overwhelmed by what the vehicle can do. Even averaged 34.8 mpg over 250 miles yesterday via the trip computer.

ctwickman

Yeah me too. As for MPG I am getting better MPG than advertised, and that is in cold Chicago with a brand new engine no less! It will only get better from here!

swt2c

When I select a lossless file to play, I'm seeing a bit of delay (a second or two) before it actually starts playing. Is this normal?

Wow, 34.8 mpg! The best I've gotten is ~32, but I haven't done much highway driving yet. The 32 was on the highway but probably higher than optimal speed. :-)

ctwickman

I haven't tried regular encoding but yes I do get a delay of about two seconds before it starts a song. But that's only if I specifically select a song to play. I can certainly live with it given the quality.