Performance Model ordered

[kmpowell]

£700+ for a CD/DVD player - you must be mad to even consider spending that much on something that in technology terms is obsolete, and in monetary terms costs a couple of a quid to make.

£700 can get you two iPads which can hold hundreds and hundreds of videos, and some decent headrest harnesses.

[boff]

Well that's kev with a friday morning hangover then

Sometimes there's something to be said for just having some tunes in a cd player, or a movie in there. The amount of times the phone is busy or doing something else or you want to buy some music abroad or a mate has something to show you may justify it.

Having said that i didn't order one

[MikeFish]

I nearly ordered it, then thought about retrofitting it for a fraction of the cost (maybe new glovebox though) but when I realised the mmi had motive support for flac it made it pointless.
You still have a cd dvd in the dash for those moments when you are out and bought a new cd etc. Without the flac support though the cd changer would have been essential for me.

[kmpowell]

Must be just me then, but I haven't bought a CD for a good number of years (mid noughties possibly) or a DVD/BR for several years (circa 2010) , and I don't ever envisage a time when I will need to in the future. All my music consumption is streamed and video/film is downloaded directly to a device and/or streamed from/over devices. In the car this is all done via my phone via cable or over BT.

[MikeFish]

Cd is best quality available in the car. Flac is of equal quality but limited download options so I still buy cds. Same for blurays, can't stream 3d hi def.

[doodlebug]

I think all that is overshadowed by the acoustics of a bean can. If I want quality I'll sit on the sofa at home! The limiting factor in the car is not the source.

FLAC is still compressed so you still may lose frames due to error, if you want true CD quality you have to RIP as thus.....like a NAIM HDX does, though I can't really put that in the car.

[kmpowell]

I think all that is overshadowed by the acoustics of a bean can.

This, 100%.

For music - road/tyre-noise, kid-noise, traffic-noise. It makes the difference between "CD Quality" and streamed music totally negligible.
For video - as long as the fps and resolution matches the max resolution of your device in the car, that's all that's required.

[MikeFish]

FLAC is compressed but lossless; there is no loss of quality. Have you ever had words missing from a Word file after unzipping it? Unless the whole file is corrupt then the answer is no because it is not lossy just compressed.
I use exact audio copy (EAC) to rip my CDs to FLAC which is as the title suggest will give an exact copy of the disc. This is better than any source CD player can achieve playing the disc in real time as sometimes it takes longer to rip a disc than it does to play a disc if there are scratches etc. a CD player in this instance will skip but EAC will keep trying until it can extract all the info. You need only do this once of course and then you have an exact copy on disc.
Yes the car is less than ideal environment for listening to music due to noise but it has some very good plus points too. Your listening environment is very consistent, you can set the sound just right and the only variable each time will be passengers. You are also very close to the speakers so can get some great stereo imagery. And whilst some people can struggle to hear a difference between mp3 and FLACs in a car, there is a difference and that difference will become even bigger once the speakers and amps are upgraded.
Some of the best hifi I have ever heard has been in cars and I've heard so go very expensive demos rooms over the years. If you don't believe me get yourselves down to Car Audi Security next weekend where round 1 of this years competition kicks off.

[doodlebug]

I've had zip files not open at all.....

There's no car audio that will come close to the best Hi-Fi. I've got a medium level Naim setup, it's epic. It'll also make your ears bleed if you choose.

Very versed with ripping, that's exactly what the HDX does, except there's no compression, so that's optimum. Playing it back, at its best is best done using a separate streamer, maximum separation of those noisy PSUs. No such opportunity in a car.

[MikeFish]

The ones that don't open at all are completely corrupt, there's no helping that and could equally happen to an uncompressed file. Compressing it using EAC & FLAC will have no degradation of quality.
Car audio can come very close to home hifi and can exceed the quality of most peoples home systems. The issues most people talk about with car systems are only there when driving; if you listen to them when static, as how they are heard when being judged in competitions, there is no reason why they can't be as good as or better than home hifi. Agreed that's not how you will listen to it the majority of the time but even if you consider road noise as the reason why home hifi is superior then it can be almost eliminated from the car too with sound deadening and damping making it a better environment to reproduce music than the hifi unfriendly materials found in most peoples livings room. Have you heard a modern completion car system? They are truly amazing. Maybe the competitions have driven it to unusually high standards, something home hifi has never understandably benefitted from.

[boff]

Come on into my new thread Mike - we need to discuss Audio!!

[doodlebug]

Indeed, but your still using cycles doing the decompressing so it's not the purest form.

I'm into the high end hifi stuff. There's a pile of reasons why you'd not be able to compete on quality at the top end. It's not just about the environments it's all the noisy components that a car is full of. And there's the power supplies. Even down to physical isolation of the source, unless you're using SSD. You also have serious challenges because of the shape of the car and where your bouncing the sound waves, some overlapping, some cancelling. The starting point is bad.

[MikeFish]

Yes, but room correction and time alignment can come over all those obstacles. But obviously well placed components in the first place will minimise the need for correction.
I too am into my home hifi, my living room is full of power amps, I have 3 stereos power amps driving just my main speakers alone, but I am still amazed at the sound quality you can get in a car; I have been more impressed by car hifi than by all these dealer / show demos with the exception of when I heard a Linn surround sound demo at Billy Vee a few years ago and that convinced me to change my living room setup to Linn despite the lack of reviews in the press who don't seem to rave about linn very much.

Sorry Boff, moving further comments to your other thread, sorry for taking this one off topic.

[doodlebug]

Linn is not that popular here, price is one factor and competition from native manufacturers. It Naim for me, yes, it's pricey but it's epic. And there's no bi or tri amp business. Just one dirty whacking amp and a separate power supply. Thankfully I've been able to do cinema in the living room and hifi elsewhere to get the best of both worlds.

[MikeFish]

Yes I have a separate cinema room but I made the living room a good hifi setup and built it into a surround sound system. I tried to make it a good cinema setup first but couldn't get decent music from it.