Which brings another question to my mind.
I dont know what is quality music and what is not, just by looking at the kbps and stuff. I realize now (most of my music is downloaded from internet) some songs, bass hits harder and highs are soo much cleaner. This is all about the how the songs is frist ripped form its original source right?

 

Bitrate has a lot to do with how clean the song sounds, as well as which encoder did the work. A really good encoder shines at lower bitrates. Most of my collection was ripped at 160 and 192. These are an excellent compromise between storage/sound quality. 128 (which is most of the stuff found on the net) is still good but the highs can be distorted - sorta like wow and flutter on a tape deck. There is also Variable Bit Rate (VBR) where the bitrate adjusts according whatever is needed at the time. Ripping VBR takes more time than a fixed bitrate.

 

Andy,
If you just downloaded itunes, you can probably rip your cds as AAC's rather than MP3's. The AAC format is considered to be far superior in sound quality.

Go to:
itunes>Preferences>Importing> choose AAC from the drop menu.

You need the latest version of quicktime to run AAC and that can be downloaded form Apple.com as well.

Rworne:

"They are talking about talking it up to the stock HU. This is perfectly fine and works great. Just that ICE link or the Alpine solution to simplify the controls."

For most listeners on a stock system, I would imagine that a 3.5 mm to RCA would be fine. All the current ipod to HU harnesses employ this wiring method that basically uses a headphone jack adapter to connect the ipod to the HU.

I would imagine (and honestly I am totally hoping here, I have tried but I cannot get an answer from Alpine or Apple) that Alpine's Ai net connector will use the bottom port of the ipod. This way the HU is using it's own DA converter and not the DA converter of the ipod. When Ai net connects to XM radio it uses the HU's DA converter, it should work the same way for the ipod. Sonically it would be far superior than using the headphone jack.