I'm trying to decide between a BMW 330xi and the 3.2 A4. One thing I like about the BMW is it has an auxiliary iPod input in the center console. I noticed that the 2006 A4 does not have this, but I heard it might become available for MY 2007. Does anyone know if this is true? Thank you!

 

AW may have highlighted this issue in one of the B7 project cars. You may find the following link of interest (find the 2nd page):<ul><li><a href="https://www.audiworld.com/features/project_b7a4.html">https://www.audiworld.com/features/project_b7a4.html</a</li></ul>

 

interesting read. The hookup in the BMW is a simple AUX IN headphone minijack, which would allow control of the artist/song using the click wheel (Stahmann's biggest gripe about the audi adapter). Will the iPod connection on 07's be a headphone minijack (good) or a dock connecter (not so good)?

 

That's a great question. BMW sure has Audi beat in this category. I agree that the current hookup in Audi is not practical at all:

"Our first and still biggest complaint is that the adapter does not allow us to control the songs or playlists through the IPod, but rather disables any input from the IPod clickwheel itself..the Audi head unit treats the IPod as a 6 disc changer with each of the 6 discs represented as playlists on the IPod"

On the other hand, I've read in this forum that the new Audi Symphony II radio will play MP3's from CD's...not quite the convenience of an Ipod, but hell...6 CD's (each 650megs) full of music might work

 

the dock connector.

My friends BMW has the OEM ipod adapter and it is a dock connector type with a similar interface to the Audi OEM adapter. Changer controls controlling your playlists. Did BMW just change to the headphone jack adapter??

 

Correct, new Symphony II radio coming with the cars this summer will play MP3 files off the CD (finally). And it'll display the song information too. I'm not sure if the new headunit coming will support CDTEXT (this is how Dension communicates with the headunit respect to the song and title information).

As for an iPod hookup, I recommend using the Dension IceLink+. Of course if you have an external CD changer, you'll lose it as the IceLink needs to hookup to the Symphony somehow and someway (I don't have any experience for those using the Symphony plus sat radio or Nav+).

You also have the ability to control the iPod with the steering wheel controls which is something I really like now (I used to hate the idea of having controls on the steering wheel). You can also have the iPod in one of two interfaces - the Icelink UI or the iPod UI. I use the iPod UI as I have some sort of problem only on my iPod where the IceLink UI will randomily lock up but using the iPod UI works great also (can easily change playlists and use the contrls on the iPod also).

The installation of the IceLink is a lot simpler than the OEM version which requires a bit of work to wire up (plus if you get Audi to do the installation expect to get an estimate of 2 or 3 hours of labour which I feel is a bit on the high side).

<img src="http://static.flickr.com/25/98084687_d4a7dbf07a.jpg">

 

I too have heard that to truly get the best quality sound from an iPod, you must go through the dock connecter. How does the sound quality of an iPod connected via dock connecter/IceLink compare to CD quality, especially at loud volume? Also, would it be fairly easy to wire the IceLink so that it would connect to the iPod in the center console instead of using a mounting bracket?

 

At high volume I do notice a bit of hiss, I can't recall if this was something I heard before on the B5 or not.

To the best of my knowledge, the output via the dock connector is the same going through the headphone jack - it's all analogue. Actually with all iPods, there is a measureable amount of distortion in the audio if it's running on battery but as long as it's connected to an external power source this distortion isn't a problem but that's a different issue itself (it's due to some cheap component that Apple used).

As for where you want to put the iPod, I'm assuming having it down by where the hand brake is? I think the wire is long enough to reach there.

 

what rate do you encode your MP3s??

low quality mp3 will sounds bad no matter what

 

dock connector is a digital signal