caballo77

Hi all-
I have the standard radio, cd changer and the XM tuner.
I have not used CD's in a long time, but found that I really enjoy the sound quality when I do use them in the A8...
Much better than XM.
So good it almost makes me want to burn lots of cd's

QUestion for you all who have AMI:
Does the AMI with Ipod have similar SQ to the stock CD changer? Does the signal still go through the Bose DSP as the cd does?

Does the same apply when the source is not an ipod (mp3 stored at high bitrate and placed on a memory stick), for example, connected to the AMI?

Thanks!
R

Brozee

AMI with lossless quality>CD>Radio/XM Sirius

Or

CD>AMI mp3>Radio/XM Sirius

All depends on what quality sound files you have.

Thread closed, this has been covered in many other threads.

caballo77

thanks for the input!
I understand the sound is only as good as the source...I rpbably did a poor job of structuring my question:
the only real question at this point is whether the Bose still processes MP3 sound from the AMI unit using Surround and the other DSP settings, or does it bypass it?
The FM radio and Xm bypass the Bose DSP...

Greekss

how come we can't enable it with vagcom ?

Edd W

FM does not carry the data required - there is no additional data attached to the FM broadcast to decode so there is nothing to process other than the basic FM stereo channels.

I have not investigated futher, but I seem to see some MP3 tracks which do carry DSP data and some do not - I use either a 128gb SSD or at present a 32gb cat 10 SD card. I have not yet tried from an iPod or iPhone but I guess it will be pretty much the same.

With MP3 I am not sure if it down to the source or compression settings but it seems to vary whether it is avaialble or not.

I can only say that the sound is good enough for me and even if it not quite as good as CD, the convenience outweighs any slight loss of sound quality.

I do notice that a good signal DAB is possibly the best sound quality of all.

caballo77

Very useful; thanks all!

MikeNSX

On my 07, only the FM radio bypasses DSP. CD's will probably sound better than AMI or satellite radio/iPod/USB because CD's are uncompressed. You are probably playing MP3's on your iPod/USB. If you load them with loss less music files, then I'd expect them to sound identical to CD's.

kgd_007

I really can't tell the difference between a CD and the iPod with MP3 compression at 320. I don't remember the actual compression options but anything below 200 is closer to SAT radio and anything above that is noticeably different. I have found the original recording makes a big difference. The Eagles, Hotel California, live version off the Hell Freezes Over album sounds amazing at 320 compression through the iPod.

I am going to try the Bluetooth Dongle for the AMI. Although the AMI iPod interface is really good it still sucks to find songs. I want to be able to use the iPhone voice commands (ie Play Songs by the Eagles) vs having to search through about 500 artists and guess whether the Eagles is 100/500 or 200/500 would be nice if it switched to letters vs the numbers when quickly scrolling.

jakematic

Old Fart Alert

Be glad you guys can still hear the difference and don't play it too loud.
And take those damn earbuds out and get a real headphone like an AKG studio set

After formative years on farms, in construction and as a mechanic, most of my adult life has been on raised floors and my hearing is shot.
What was left of it is now unbalanced from having a telephone headset on the remainder of my career

This has been an OFA. Had this been a real emergency.... I forget....

enGage

XM and Sirrius compress their signals heavily. They will not sound as good as CDs