Audio quality on E89 head units

[B21]

Given I’ve tipped well over £2,000 into my upgraded audio system in terms of speakers and DSP/amps I was intrigued to re-visit the issue of quality of sound through various inputs.

My car had the 677 Top-Fi system with streaming media Bluetooth, the normal aux connection, the USB interface in the centre armrest compartment and snap in phone connection..

I decided to test a few iPhones with these inputs.

The iPhones have very good (by most car folks) capabilities…16 bit playback with both high quality lossy ..AAC at 250kbs-1024kbs and lossless ALAC…with pretty good digital to analogue hardware..(DACs)..

I played a variety of music encoded at 16 bit WMA/AAC within bit rates between 196 and 896 kbs.

The conclusions were…

USB is best…but only by a small margin to a properly set up aux connection..Bluetooth via Apple and AAC was pretty good..most people I suspect would be more than happy..roof down I doubt anyone could split them on the road,,roof up the volume has to be up to split them..

This assumes your car has a ‘combox’ or ULF High as it’s properly called..if you have the six speaker system then you want have that..

 

[flybobbie]

I realised how poor the standard Zed set up was when my nephew bought a old banger Volvo.
The sound in that was very good.
Pity it's engine was not so good..