Hello AvFan,

I received an Acura demo disk as well when I purchased my 2005 Acura RL. Even though I liked the TL better, I have such a terribly steep driveway, that I needed an all wheel drive. I think that I will take your advice and find the demo disk and listen to it on my system today.

GMTA!
I believe there is no better car for the money than the TL. I test drove about 15 cars before buying mine, some $15k more. It wasn't even close; the TL was the clear winner.
Did you get the Nav? Even 3 years later it's the best navigation system I've seen.
My friends never know what to get me for gifts. I tell them...please don't spend your money. I have the things I need. Not any longer. Get me DVD-Audio discs!

Back towards the orignial post...I recently purchased a NYKO cable that connects my iPod to my 990 via the iPods dock connector versus the headphone jack. The cable has left and right RCA connections that I use at the 990. This results in a line connection (e.g. iPod volume and EQ are not applied). The result is that the iPod is the DAC with 990 processing layered on top. My order of listening preference is:

1) original CD closely followed by
2) FLAC files to the 990 via the linksys music bridge
3) and way down the list, the iPod playing mp3s.

I imagine the sound quality of the direct connection between a laptop and the 990 as Davin originally described would be better or near #2 above depending upon the file format used to store music on the PC. If you have enough hard drive space I recommend one of the lossless codecs versus mp3 for use in the house. Besides sounding better when played back using the PC burned CDs will be indistiguishable from the original CD.

I have not tried it but I understand the iPod will play Apple lossless format, but the number of songs on the iPod would be significantly reduced. Using Apple lossless on the iPod would probably improve the sound when connected to the 990.

I try to use a high bit rate when ripping to mp3, no less than 192kbs. For classical and more serious listening I use 256kbs. A significant amount of testing has been done at different mp3 bit rates. At 256kbs it is impossible to tell whether you are playing an mp3 or the orginal cd file.
I realize many people will claim they can hear a difference. I'm fortunate to not be one of those people.

I've played around with MP3 off and on for 10 years now, using different encoders and bit rates. I've used WinAmp, iTunes, a CD-based portable player, an iPod, and my VW's CD player (which reads MP3's off CD-R) to play my MP3's along with probably a couple other things that I'm forgetting about. Most recently, I've set up a little Roku Labs SoundBridge M500 in the main system, which I did mainly so we could conveniently have music going while playing with our daughter (instead of having the TV on).

When listening through PC speakers (at least the cheapo ones I have) or mediocre headphones with a PC or portable MP3 player as the source, I find that 192kbps to 256kbps is going to be indistinguishable from the original CD: the rest of the signal path yields so many other sonic compromises that the lossy compression just blends in. Likewise, the stock car audio system doesn't really sound particularly different with reasonably high bit-rate MP3 than it does with CD's. Even at 256kbps, though, I have been able to tell a difference from the original CD when playing through the 990 via the SB500. The differences certainly weren't drastic, but they were there if you listened for them.

Bottom line: If I am sitting down to just listen to some music on the system, I will pull the CD off the shelf and toss it in. I could set up a media server that would let me store my music library in a lossless format (FLAC or simply WAV) and probably be content to use that instead of the original CD's, but the cost (mainly associated with a reasonably reliable drive array to store that much data without risk of a single drive failure wiping it out) is still too high for me to justify it, although I definitely see the attraction and why plenty of other folks have done this. More often than not, though, I use the Roku SB500 and the music is in the background while we're doing other things - for those instances, the damage done by lossy compression is a non-issue.

I have to agree with Gonk, I re-ripped most of my CD's over the last few months using Winamp, High Quality settings at 256kps Bit rate. I'm streaming the Audio from my PC, through my XBox 360 to the 990. This allows me to scroll through 7,000 plus MP3's so It's a great feature but I can tell the difference between the CD and the MP3's. For serious musice sessions I go to the CD, background or party music I stream through the XBox. I have been thinking about re-ripping everything at 320kbps, anyone tried that ?

Maybe you'll find this interesting...

http://www.mp3-tech.org/tests/gb/index.html

http://www.mp3-converter.com/bitrates.htm

Perhaps my old eardrums no longer perceive fine detail. The eyeballs certainly don't. Except for 'screen door' effect. Yuck.

Has anyone experimented with VBR (variable bit rate) mp3? I was considering transferring some music for car or casual listening at 192K or 256K, but VBR has piqued my interest. A co-worker tried a few transfers with VBR but then has experienced playback issues. Also, because so much of his music is not filled with ‘simple or quiet’ passages, he felt like he really didn’t save any storage space. In the end he went back to a constant rate. Experience and opinions?

I seem to recall hearing that there can be playback compatibility problems with VBR (some players - both software and hardware - not supporting it), but I haven't ever looked into it closely since I've always encoded at CBR.

Like Gonk, I'm using the Soundbridge (M1000 - actually have a couple of them, one for the 990, another for a Tivoli Model 3 in the bedroom). I am storing the MP3s at 320kbps on a 500gb external drive on my PC (those drives get cheaper every time I look, it seems). At that bitrate, I've got around 15,800 songs crammed into 138gb, and with an optical hook-up to the 990, I'm hard pressed to hear much of a difference between those files and CDs played on my Harmon Kardon FL 8380 (also an optical hook-up, or maybe coaxial, haven't looked back there in a while). Then again, I've spent too many years listening to loud rock and roll, and so perhaps I'm not the best judge. For casual listening and for sheer convenience (especially for entertaining), however, I'm kind of hooked on the Soundbridge.