is there ay device out there that would let me output music from my ipod digiatly this way i could use my 970 dacs instead of the ipod dacs?

also, could it be i have the polk xrt XM tuner on my system connected to my 970 with optical, and my ipod connected with analog cables and music from the ipod sounds better then the XM. i would think that the XM would sound better because its using the 970 dacs but it seems the ipod puts out better sound. i know niether is the best but strange i thought given the optical hook up and the inherent flaws of both. i have a PS3 in my system also and the CD player seems to put out worse sound then my little ipod (and my songs are not even lossless). Could this all be? does the PS3 have lossy CD output?

As far as I know, the iPod doesn't have a digital audio output. The docking stations that I've seen all use the iPod's line output (which is analog). There is the Airport Express, which can stream music from iTunes and has an optical output, but that's not going to do you any good with your iPod.

XM is compressed, and if it is more compressed than the songs on your iPod (which may or may not be true depending on the files in your iPod) then there's only so much that the 970 can do.

what about the PS3 Cd player? could it be that it is such a bad CD player that an ipod MP3's sound better then the optical output from the PS3 to the 970?

I don't know why the PS3 doesn't sound as good with CD's as the iPod does. The PS3 should not be compressing or otherwise manipulating the audio. Are you listening to CD's in the same mode that you listen to the iPod?

in the PS3 there are multiple settings for PCM and bitstream audio. I know i have it set to bitstream to watch movies in Dolby Digital 5.1 maybe that has something to do with it?

It shouldn't. Bitstream will bypass any internal processing by the PS3 - the CD's PCM stereo will be passed straight from disc to digital output.

gonk in a a/b comparison can you hear a huge difference between MP-3 (i know its compressed) and and a regular CD everything else begin the same? or is it a slight difference to be heard?

In my opinion, in an A/B comparison, there's a huge difference between audio from an Ipod and a CD. I can tell the difference in sound from the next room on a random track. To me, the Ipod sound is bad enough that I won't listen to it, given the choice between the Ipod as a source through the big system and silence. This is generally the case with 128K encoding on the Ipod. I'll have to try the Apple lossless encoding and see what the difference is with that. If it's that great I may have to buy a 160 GByte Ipod and re-rip a large portion of my CD collection.

I don't hear a great difference between using the DACs in the 990 and those in the Denon player (bitstream out of either HD or Blu-Ray vs CD). I tend to use the Denon because of the relative speed of operation relative to the Toshiba or Sony players.

Bitstream output simply sends the raw data from the CD to the output of the player. It will be decoded and the D/A conversion done in your 970. This should be pretty good quality sound.

Of course, some CD's are poorly recorded/encoded. A lot of the modern stuff has the dynamic range compressed so it will sound good (loud) on playback through Ipod or FM/car audio systems. Look for something that was actually well recorded. Mannheim Steamroller or anything on GRP label is recommended. (many others out there)

by using apple lossless i'm guessing it would cd quality the only bad part being using the ipod dacs to convert to analog