[Drsauce10]

I'm just wondering is the sound quality better if you download the music straight to the cars music collection or listen to it on a USB external drive ? I lightweight notice a lil better sound quality from the music on my music collection I rlly can't tell and if it is it's just a slight difference

[ptpending]

if you connect external drive with WAV cd images to the armrest USB port you'll have best quality you can get

[Drsauce10]

Originally Posted by ptpending

if you connect external drive with WAV cd images to the armrest USB port you'll have best quality you can get

Aren't wave files more mb than MP3 ?

[ptpending]

Originally Posted by Drsauce10

Aren't wave files more mb than MP3 ?

sure, but they are lossless, so this is highest quality you can feed to HU

[ice_nyne]

And - if you are a stickler for this sort of thing - the artwork on a usb connected device can be read and displayed whereas the UI of the internal bimmer drive will not accommodate it. Speaking for my ‘11 E90. YMMV

[TemjinX2]

ptpending is correct, WAV files will give you the best sound because there uncompressed sound versus compressed mp3,wma, aac formats. Thats why your cds sound better then your pandora.

If there both in mp3 format, it won't matter just do whatever is the most convienent.

[Beisofmarko]

Originally Posted by ptpending

if you connect external drive with WAV cd images to the armrest USB port you'll have best quality you can get

Does this work with armrest AUX aswell or only with USB? (if i have wav files on my phone)
I don't have usb option

[ptpending]

Originally Posted by Beisofmarko

Does this work with armrest AUX aswell or only with USB? (if i have wav files on my phone)
I don't have usb option

it is, but wav usually have big size, on cd album is approx 700MBytes

[Scrippy]

I prefer 64gig USB drive with AAC 256bitrate. Takes like 2minutes for the car to see all the songs but then I'm good. Sound quality is good to me but I am not a sound engineer.

[Olagüe]

USB

[ctuna]

USB stick memory is cheap these days.
I can't tell much difference between high bit rate mp3(320 bits) and wav files.
That still gives you a lot of compression about 50 tunes on a cd
vs 12 .

[MysticRob]

Originally Posted by ctuna

USB stick memory is cheap these days.
I can't tell much difference between high bit rate mp3(320 bits) and wav files.
That still gives you a lot of compression about 50 tunes on a cd
vs 12 .

Me neither. I can say my ears aren't calibrated enough to tell the difference between a 192kbps bitrate, which is what 99% of my mp3s are coded at, and anything better. Too many variables go into what you finally hear coming thru any given set of speakers anyway, and I'm more concerned with drive space than anything at this point. I have 100s of tunes (mostly hard rock and metal) on a 16GB usb thumb drive using FAT32 plugged into the center console and it sounds just fine to me. Tunes start playing from that set up within 10 seconds or so of the car being started.

[ctuna]

I think some of it has to do with the quality of the recording
and the quality of sound system, then there is road noise .
My ears though very well trained aren't what they used to be.
I would say I can here differences below 256 sy 196 it starts
to sound a little less bright.