Does the c300 (2015) have a 3.5mm auxillary port?

I know you had to install an auxillary port on the last generation, is that still the case?

 

My 2015 C300 with Audio 20 does NOT have a Aux port. Only BT streaming.

(Unless I have not looked hard enough). I see 2 USBs and 1 SD Card for Nav in the center storage area.

 

No aux in. What are you trying to connect?

 

There must be a kit available. AUX IN is mentioned in several of the user documents. I would've liked being able to connect my AK240.

 

Bluetooth is it. What sampling rate/bit depth are your hi-res files? The AK BT might choke on the big files. Neither way is ideal. It'll compress the files for BT, or you're stuck going through the little internal headphone amp in the AK. I think the AK is a flawed product in that there's no direct digital out via USB.

Found this. Hard to tell from the graphic but my guess is those three round ports are RCA IN for L/R audio and composite video:

Part #2 in the pic...

http://www.mbpartscenter.com/oe-merc...IvMaAkcl8P8HAQ

 

 

Yea the BT sux to put it kindly. As you say, it just choked on the files. I wasn't trying to make the connection so I could enjoy hi-res, more just a convenience factor in not having to convert DSD & FLAC libraries to MP3 each time I wanted to listen to a particular piece. The 240 was an extravagance I would not normally venture into - especially not for a portable, but i do I have to admit to loving it dearly. I doubt the car would ever be good enough to really enjoy it, even if I could link it via the 3.5 port, not unless I did something similar to your upgrade (which I really liked). Alas, the car is a lease and I won't spend big on updating the Burmester unless I was inclined to keep the car (which I'm not).

 

Yeah, mine is a lease as well. I may just leave the Prima gear in it at turn in since it'll be 5 years old at that point, or have the shop put the system back to stock. Cost me $600 to have it pulled from my W221.

On the stock Burmester I'm not sure those files would sound great. Sometimes better source material just exacerbates weaknesses.

Hi res is the **** though. I have a Peachtree Nova 125 in the house. Amazing the amount of detail in a studio master.

 

Can the system play audio files off the sd card? Or is this slot only for the nav system. I used the feature often in my W204.

 

Yes, I have an SD card in mine right now. Plays just fine. MY16

 

Are you playing hi rea files or just MP3's?

 

It will do either, the SD card input should support the same max bit rate that the HU supports. I have multiple file types on a 32gb card. The command system has no problem with them and it detects all of my folders properly. You can fit a lot of music on a 32gb SD. Larger cards are probably supported but I've had no reason to test them yet.

 

Interesting. What's the highest sample rate and bit depth of a file you've been able to play on the factory HU? (Hi Res typically isn't defined by bitrate, although it can produce bitrates roughly 8X higher than CD).

Format too (FLAC/ALAC/AIFF etc.)

 

I can convert some CDs to FLAC and ask my wife if she can tell the difference. I honestly can't hear the differences between wav and flac but I can definitely hear the difference between older mp3 and wav and FLAC. She's a classical musician with a much more sensitive ear than I, so I'm sure she'll notice.

 

Got it. CD tracks can be copied bit for-bit in FLAC or ALAC and you'll get CD quality. Hi Res is a massive step up from CD, and the tracks are typically bit for bit copies of the studio master tapes/files, which contain a lot more sonic information than CD.

CD is a lossy compression of the original studio master, mainly because of the physical limitations of the disc, which has to compress the data enough to fit an album's worth of material on a single disc. (A single raw Hi Res track or two would fill up a CD. They're huge.)

So in the hierarchy of formats, MP3/AAC, then CD, then Hi Res. Basically, back in the 1980s when the CD was gaining traction, recording studios slowly went from 2" multi track tape to 24 bit digital with higher sampling rates than CD's 44.1k/sec. ( 48, 88.2, 96, 192 and 256k/sec)

As a result a lot of material was recorded at sample rates and bit depth greater than CD, and even the large format 24 track reel to reel tapes require better than CD quality to be fully digitized.

The CD of course is locked in to the original limitations of 44.1/16 bit in order to preserve compatibility. There have been some attempts to do better (SACD for example, which required a specialized player) but nothing caught on commercially. It really wasn't until DACs capable of decoding a studio master recording became commercially available and reasonably priced, and hard discs with the capacity to handle a large library of huge hi res files became common that the whole Hi Res thing took off.

My home system has a 12 Terrabyte drive I use for Hi Res files, as well as several hundred Blu Ray and DVD rips. In terms of quality, I happen to have a lot of the same material in multiple formats, which is handy for comparison.

For example I can listen to Hotel California on vinyl, CD, MP3, and Hi Res. Hi Res is phenomenally pure, with a massive dynamic range. You will literally hear stuff you never realized was present. It's less sanitized than the way you're used to hearing it, and you "hear" the studio space and it's clear you're listening to musicians and not just music. This is especially noticeable for recordings by bands that tracked live like The Eagles. (Tracking live means they all played and performed the material together. As a result you'll get little fragments of bleed over between the various instrument mics. The alternative is to lay down a single track at a time, get it perfect, and then add the next instrument track, get that perfect, etc. Usually the whole band isn't even present at one time. They pop in, record their track and leave. Boston, Steely Dan, Yes etc typically record that way.)

However, amazingly, vinyl is far and away my favorite source. Probably because I grew up listening to vinyl during rock's 70's era and that's how I'm accustomed to hearing it.

With a nice tube amp, a vintage table with a decent cartridge and a good preamp, it sounds the best to me. In the car, 256k AAC or 320k MP3 sound good, as does CD either on disc or streaming in full CD Res from Tidal.