BenzV12

I would like to know which one of these following as the poll is concerned you do use the most

hyperion667

usually a CD or the stored music....

WEBSRFR

Lossles music all the way. I have over 200 gigabytes of uncompressed audio in my iPod.

If you are tempted to not use a lossless audio format consider the sound quality you are loosing...

mnje350

iPod I'face in the glove box. It always has my latest download, thanks to the fact I park close to my wireless router. It has all of my playlists and it integrates nicely with the command. I guess I should have voted media interface.

dfordham

You must have the world's largest IPOD. 200 gigabytes of uncompressed audio requires 200 gigabytes to store. Isn't the largest IPOD 32gig?

I think what you mean is you have 200 gigabytes of audio stored in a lossless, compressed format on your IPOD.

I'm not an Apple expert. What lossless formats does the IPOD recognize?

Regards,
Don

ttoE550

It doesn't really change your point or answer your question, but iPods are available up to 160. You might have been thinking of the iPhone, but my wife's is 64 G. Can't blink without falling behind!

dfordham

Thanks for that. My only Apple products are an IPOD Nano and my IPhone. Both are rather restricted in storage.

Still curious about lossless compressed formats supported by Apple.

Regards,
Don

K-A

None at the moment. I'm gonna wait 'till iPhone 5 comes out and load that baby up with a bunch of music to use handily in my car. At the moment I don't have any music stored portably aside from CD's, so I will go between that and radio.

WEBSRFR

Actually my iPod is 240 GB. I refuse to have compressed audio in the car so I sent my iPod to have its drive "upgraded." Google and you can find how to do it. My original music library is stored in Windows Media Audio lossless format. From their I've configured iTunes to import it to Apple Lossless for syncing with my iPod. My iPod has about 200 GB of actual lossless music.

If you listen to a lot of jazz, opera, and classical, it is much better to not loose the resolution of your audio files. Some might not be aware of the loss in quality when you buy music online so that's why I mentioned that you should try to stick to a lossless format for the best audio quality.

KA is right -- I don't think Apple sells lossless audio files yet but there is a workaround. You can buy CDs and store the CD audio in a lossless format that you can then transfer to your iPod. The cost is the same more or less so I prefer to have the full resolution audio files, albeit with some hassle. This is the reason I don't buy music online as the music you buy online is compressed with some quality lacking.

BenzV12

Bluetooh Audio is the leading so far , thanks for your contributions . I do use it as well . There is a snag though , it doesn't support Gracenote (album covers ) but SD does .
One thing , I think I should say , a friend of mine advised me not to leave CDs, DVDs in the car during hot summer days . He said extreme heat could be detrimantal to the COMAND system with these CDs,DVDs are in the slot

I asked how about SD CARD , he said it was OK to leave it there in the slot and not necessary to remove the SD CARD and reinsert it everyday

240BG is sorry I mean 240 GB is . I recently had to prune some tracks in my SONY 8 GB to upload new coolest tracks in MP3 player lol

listerone

I use several of those...but not "media interface" (I don't even know what that is).When far from home I stream local radio stations on my cell phone (I have an unlimited data plan) so I don't miss my favorite talk show host and I also use music register,AM/FM and sometimes an SD card.

dfordham

That's quite an iPod! I didn't know you could do that.

Just for the sake of accuracy, both WMA lossless and Apple lossless are still compressed formats, just lossless compression. They differ from codecs like MP3 and standard WMA in that they don't eliminate any data in favor of better compression. As a result, they are not nearly as efficient in reducing file size, but the end result is music identical to the original source.

Enjoy your music!

Regards,
Don

WEBSRFR

Correct. With WMA Lossless and Apple Lossless the output (what matters) is mathematically identical to the uncompressed CD audio file. Since the conversion is actually done on the device itself and what you get is the digital output, there is virtually no distinction whether the audio stream is coming from a CD or an iPod with lossless audio.

What a shame that it is 2012 and the highest audio quality you can get is basically the same technology available in the late 1980s. It's about time we had high resolution multichannel digital audio. Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until Apple or someone creates a device for this and Mercedes creates a corresponding interface.

I really care about audio quality and I am, disappointed that with each new audio technology that comes out rather than the aduio quality get better, it gets worse...

xolinlevh

Media interface plus usually, though after my COMAND software got updated the MIPs no longer displays my track titles correctly =/ so have started using the bluetooth audio thing a bit

dfordham

Yes, you're quite right. Fidelity has given way to convenience. This is mostly driven by the younger generation whose music doesn't sound any different on MP3 anyway.

Of course, COMAND will play DVD-Audio but that format seems to be all but abandoned.

Regards,
Don

El Cid

Actually use CD changer and radio almost as much as I do Music Register, especially for short trips. Never use any of the others.

WEBSRFR

Just when I had invested in Super Audio CDs (when I thought that was the emerging high definition audio format a) couple of years ago... Now both SACD and HDCD are pretty much dead and Mercedes ended up supporting the format I did not get

listerone

Unlike some (many?) here I don't expect top notch fidelity in my car.Nor do I expect multi channel sound.The fidelity I get from the music register is fine with me.I've played several DVD-A's on my Comand system and it sounds excellent but as is true of most of my commericial discs I only like one or two songs on each.

And you're correct about kids being unconcerned about sound quality.Since the advent of the CD my attitude has been that if I like a song enough to own it then I want to own it in CD format (commericial or CD-R wav files).And then from CD I can convert a song into MP3 format for an MP3 player,cell phone,etc.But then,my music is almost entirely 50's and 60's.

RNBRAD

HD audio will make a comeback and possibly with newer different formats as portable storage space costs less of a premium. Not too far in the future we'll see new storage devices the size of a postage stamp that will have several Terabytes of storage. There will be no reason not to have the complete rendition of the recording and even better quality than a standard CD. This is happening as I type.