I notice that the iPod sound quality from the Mercedes connector sounds horrible. Regardless of the iPod EQ and volume settings, the sound qulaity is nowhere near as good as CD or Radio. The sound is distorted and the fidelity is way off. Any suggestions?

Are you talking about the connector from your glove box ?

Andy

yes

Hmmm. that is strange. I have had the opposite experience. Sound quality has been pretty good on mine.

My quality is pretty good coming out of there, but I have everything on my iPod at 192 kb/s. Only problem I have with the connector is volume. I just re-leveled all my songs so I might have fixed it, but sometimes max volume in the car was not very loud with my iPod in...

My ipod connector sound quality is crummy too. I stopped using it and have been considering the connector upgrade that goes inside the center console (and also adds bluetooth)...but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. Do a search on the forum and you'll see what I'm talking about.

The sound quality through the factory iPod harness is down right horrible. I've tried to change the settings a variety of times to no avail. The sound quality from the Harmon kardon system is really disappointing in general and is probably my biggest gripe with the car.

Based on the replies, it appears that the sound quality is subjective. For those who are in the same boat as me, is it possible that for whatever reason, the head unit AUX input is screwed up?

iPod sound reproduction is for the most part some of the worst on the market anyways. They have gotten much better, but my Sony Ericcson walkman phone sounded worlds better than my old Nano a few years ago.

Okay, I don't want to lose track here. I'm not trying to compare the audio fidelity of CD quality versus compressed audio (aac, mp3, etc.), that's a totally different topic.

The sound quality I'm experiencing is just BAD. I have an iPod connector hooked up to my Chevy Tahoe and home theater system and they sound great. You'd have to be an audiophile to detect a difference. You don't even need to be close to an audiophile to detect the bad sound quality coming from the iPod connector in my Benz.

I'm with you. My new iPhone sounds great when hooked up to my wife's Volvo, my home system, or my Bose sounddock...but sounds like crap when plugged into my E55. Like I said, I don't use it anymore.

Might just be a bad box then. The aux cable is pin-compatible to a standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. Rig up a conversion cable and see how it sounds when going into some other audio playback device but still through that converter box.

If you had a headphone jack in the glovebox, you should be able to just plug in it's aux into the box, and listen on headphones.

Yeah, I can see how the connector could go bad. Mine has not gone bad and sounds pretty good. It could just be a little messed up in there if people just yank their ipods out, etc. loosen the connection or something.

Thanks for the feedback! For those who are in the same boat as me it could potentially be something gone bad. I highly doubt that the iPod output would sound this BAD from the factory.

I am going to try plugging my iPod directly into the AUX jack to see if there is a sound quality difference.

I think I understand but can you clarify?

Old thread, but maybe helpful - you might try a cable like this - .. and plug it into your aux input. It takes line-out quality (doesn't pass through the ipod's headphone amplifier) from the ipod connector, you connect to the car aux input, and you can also plug in the USB end to charge your ipod at the same time. I used this in another car and the quality was great.

There are a lot of different manufacturers for that style cable now, so as always, build quality may vary.