Bypassing Iphone poor sound quality

So i have been upgrading my stereo for the past 2 years, and it is about to be complete with a new set of fronts from H.A.T.. My only issue now is my source. I use my iPhone for everything, including all my music. I attach it to my Alpine CDA-9886 and it works fine...except for sound quality. When i listen to a CD, the stereo sounds amazing, when i listen to the connected iphone....only so-so. Does anyone know of any good options for bypassing the iPhone's DAC (could be the wrong term there)? I know you can by home audio version for like 500 bucks, but i can't seem to find anything for the Truck.

Current system:
Alpine CDA 9886
Metra SWC
H.A.T. Unity 6.5" components (in route!)
H.A.T. Imagine 6.5" Convertible Coaxial Components
JL Audio Slash V2 350.4
JL Audio Slash V2 250.1
Infinity Perfect 10.1 in 1ft^2 sealed home fabricated access cab box.
JL wiring

 

My guess is that your problem is before the iPhone even. I'd be willing to bet that it's the music itself that's actually the problem. What format are your songs? MP3?

Take a CD and rip it as WAV and then load it on your iPhone and let me know if you hear the difference. My guess would be no.

 

Yup. Re-rip your CD's, or quit downloading crappy versions of music, and you should be good to go.

 

yeah, after doing some research, its definately the file format. ill look into getting .wav files on the iphone, but in the meantime i will start using the Apple lossless format too...not very excited about re-ripping all my old cd's....if i can find them.

 

my iphone music sounds great in my truck, even through the aux port.

glad you got it figured out though

 

The better the stereo, the worse the music sounds unless its lossless... LoL You're in my boat bud. I'm impressed that, even though bluetooth is lossy, you can't tell.

 

.....tell ya what I'll do.

I made a disc where I cut 50 tracks of the most well recorded music I could find. I put them into intuitive sections so that you can use it to tune your system. I also wrote like 5 pages of commentary so you know what to listen for.

I'll put a link to it up in the test tones thread once it's uploaded. Download a copy of it and load it on your iPhone and print out the commentary. Then spend some time in the truck doing some listening and let me know what you find.

 

Alright ladies.....here ya go

(will be posted in the test tones thread too)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5688980/Clarity%20Tools.rar

 

Are you friggen' serious? That's Awesome! I'm burning it all right now! Much appreciated!

 

Steven, what an incredible offer - thanks.

 

Yea MP3s just have inherently bad sound quality, and I've actually blown speakers because of all the background noise. Re-rip the tracks in a .FLAC or similar lossless format and it should fix the problem.

 

so will i be able to run the .flac's on my iphone? or only the apple lossless?

 

Here's a good youtube comparison. The music switches back and forth from Lossless to Lossy. Lossy sounds muddy even on my laptop's speakers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbkV9vghf6A

 

I'm wondering how you all are getting good quality music. Do you buy all of your cd's? I download all my music and it's all compressed. Is there a program to improve the quality of songs?

 

Nope, you can't restore what was never there. My suggestion is to either buy the music (best option) or download 320kpbs files.

 

Wow man! Thanks!

 

No problem guys. Took me forever to cut all those tracks so make good use of it!

 

So i used your test tones, and "re-tuned" my current setup, which now sounds at least 50% better. That PDF write-up is great for someone learning the whole tuning process (slow learner still...). I also figured otu how to download Apple-Lossless files instead of just the regular versions of songs (very easy, simple checkbox in options of itunes). THAT made a world of difference when using my iphone as the source. I've also been digging out my old cd's and preparing to slow burn them all into WAV's or at least apple-lossless.

For anyone out there that is wondering if its worth it to get better files for their music - yes, yes it is. I am back in love with my stereo again. Yes, you CAN tell a difference when hearing the two files one after another.

Still waiting on the H.A.T. Unity Components and adapters, but i figure it should be freaking amazing with the new setup as well.

 

Glad you got things sounding better. The source material makes a WORLD of difference.

The only thing that's not great about WAV files is that there is no metadata on the file. Meaning, no tagging of any sort. I like WAV because pretty much anything will play it whereas Apple lossless will only get played by apple stuff. But if you mainly play from an iPod or iTunes I think that is probably your best bet.

 

There's an Android app that will play Apple Lossless. It's called Andless. The interface needs works (works like a file browser) but it works.