Haven't tried BT on my excelon yet. Still dialing it in with mp3 in original format and with gain control.

 

This question has been asked many of times, even by myself.

I have the full Biketronics system and a Sony HU.

In my opinion, when I'm playing music from Spotify via Bluetooth from my phone, the sound quality is more impressive than from using a thumb drive. In my opinion, the sound is more flat using a thumb drive.

But, I have more playlists and they're easier to get to when riding on Spotify, than what I own on thumb drives.

 

Ok now we're gonna get deep into this....because when playing tracks to the USB you have to take into consideration what the quality of the track is and is it a lossless format, wav. or what the bitrate of the mp3 is, and true bitrate at that, not a converted 128 into 320 while Spotify may be streaming a CD or iTunes rip. Not saying your tracks are of that quality, just adding that obviously not all tracks on a drive are created equal.

When I get the same exact file and play it on my radio via BT or via USB I can go much louder without distortion using a USB. I gotta try with Spotify! Have you tried playingg a track from Spotify via BT and then via USB or Aux cable to see if there's a difference?

 

Just installed my Sony MEXM70BT and am loving this thread!!!! Thanks guys great info here.
Kris

 

I've loving the info also, however I'm only truly understanding part of it. I'm going to have to do some homework on spotify because honestly I'm not familiar with it. I'm assuming when comparing a bitrate it similar to comparing the definition of a TV? The better the bitrate the higher the quality of the music data? I guess I've just been stuck in the apple world for awhile and iTunes is really about all I know. I have transferred all my cds to iTunes and also purchased a lot of music over the years. So what would the bitrate of iTunes music be?

 

Holy smokes, after a few hours of looking into this "bitrate"or "digital audio quality" in general I'm overwhelmed!! So let me ask this.... I have music I've loaded to iTunes from CDs and also iTunes downloads. If I convert the files to MP3 (assuming that's the best?) and load them to a thumb drive will the original bitrate of the cd music be present on the thumb drive? Another question would be is it possible to download hi def music digitally from an iTunes like source?

 

There is a column view in iTunes for bitrate. MP3 is not the best format, lossless and wav files will generally sound better, but are much larger files and not all digitila Music players play them. Also, let's say when burning a CD from iTunes, iTunes itself will let you determine what bitrate you want to burn at since the lower the bitrate the smaller the file.

 

And the higher the bitrate, the better the sound quality?
Kris

 

You actually set the bitrate for loading the CD's into iTunes, I set mine to the custom rate of 320kbps which is as high as iTunes allows for mp3's, you go into Edit>Preferences>Import Settings and select the settings you want and what encoder if any you want.


Yes, the higher the bitrate the more information it has on the actual sounds it is trying to reproduce. Without giving college courses, hopefully simple explanation, the encoder is reading the song info, and coding it down to whatever size instructed, then a decoder plays the song back when you listen to it, trick here is, the encoder/decoder uses algorithms to replace the music that is missing, these are not always correct and with less information it does not even replace some frequencies because it doesn't know they were even there to begin with, because it has such a low file size.


Wav files are the files CD's are so this type is a direct copy of the music, Lossless files are encoded to close to half the original size and are supposed to reassemble to the original state, several companies have lossless encoders.


I used to only use WAV files, but then I had 3-4TB's of HDD used and no way to put it on any other media that I could use, so I did finally bow down and started using an MP3 rate of 320k no less, and if I download a song I will not accept any less than 256k, if less than this, I just buy the CD and load it myself, this way it is 320k. The downside to this, if it really is a downside is, I only have iPod classic's because nothing else will hold my library, and I have modified the 6 iPod classics I have, two have 256Gb SSD's and 4 have 240GB HDD's, but they have all my 2700+ albums and 36000+ songs, and at a rate that has enough info to reproduce the song. You can take a MP3 at say 128k, one at 320k, and the original WAV file, and play them on a quality system (not a bike system, a home or auto system) and you will hear the difference.

 

Yes......maybe.

Higher the recorded bit rate = sound better. Now within iTunes for example you can convert a songs bitrate which will make the file smaller or bigger, this is useful when burning to a CD, moving to a drive, etc. However, let's say you downloaded a crappy version of a track from somewhere online and it was 128bps, and you convert it to 320 in iTunes it won't increase the quality of the sound. It will simply make a larger, louder just as crappy version!