I have a kenwood excelon in my bike and have wondered if there is a sound quality draw back to bluetoothing my music from my iPhone? Would I be better off putting my music on a thumb drive and using the front usb on my head unit?

 

If your an audiophile, (I'm not), thumbdrive will give you better sound quality.

One thing to be careful about with a thumb drive, you take a chance of hitting it and ruining the port on your HU.

Bluetooth will run your battery down quicker.

Some HU will display song info using thumb drive.

50/50 decision...

 

I've never used a thumb drive for one simple reason to be honest. I have several playlists, I don't always listen to the same music. I listen to heavier rock music by myself than I do if the wife is with me and so on. The have the thumb drives that have the little bitty heads on them now, I wouldn't think it would be to risky using one of those?

 

100% better sound quality with a USB. You can use a mini USB that doesn't stick out, and for playlist you can create folders.

 

Absolutely. BT will impact sound quality in a negative way.

 

Now I need to figure out how to export all my music from iTunes!!

 

Copy them to another folder then convert them to MP3 format. After that I'd suggest you run them through the mp3gains website and set them all at 93db.

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

2010 Limited with some stuff

 

Drag and Drop. I have one of the ScanDisk USB's but 16gig's

 

A question for you guys that have used both thumb drives and bluetooth. How would you compare the two? Sound quality wise? Thanks

 

I use both and don't notice any difference. I might if I had a better system.