do you think this would look good, or for those of you that have a green display, how does it look? Maybe bad?

I want the alpine with the time correction, but we are talking 60 bucks more for the 7894 over the 7892 and the only REAL difference is the damn orange display! So I was thinking of getting the 92 and dealing with the green display..UNLESS THAT SUCKS!!!

 

I'm seriously considering the 7893 because of it's brushed aluminum faceplate, and the fact that the display, although not amber, is a more neutral white.

 

you'd also be missing out on MP3 compatiblity built in... you'd have to add the chm-s634 changer to get mp3.

 

the 7893 would be $270

the 7894 would be $310

is the 94 worth the 40 bucks? I guess the blue/white and chrome is cool, AND it has mp3 playback which should be nifty, eventhough I hate MP3 sound quality!

I guess I would say orange is not worth 40 bucks, but the jump from 7892 to 7893 IS worth 20 bucks. hmmmmm....

 

MP3's, IMO, are a lossy form of media. Unless you convert MP3's at a bitrate of 192 kbps or higher, you're deteriorating the music, and even at those rates, you're still cutting highs and lows off of the files. MP3's are great for individuals that aren't too concerned with great sound quality and a near perfect reproduction of the original source, but if you're someone like myself that *is* concerned, then MP3's are a waste of time. If you're going to drop a lot of money into an audio system, please don't play crappy MP3's on it.

Just my nickel

 

The 7893 doesn't have MP3 playback capablility, unless I missed something in the features?

Either way, that certainly wouldn't be a selling piont as far as *I'm* concerned....might be for others though.

 

Well, I wouldn't worry about getting an Alpine that has "amber" read out because it doesn't match the Z's amber anyway. I have the Alpine 7998 w/bio display and can switch to amber, however it doesn't match and looks funny, so I keep it on the green color. As for MP3 playback, yes I know the quality isn't top notch, but I was extremely impressed with the Media Expander feature that the Alpine had. It helped reproduce a much better sound when playing MP3's, or at least good enough that most of them sound good enough for me.

The time correction on these unit rocks, and the built-in crossover and digital eq feature is excellent as well. I like being able to have one unit control these items rather then buying seperate devices to set this....although I know the Alpine 7998 ran me $560!!!

Enjoy!

 

mp3's can be worse or better than cd quality, it all depends on how the mp3 was encoded. most of the time it cant be any better than a cd (only because most mp3s are recorded off a cd), but shouldnt be worse if the person who encoded the mp3 off the cd knew what they were doing. sometimes mp3s can be better quality if the music is recorded from the artist and saved directly into the mp3 format. what program do u use to play your mp3s on your computer before u burn them to a cd?? most have a way of telling u how good the quality is. and if u dont test the mp3s before you burn them, its your fault that they may sound like crap.

 

I've ripped most all of my CDs and have them on my home theater PC. I've found I rarely put in the real thing anymore, just because it is so convenient to pull up the MP3s and play them through the stereo instead of getting out individual CDs. Since I'm normally roaming the house out of the main room when doing this, the quality difference isn't really noticable compared to the convenience factor.

If you encode with high enough quality settings, MP3s can be damn good. Not perfect, but very useful. I personally encode with LAME, using the --r3mix settings for variable bitrate, and am very satisfied. MUCH better than the 128K MP3s that used to be so common all over the net.

 

I have to disagree. There's NO WAY an MP3 could ever be better than CD quality. MP3 is a *lossy* format of media, meaning you lose quality from the original recording and/or source. When you convert a .wav file to an MP3 @ *any* bitrate, you are compressing the file to make it smaller, thus losing information within that given file. The higher the bitrate, the less amount of information you lose, but you are still losing info and degrading the file.

A direct rip from a live recording to MP3 is still of a lesser grade than a .wav file, which is what you get when you convert a CD track to a media file. The only way to preserve a live recording while making the file size smaller is to use a .shn program. .SHN's are a lossless way to transfer data (music files) at a fraction of the original .wav file size. When you extract a .shn back to .wav, you lose nothing, as where an MP3 has already been compressed and the loss has occurred.

1. What is SHN?

SHN is short for Shorten. It is a lossless compression algorithm for digital music. It was developed by SoftSound (www.softsound.com). It compresses music files 1/2 to 1/3 of their original size, maintaining perfect sound quality.


2. Why not MP3/VQF/AAC/ETC?

These compressions all use a lossy algorithm. This means that over time, these lossy recordings can be re-extracted and re-encoded so that it sounds very inferior to the original source. Lossless algorithms such as Shorten (.shn) allow for pure digital reproductions.

 

Here is an interesting but techish look at some lossless compression schemes.

 

We can argue the technical points to the music formats till we all feel like we can **** further, but the bottom line comes down to your preference, waying the convience of MP3 capabilities on a deck to "not so perfect" quality. I know the quality can be better, hell for that matter once you get a good stereo setup you can tell when the quality of regular store bought CD recordings are worse than others, but for me I love being able to burn a CD full of my favorite songs (MP3 format), stick it in the deck, hit "mix" and continue with driving my Z!

Not trying to shoot for distance, but just getting back to the points of which deck should I buy, etc. My summary...

-Green is fine (better than the amber they offer)
-Time correction rocks!
-silver face plate is sweet
-MP3 playing ability is cool (assuming you can live w/the quality)

Hope this helps roberto350z!

 

Dude, if you want to believe that the quality of an MP3 can be better than CD, that's certainly you're prerogative, but there's no physically possible way for that to be true.

 

No way dude. CDs are SAMPLING of the source.. MP3s are LOSSY COMPRESSION. Huge difference.. a MP3 will never be as good as a CD due to the loss in compression. Mp3 isn't Lossless.. like ZIP is.. it throws out info to achieve its compression.. hence lossy.

MP3s can sound great with a good bitrate, and good quality encoder.. but some tracks will always sound like crap. And for purest.. Mp3 just isn't satifactory.. and people spending 3-5k for stereos in their cars.. I'm sure they are of the group where they can not cope with the artifacts MP3 encoding introduces.

 

Exactly.

 

Let me clarify the statement, because it was not meant in the manner in which you interpreted it.

"I know the quality can be better..." I was trying to direct this toward music in general not MP3...I KNOW how mpeg-layer 3 compression works and all of the pro-cons to it. I was intending to say this as compared to actually playing the song from the orginal CD not as an MP3. I have alot of the original CD's these MP3 were ripped from, but I can live with some loss in quality for not having to tote around a huge CD case.

Can we move on here....MP3's sux you don't like them blah blah blah...some of us do and know they are the best quality.

 

See, this is where I get confused. Are you saying that you think MP3's are the best quality?

We can certainly move on. It's already been proven that MP3's are a lossy form of media and are not, and could never be, the same quality as a CD.

 

How about this variable?
With the road noise in the Z while it is moving, MP3's sound just fine. Can't tell much of a difference between an MP3 that I encoded at 192 vs a CD of the same material when the car is MOVING. Yes, when I sit in the car in the garage, I can hear a difference, but I like my music when I am driving, so MP3's work just fine for me. An when I am not listening to MP3/CD, Sirius Satellite radio works great to keep me intertained!

 

Mp3's are truely a lossy format, and yes the "quality" of the digital sound is degraded when mp3s are encoded. This is true and has been proven. BUT, what you need to take into consideration is HOW and WHAT is lost during the encoding process.
Mp3s work by filtering out bits of sound that are INAUDIBLE to the human ear. Now unless you're a dog, or some superhuman that can hear all frequencies of sound, you WILL NOT hear a difference. Assuming you use a high bitrate (I personally use 224kbit/sec), and a quality encoder (like flynnibus mentioned, one that does not filter out audible frequencies along with the inaudible ones), the mp3s you rip, dispite not being the same "quality" as the cd, will sound exactly the same to you, a human being. Sure, audio purists will still want the original exact copy, but to the rest of us this is very unnecessary, especially since this original is no more useful to the human ear than the much smaller, more efficient mp3. Now if you want to keep all your cd's and your SHN files, I'll keep my mp3s, I'll just be able to keep far more music than you will. So while you switch between 8 of your cd's, with those great inaudible frequencies, I'll just leave my one cd in with all your 8 albums burned on it in mp3 format.
I've ripped one of my cd's to mp3, then burned it back onto a cd in wav format to listen to on other stereos. I've played the original cd in my brother's home entertainment system, which was about $3000 (just the audio portion, not including tv, dvd etc), and then played the burned cd, on all different audio setting, high bass, low bass, high treble, low treble, different speaker positions, blah blah blah, and I noticed absolutely NO difference in the quality of sound. But maybe my ears just can't hear as well as yours can. But they are young, and they are in the majority of human ears. So whatever.. You remind me of the people who prefer records over cd's because they apperently sound better. Cd's are digital, therefor superior. Mp3's are a smaller digital format, with no audible difference. Therefor superior.

 

Yes, there is audible difference, therefore MP3's will, which are a *lossy* form of media, never be superior no matter how you slice it. *You* may like them more for whatever reason, but this doens't erase the *fact* that you're listening to an inferior, lossy form of media.

MP3's ripped at a bitrate of 256kbps are definitely a lot better than the normal 128kbps, but the 256 files are quite larger in size while still being lossy. When you reduce something by 70% (which is approx. what you're getting with a 256k rip), you're losing a lot more than inaudible sounds.