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DroneMobile Smartphone Vehicle Control Response Time vs OEM

Smartphone Control

Being able to lock, unlock or remote start your car or truck using an app on your smartphone is handy. In listening to what owners of these solutions have been saying over the last few years, we’ve noticed a disturbing pattern: Most factory-installed remote systems are agonizingly slow. Nobody wants to wait around for their vehicle to unlock. So let’s do some research and see how the DroneMobile system from Firstech stacks up in terms of responsiveness.

What Is a Telematics System?

In the context of cars and trucks, telematics is a way of remotely controlling basic vehicle functions using an app on your smartphone. In essence, these systems replicate the operation of a key fob to let you lock or unlock your vehicle, pop the trunk or hatch, or remote start the engine. In addition, many systems include a GPS receiver that can locate your vehicle on a map or configure location-based security alerts.

DroneMobile is the aftermarket telematics system offered by Firstech – the company behind Compustar remote car starter and security systems. DroneMobile can be integrated with a Compustar remote car starter to provide unlimited control range. So long as your vehicle is parked somewhere with cellular service and your smartphone has access to the internet, you can send commands quickly and easily.

Smartphone Control
DroneMobile does much more than just let you lock, unlock and remotely start your vehicle.

Smartphone Control Response Time

In addition to reliability and ease of use, impressive response time is one of the main reasons thousands of people have upgraded their cars and trucks with this system. Firstech moved its authentication services to AWS a few years ago to increase reliability and responsiveness. AWS is one of the world’s premier cloud computing platforms and is used by companies like Netflix, Amazon, Capital One, Coca-Cola, Expedia and thousands more to host their online platforms.

If you’re sitting at your desk at work and want to remote start your vehicle with your smartphone, it doesn’t matter significantly if the process takes 2, 20 or 120 seconds. However, if you’re walking up to your vehicle and want to use your phone to unlock it, response time matters. The last thing you want is to stand in front of your vehicle for 30, 40 or 60 seconds while data commands travel around the globe. You want the system to unlock as quickly as possible so you can be on your way.

We surveyed a group of friends to look at the response time of the telematics systems that came with their cars and trucks. The answers were surprising in all regards. Most response times were slower than we expected, with a surprisingly significant number of users completely giving up on these systems because they often didn’t respond.

Smartphone Control

If we average all the responses, it took just under 18 seconds from when an icon on the smartphone was pressed to when the vehicle responded on most factory-installed telematics systems. In most cases, this was a simple lock or unlock command. However, the time it took for these vehicles to remote start and then report their status back to the app was often more than twice that.

DroneMobile – The King of Vehicle Remote Control Speed

Most of the employees at BestCarAudio.com have Compustar remote starters installed in their vehicles. We also have DroneMobile telematics systems integrated with those starters. We surveyed our team and many of our peers and found that the average response time for a lock or unlock request was about 2 seconds. In some cases, it was less. Sending a lock command over LTE was often faster than using a one-button RF remote. This isn’t a failing of the remote – it waits a second before transmitting to see if you’re going to press the button again.

If you have remote started your car or truck from inside your home, work, a restaurant or movie theater and are approaching the vehicle, using the DroneMobile system to unlock the doors in about 2 seconds is, frankly, the way these systems should work.

Upgrade Your Vehicle with DroneMobile

Many friends we talked with for this article expressed an interest in replacing the factory system with a solution like DroneMobile. The slow response time or complete failure of the system to function had led many of them to abandon using the factory-installed solutions. If you’re shopping for a lightning-quick telematics system for your car or truck, drop by a local DroneMobile retailer today. You can learn more about this impressive smartphone control solution by visiting the DroneMobile website, their Facebook page, Instagram feed or YouTube channel.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, PRODUCTS, Remote Car Starters, RESOURCE LIBRARY Tagged With: DroneMobile

Why Buy A Bigger Amplifier?

AmplifierWhen an audio enthusiast goes shopping for an amplifier, the question of “how much power do I need?” comes up almost every time. There are a few factors to take into consideration when answering this question. This article looks at those factors and provides some technical background to help support your decision.

Why Do We Need Power?

AmplifierQuite simply, when you send more power to a speaker, it moves farther and produces more output. Two limiting factors within the speaker itself control how much power it can handle. At higher frequencies, the limit is heat. Speakers are notoriously inefficient. The best convert about 2% of the energy sent to them into sound and the rest is converted to heat. When you send 60 watts of power to a speaker, most of that energy heats up the voice coil and the components around it. Eventually, those components will reach a temperature where they will fail. The speaker will usually stop working at this point, or shortly after.

The second limiting factor is how far the speaker can move. Inexpensive midrange speakers may be able to move back and forth about half an inch without creating massive distortion. Higher-end speakers have as much as twice as much cone excursion capability. (Speakers don’t sound the same at high volumes as they do at low. Audition your speakers at the volume you will be using them.)

Power vs. Output

Power works like this: When you double the power going to a speaker, the output increases by 3 dB. That is not a large amount. In fact, it is the smallest change in amplitude that is perceivable across the audible frequency range. (1 dB is the smallest perceivable change in amplitude where our hearing is most sensitive – 1 to 2 kHz).

Perceived volume is a different beast. An increase of 10 times the power sent to a speaker produces a doubling of perceived volume.

Speaker Efficiency

Another consideration in choosing an amplifier is the efficiency of your speakers. An inexpensive conventional midrange speaker may produce an average output of 91 dB when measured 1 meter away from the speaker cone and when driven with 1 watt of power. A high-quality speaker will likely be less efficient, but capable of playing over a wide range of frequencies. A measurement of 85 dB efficiency at the same distance and power level is not uncommon.

How Loud Do We Need it?

AmplifierA typical RMS sound pressure level for an orchestra, when you’re seated three or four rows back from the musicians, is around 100 dB. If we use our analogy of the 85 dB efficient speaker, we need 31.6 watts to get that speaker to play 100 dB. The problem is that this is the average power, not the peak power. Perhaps the performance crests at 110 dB? In that case, we need a peak power level of 316 watts. Just keep in mind that the speaker components are likely to melt if you keep this effort up for any significant amount of time.

We don’t suggest buying any speaker based on its efficiency. Criteria like linearity, lack of distortion, application limitations and frequency range are far more important. If you need it loud, buy more speakers, or larger speakers.

Distortion Happens

What happens if we run out of power in an amplifier? We get distortion. This distortion creates all sorts of high-frequency harmonic content. That increased high-frequency energy is what causes tweeters to fail. We need to choose an amplifier that will allow our speakers to play loudly enough without running out of power.

You are better off buying a 100 watt per channel amplifier and only using 50 watts than you are buying a 50 watt amplifier and occasionally causing it to distort. Remember, those 50 extra watts only result in an increase in output of 3 dB – assuming the speaker can handle it.

It Takes Power to Make Power

AmplifierA consideration that many people overlook is the ability to supply an amplifier with the power it needs to produce the power you want. Modern vehicles have electrical systems with reduced power production capabilities. Smaller alternators, smaller batteries and smaller wiring save weight. Reduced weight transforms into better fuel economy for the vehicle.

As a general rule of thumb for power consumption calculations, you can assume that every 100 watts of power from an amplifier will require about 10 amps of current from your electrical system. Yes, some amplifiers are more efficient than others, but this serves as a good, quick guideline.

If you want to purchase a 650 watt amplifier to power your subwoofer, then your electrical system (battery and alternator) has to be able to provide it with about 65 amps of current. This power requirement is on top of what is required to run the vehicle. The computers, lights, ignition system, radio and heater all consume power as well. On a modern compact car, it would be no surprise if you only had 30 to 40 amps of power left over for an amplifier.

You can get away with a big amplifier – but you can’t play it indefinitely, even with the vehicle running. Once you have exceeded the power delivery capabilities of the amplifier, the battery will start to supply current. You can kill a car battery, even with the vehicle running. Once you shut the car off, you may not have enough energy in the battery to restart it.

Blowing up Amplifiers

AmplifierAmplifiers do not like to be starved for power. When you run out of power to drive your amplifier, in most cases, the amplifier rail voltage starts to drop. Power starvation causes the maximum undistorted power production of the amplifier to decrease. We are back to the same scenario: Distortion causes harmonics, and harmonics can damage fragile speakers.

If you have had an amplifier fail, and the failure was because the power supply section of the amp self-destructed, chances are you were not able to feed the amp properly.

How Much Amplifier Power Do You Need?

The solution: Buy as much as power as you can afford. Buy the biggest that will physically fit in your application. Get the highest-performance amplifier you can. Make sure your installer uses properly sized wiring to install the amplifier. Upgrade your car battery to a high-performance, high-capacity unit if you need more reserve power.

For more information, visit your local mobile electronics specialist retailer. Be honest about your needs and expectations for your audio system. They will be able to suggest a solution that sounds fantastic and will offer years of reliable performance.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

Product Spotlight: Sony XM-4ES Mobile ES 4-Channel Power Amplifier

Sony XM-4ES

The addition of amplifiers to Sony’s Mobile ES line means that every component in a premium car audio system can come from this prestigious series. Our second amplifier spotlight focuses on the compact and powerful XM-4ES four-channel amplifier. Let’s see what Sony’s development team has created!

Sony Mobile ES XM-4ES Amplifier Specifications

The XM-4ES can drive four 2- or 4-ohm loads in its stereo configuration. Each pair of channels can be bridged to drive a single 4-ohm speaker or subwoofer with significantly more power. This bridged configuration is common in systems with a pair of front component speakers and a single subwoofer in the trunk or cargo area.

By way of power specifications, Sony rates this amp as capable of producing a beefy 100 watts per channel with 4-ohm drivers. That power increases to 165 watts when driving 2-ohm loads. When a pair of channels are bridged, the amp will produce 330 watts into a single 4-ohm load. As we’ve come to expect from a no-nonsense company like Sony, all specifications are compliant with the CTA-2006-C standard for supply voltage, noise and distortion content. The power ratings contain less than 1% total harmonic distortion and noise and are measured with 14.4 volts supplied to the amplifier. The CTA-compliant signal-to-noise ratio is 77 dB, and harmonic distortion is rated as less than 0.05%. Finally, the frequency response is very wide at 10 Hz to 40 kHz. On paper, everything looks excellent.

Sony XM-4ES
The XM-4ES amplifier shares the same footprint as its cousin, the 1,000-watt monoblock XM-1ES.

XM-4ES Features and Design

The chassis of the XM-4ES is the same high-mass 10.63-inch wide, 8.46-inch deep, 2.36-inch tall cast-aluminum heatsink as used on the XM-1ES monoblock we spotlighted recently. All signal, power and speaker connections are made along the front edge of the amp, and all but one of the controls are concealed under a removable panel on top of the amp. It’s worth noting that the center trim panel on top of the amp can be rotated 180 degrees, so the Mobile ES logo is aligned with the amplifier’s orientation in your installation.

Sony XM-4ES
The logo plate in the center of the amp can be rotated to align the artwork with your installation.

The front edge features three beefy terminal blocks with heavy-duty set screws accessible from the top of the amp. The right-hand block will accept four-AWG power and ground wires and the remote turn-on lead. The two center blocks are for the speaker output connections, and they will take 10-AWG speaker cables without fuss. A pair of 40-amp ATC fuses to the left of the power block protect the amp.

On the far left of the end panel is a switch that your installer can use to select between low- and high-input voltages. This indicates that the amp has differential inputs – a feature that should be on all car audio amplifiers. Three pair of RCA jacks are present. Two pair are inputs (one RCA for each amplification channel), and the third is an output that could feed a subwoofer amp.

On top of the amp, two groups of controls are mimicked for each pair of channels. These include input sensitivity, filter function, filter range and both high- and low-pass adjustments. Without getting into too much, it’s worth noting that each pair of channels can operate in full-range, high-pass, low-pass or bandpass filter configurations. The amp also includes remote or a signal sense turn-on detection that can be used in high-level input mode, which is crucial for integration with factory-installed source units. There are also switches for signal summing and line-out mode selections. We have a Test Drive Review planned for this amp in a few months. We’ll cover the details of each control then.

Sony XM-4ES
With the XM-4ES top panel removed, your installer has quick and easy access to all the configuration switches and controls.

Chassis and Electronic Design

As mentioned in the XM-1ES spotlight, Sony has put extra attention into the design of the amplifier chassis to help reduce resonance and vibration that could deteriorate sound quality and accelerate wear and tear. That’s something I haven’t seen any other manufacturer focus on.

Internally, the amplifier is based on two circuit boards. The main board is home to the power supply and output stage. High-quality, high-tolerance surface-mount components are used wherever possible. The output filter chokes are shielded units that help to reduce electromagnetic interference. The second circuit board stands vertically and has all the signal processing controls and switches. In all, the design is modern and well-organized.

Sony XM-4ES
The components used to construct the XM-4ES are high quality and should help deliver excellent sound quality.

Check Out the Sony XM-4ES at Your Local Authorized Sony Retailer

We’re excited to get our hands on the XM-4ES to give it a listen and run it through its paces on the TestDriveReview bench. Until then, you can learn more about this amp and its monoblock and five-channel brethren by visiting the Sony Mobile ES website or a local authorized Mobile ES retailer. Be sure to subscribe to Sony’s YouTube channel and follow them on Facebook and Instagram to be the first to learn about their latest car audio product releases.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, PRODUCTS, RESOURCE LIBRARY Tagged With: Sony

Product Spotlight: Sony XM-1ES Mobile ES Mono Power Amplifier

Sony XM-1ES

The team here at BestCarAudio.com has been privileged to follow the introduction of new, high-performance car audio components in the Sony Mobile ES line. From their impressive speakers and subwoofers to the genuinely outstanding XAV-9500ES source unit, each solution has delivered exceptional performance and value. For 2022, Sony has added three amplifiers to the Mobile ES line. The first model we’ll spotlight is the XM-1ES monoblock subwoofer amplifier. Let’s dig in!

Sony Mobile ES XM-1ES Amplifier Specifications

The XM-1ES is a monoblock car audio amplifier designed to power subwoofers with up to 1,000 watts of power. Specifically, Sony rates the amp as capable of producing 600 watts of power into a 4-ohm load with specifications that fall under the CTA-2006-C guidelines for noise, distortion and supply voltage. When driving a 2-ohm load, power output increases to 1,000 watts while remaining under the 1% THD+N limit. Sony specs the distortion as being 0.05% or less at 100 Hz. Though it’s uber-geeky, I’m happy to see that the 77 dB signal-to-noise ratio specification is also CTA-compliant. Everyone at BestCarAudio.com is fanatical about proper specification qualifications, and Sony isn’t playing any games in this regard.

Sony XM-1ES
All connections are along one edge of the amplifier for a clean and tidy installation.

The amplifier measures 10.63 inches wide, 8.46 inches deep and 2.36 inches tall. This is small enough to fit under the front seats of many vehicles or in a storage compartment under the floor of a cargo area. Sony has done something unique with the chassis and bottom-plate design of the XM-1ES that I’ve never seen from any other amplifier manufacturer. The high-mass cast-aluminum extrusion has been optimized for a resonant frequency that is well out of the region where most of the vibration energy from the vehicle and subwoofer system occurs. This will contribute to product reliability and could easily improve the amplifier’s sonic performance. It’s also worth noting that the center trim panel on the top of the amp can be rotated 180 degrees, so the Mobile ES logo aligns cosmetically with your installation. This is impressive attention to detail.

Sony XM-1ES
The chassis of the XM-1ES is designed to be damped better than other amplifiers on the market to improve reliability and performance.

In terms of electrical connections, all signal, power and speaker terminals are along the front edge of the amplifier. All the speaker and power connections are made via heavy-duty terminal blocks with hex-head set screws accessible from the top of the amp. Even better, the same size hex key is used for every screw on the amplifier, from the top trim cover to the beefy 1/0 gauge power terminals. Fuses, the connection for the very handsome remote level control and an input voltage selection switch round out the end panel features.

Sony XM-1ES
The remote level control included with the XM-1ES will allow you to adjust the output of the amplifier quickly and easily from the front of the vehicle.

Removing two screws on top of the amp gives your installer access to the amplifier’s configuration settings and controls. RCA input jacks will accept 0.2 to 8V in low-voltage mode and 3 to 16 volts in high-level mode. This switch implies that the inputs on the amp feature a differential design that will help eliminate the presence of induced noise. The low-pass crossover is adjustable from 50 to 500 Hz and has a slope of -24 dB/octave.

The XM-1ES has remote signal detection turn-on capabilities when using the high-level input setting, so it can be used with a factory source unit without needing external hardware in most applications. The infrasonic filter is adjustable from 5 to 50 hertz with the same attenuation rate.

Sony XM-1ES
The center trim piece on Sony’s new Mobile ES amplifiers can be rotated to suit your installation layout.

A look inside the amp shows a modern design, using surface-mount components almost exclusively. Surface-mount parts, which can be placed on the board robotically instead of by hand, offer exponentially better value to consumers. These parts also typically offer higher precision than their through-hole brethren. High-quality capacitors, shielded output filter chokes, lots of energy storage and good input filtering are clearly evident.

A small variable-speed fan in the back left corner helps ensure that the amp will continue to function reliably, even when installed in a space with limited ventilation. This durability is part of why Sony can back its Mobile ES amplifiers with a three-year manufacturer’s warranty.

Sony XM-1ES
A solid design executed with good-quality components should ensure that the Sony XM-1ES sounds great and operates efficiently

Check Out the Sony XM-1ES at Your Local Authorized Sony Retailer

We plan to get one of the new Sony XM-1ES amplifiers to our lab for a full BestCarAudio.com Test Drive Review shortly. If you’re shopping for a high-quality, full-featured subwoofer amplifier for your vehicle, visit your local authorized Sony Mobile ES retailer. You can learn more about this amp and its two brethren (the XM-4ES four-channel and XM-5ES five-channel) by visiting the Sony Mobile ES website, their Facebook page, Instagram feed or YouTube channel.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, PRODUCTS, RESOURCE LIBRARY Tagged With: Sony

What Is An MP3 File?

MP3

You cannot have talked about audio and computers any time in the last 15 years and not have heard of an MP3 file. MP3 audio files and websites, like the original Napster, started a shift in where, how and when people acquired music. If you are on the older end of the spectrum, like many of us in the mobile electronics industry, then you bought your CDs, cassettes and maybe even your vinyl at a record store. Computers and the Internet changed that. You could go online after dinner and download an illegal copy of a song in a few minutes. It was wrong, but people acquired tens of millions of songs this way.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, accessing the Internet was slow. We started connecting to the Internet using phone lines and modems. Each byte of information took time to transfer to your computer, so anything that would speed up the process was a treat. Downloading (stealing) music using the Internet is where the popularity of the MP3 audio file met its calling.

A Primer on Digital Audio

MP3We could write 10 articles about digital audio – and we just might. For now, we are going to look at the basics and use the compact disc (CD) as our reference. CDs store digital audio sampled at 44.1 kHz with a resolution of 16 bits. These numbers mean each sample can have an amplitude that is a single value within a range of 65,536 different levels (2 to the power of 16). The information is sampled 44,100 times a second. Sampling at what is known as 44.1/16 allows capturing the audible range of audio (considered 20 Hz to 20 kHz) with good detail and accuracy.

To store 1 second of audio at this resolution, we need to store 1,411,200 bits of information. Anyone who has played with audio transcoding software may recognize 1,411 kbps as a standard data rate. This number is calculated by multiplying the number bits per sample (16) times the number of samples per second (44,100) times 2. The times-2 factor is because we record in stereo – which is two channels. So, a 3-minute long song is 254,016,000 bits or 31,752,000 bytes.

Let’s round it off to 31 megabytes of information. Can you imagine how long it takes to download that with a dial-up modem running at 14,400 baud? The answer is at least 3.5 minutes – without error checking, line noise and other factors that slow the real download time to about 5.5 minutes.

Data Compression

What if someone found a way to shrink the size of the audio file to speed up download time and reduce bandwidth usage? The caveat is that the audio still sounds essentially the same on most basic audio systems, such as a TV, computer speakers or a 1990s factory car radio. In 1991, a group of companies, including the Fraunhofer Institute, France Telecom, Philips, TDF and IRT, started working on a way to reduce file size while maintaining relevant information. That is the key to how file size is reduced using MP3 compression.

The MP3 file format is a “lossy compression” algorithm. Lossy compression means that information is thrown away to reduce file size. The development team worked on a compression method called perceptual encoding to decide what information to remove. Perceptual encoding is based on how we hear sounds relative to other information, and the limits of our hearing.

What MP3 Files Throw Out

We are going to analyze the information that MP3 files remove to reduce file size. One of the easiest ways to cut back on information storage is to reduce the highest frequency that will be reproduced. If we analyze a 128 kbps MP3 file, we see that the highest reproduced frequency is just below 16 kHz. If that were the only information that was removed, our new bitrate with 16-bit samples in stereo would be about 1,004,800 kbps instead of 1,411,200 kbps for 20.05 kHz.

MP3The next part of the compression process analyzes content that is common to both channels. It is common for some parts of a recording to be virtually in mono. The encoding process removes duplicated information from the file and adds code to copy the opposite channel. If the audio track were purely mono, the file size would be divided in two. Few tracks are completely mono, but we can see more space saving from this process.

Subsequent processing looks at low-level information during high-amplitude passages. Let’s use the example of a song with a lot of bass in it and some very quiet harmonic midrange information. Perceptual encoding processes like MP3 will remove this low-level information from the audio track. This process is called audio masking. There is enough audio information at other frequencies to distract you from hearing what is removed.

Can You Hear the Difference?

Dozens – nay, hundreds – of tests have compared MP3 files to full CD-quality audio tracks. Are there differences? There most certainly are. One thing became apparent during our research: How an MP3 file is created is crucial to its subjective sound quality. Different encoders work in different ways with different results.

Perhaps the best way to describe the difference between a CD-quality recording and an MP3 file is to look at the difference between the two. I wish we could share some samples here for you to listen to, but that would break copyright laws. What we can do is visually show you the difference.

We took a 3-second sample from Daft Punk’s “Give Life Back to Music.” We chose this track because of Daft Punk’s clear and conscious effort to make a high-resolution version of the album commercially available. We want to thank them for that! The sample is from 31.5 seconds to 34.5 seconds into the song.

This Spectrogram shows the frequency content of the sample. The horizontal scale is time. The vertical scale is frequency. Finally, the color intensity shows the amplitude.

MP3
This is the original sample.

You can see that there is frequency content up to 30 kHz, clearly demonstrating the high-resolution nature of this track. Each vertical color band represents a drum machine beat – more or less.

128 kbs MP3 File Analyzation

MP3
This is the sample converted to a 128 kbps MP3 file.

It is clear that audio information above 16 kHz has been removed. Infrasonic frequency content is clearly different as well. There is more information in the MP3 file below 30 Hz compared to the original. This increase in information will, however, present itself as less-dynamic range.

MP3 Vs Original File

MP3
This is the difference between the Original sample and the MP3 Sample.

We inverted the MP3 file and added it to the original sample to make the image you see here. The net result is the difference between the two tracks. You can see the high-frequency content that was removed above 16 kHz. In fact, information was removed at all frequencies, and that information follows the intensity pattern of the audio file.

The original file has a peak amplitude of -0.1 dB for both channels and an average amplitude of about -14.2 dB. The removed information has a peak level of -10.9 dB and an average amplitude of -37.01. The removed information is buried deep below the peak amplitude information.

MP3What does the removed audio sound like? We would describe the clip as the sound of a distant marching band. The audio is mostly high-frequency information. The track has a decidedly warbled texture to it as well: The drum machine beats are clear and present, but they sound like distorted cymbal hits.

Even with a high-end headphone preamp and studio grade headphones, the difference is hard to perceive when switching between the original track and the MP3 file. In a listening environment with a larger soundstage, it may be more apparent.

Conclusions about MP3 Files

Purists will tell you that you should have the highest-quality recordings available. There is no fault to this logic. Why skimp when you can have it all? High bitrate MP3 files, like those at 320 kbps, for example, are excellent in quality. Repeated testing has shown that when created with quality compression algorithms, the sound difference between a CD-quality recording and a 320 kbps MP3 file is almost impossible to detect. Lower bitrate MP3 files start to dispose of more information, and the differences become bigger.

The latest source units on the market are capable of playing WAV and FLAC audio files of great resolution and bit depth. Shortly, we will see units that will play MQA files over digital connections. Almost every source will handle MP3 and WMA files.

Drop into your local mobile electronics specialist retailer today, and bring along some music to enjoy. We think you will be impressed – no matter what format you choose.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Filed Under: ARTICLES, Car Audio, RESOURCE LIBRARY

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