Ipod car aux-in volume control

Factual Questions
1

When playing my iPod in the car through the stereo’s aux in, is there a preferred way to control volume? I could have the iPod turned down and the stereo turned up, or vice-versa. Is either way better from an audiophile view?

Now, I could try each way and see, but I have hearing loss and a hearing aid and am not the best one to critique audio. I tend to just turn everything up. I’m more interested in the science here…

2

I keep my iPod’s volume maxed out and just use the car stereo for volume adjustment. Car stereo includes volume control on the steering wheel, which is convenient since I keep the iPod tucked out of sight.

On my wife’s new CR-V, having the iPod volume maxed out overloads the stereo, resulting in horrible distortion; the iPod has to be backed down to about 80% of max in order to get good sound quality.

If you set the iPod volume very low and then crank up your car stereo’s volume very high, things will get ugly when you inevitably switch your stereo to FM or CD; you’ll blow your ears off. I’d pick a volume level for your iPod so that when you listen at a comfortable main-stereo volume level, the radio and CD player are also played at approximately the same loudness when you switch over to them.

3

In general you keep the source level as high as you can for audiophile quality. The iPod uses a digital volume control, so at low output levels is actually outputting signal with a lower bit resolution, turn the output low enough and compensate with the car stereo volume and you can hear significant degradation of the audio quality (it is an interesting experiment to perform.)

The most important thing with quality and an iPod is to use the dock connector’s audio output, not the headphone socket. This makes a depressing difference, the quality of the internal headphone amplifier is not good. The output from the dock connector is at normal line level, and should be compatible with most aux inputs, and you should usually find that the iPod turned fully up has the same level as other inputs.

4

Thanks! What I was looking for.