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The single best stereo improvement under $50

8K views 24 replies 18 participants last post by  TalonTsi90 
#1 ·
I just wanted to post this here as a helpful tip to anyone who might be wanting to get a little more out of their stereo, whether it be the factory stereo or an aftermarket one.

This mod may take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours depending on how in-depth you want to go, and involves no knowledge of stereo installation, and can be done on a leased vehicle because it can be reversed in about 2 seconds.

Here it is: buy a used iPod. An iPod touch or classic, or even someone's old iPhone would work. Put your music on there and plug it into the USB port, and leave it in the storage box as a permanent sole-purpose unit.

For a long time, I was streaming my music via Bluetooth and once I plugged my old ipod in, I was amazed at how much better the sound quality was. Bluetooth compresses the sound significantly, and going straight from USB was like night and day.

The ipod I'm using is from 2010 so even the old ones work. The Mazda infotainment system interfaces really well with an ipod, letting you select music by artist, song, playlist, etc all from the root menu. And since it's always plugged in, it loads up super fast, and never runs out of power.

You can get them on ebay for as little as 35 bucks. If you get one with a cracked screen it's probably even less. It doesn't have to be pretty, as you'll almost never see it. And then you don't have to worry about it getting stolen, since it's so cheap to begin with.

The bulk of the time commitment with this will just be organizing all your music on iTunes (if you don't already have an iTunes library).

I realize that this won't really help folks who stream music through their phones, but for people like me who have a bunch of music it's a very easy and helpful change.

Happy driving!
 
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#2 ·
I did something similar and just dumped mp3 files on a low profile USB and leave that plugged in the center console - works and sounds awesome as well. No iTunes for me. If you leave it as the last connected, it takes some time to load and hear music, so I try and remember to put it on radio prior to getting home - radio/music comes on quick that way and once underway, I can switch over.
 
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#3 ·
Thanks to the both of you for those tips! I'm still getting used to not having a CD player, and I'm getting sick of the few tunes I have on my cell phone... (Yes, I'm old, so what? lol)

Question: I still like listening to whole albums, so if I store mp3s in separate folders on the USB drive (by album), will the player recognize the files, and even play them in order by track?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk
 
#6 ·
Question: I still like listening to whole albums, so if I store mp3s in separate folders on the USB drive (by album), will the player recognize the files, and even play them in order by track?
As long as the music files are tagged properly (and I think any CD ripper should do this), the Infotainment system can group by Album, Artist, etc. For albums, it will play the tracks in the correct order - this is on a 2017 with software version 59.x.
 
#5 ·
Agreed. The USB option also works pretty well. I've used both USB and an iPod classic with my Mazdas (also have a CX-3). I am currently using the iPod in my Mazda6 as it allows for gapless playback which is nice to have when listening to some albums. I keep thinking that the music files on the iPod sound better in the car compared to the same music files on a USB drive, but I have no way to quantify that. One nice benefit of using a USB drive is that a low-profile drive takes up none of that limited space inside the console. The audio quality from either of these options should be much better than what you get through bluetooth.
 
#8 ·
If you're willing to get into the $50ish range the best option on non-Bose systems for improving the sound is to replace the dash tweeters. I've posted on this before; Db351s and bass blockers (I believe I settled on 47uf, non-polarized of course) make an AMAZING difference standing alone.
 
#9 ·
Note that the new Android Auto update will use the USB connection from the phone when playing back audio through the AA interface even if Bluetooth is paired. It only uses Bluetooth for phone calls.

I don't know how Apple Carplay works, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it, too, uses the USB interface for the audio.
 
#12 ·
Lossless files are not supported unfortunately. You're limited to 320kbps. IIRC there's an AIO tweak for it, but I have not played around with this.


(back to ID3 organization)
The system will match names found in ID3 tags exactly. For a clean organization of song/artists/albums/genres you need to have consistency. For instance, say you have an album and you have a song tagged like this: 'Song A' by 'Artist A (feat. Artist B)'. Then you have another song on that same album tagged like this: 'Song B (feat. Artist C)' by 'Artist A'. The system in this case will organize an artist media search as two separate artists which would be kind of annoying since these are both from the same album and you know that. It would be more consistent and cleaner to keep the first song tagged like this instead: 'Song A (feat. Artist B)' by 'Artist A'. This consistency applies for all fields. ID3 tags also contain track numbers as well, so if you want to keep tracks in order as they are on the CD on your system, make sure to add that information. Only reason I mention all this is because there have been cases where I've seen programs like iTunes rip CDs and tag inconsistently. Also for singles this could be an issue as well. Hope this helps some people!
 
#11 ·
I've kept a few old phones for this same purpose, a few cars ago I only had USB and that was how I did it..


As for BlueTooth, it was never designed to be High Fidelity; not enough bandwidth and your tunes are not the only thing using it. You may have luck by going through your phone settings and changing the codec in use.
 
#18 ·
It seems like folks are posting a lot of workarounds to this $50 upgrade. Yeah you could use your phone if you have tons of memory available and if you're OK will plugging it in every single time you get in and out of the car. Yeah you can use a USB drive and spend weeks organizing the music correctly, while still having it load much slower.

These are all bad workarounds. If this was a $5000 upgrade then I could see why people would drag their feet about it, but dudes...
 
#19 ·
Yes, we strayed a bit from your original premise. I agree with you that an iPod works well with the system. However, using a USB drive is just as simple: it is easy to manage as an iPod (if not easier since you don't have to use iTunes), and load times on my 2017 were not slower for a USB drive vs. an iPod. If anything, the iPod was usually a little slower to get going. Playlists can also be done with a USB drive. No huge advantages for one over the other, but pretty much anything that plays through the USB input at a decent bitrate is going to sound better than streaming over Bluetooth.
 
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#21 ·
I have used a Sony Walkman via USB for years and it works rather well on 320kbps MP3 compression. Displays all metadata correctly. The Walkman handles shuffling pretty well. However, the only flaw I've had is that when the car restarts, it resets the shuffle memory on the player. Overall, though, it works well for me.
 
#22 ·
I have two iPods that I use one has over 17k songs the other has a little over 2k songs I put them on shuffle and enjoy my music especially on trips.

We have a 2017 Mazda 6 Touring doesn’t it just have speakers on the doors and why I’m asking is some member here said something about the dash tweeters does my car have dash speakers???

One other thing I have playlist on my Apple phone I have been getting songs from You Tube.
 
#23 ·
The USB stick works best for someone like who doesn't drive a lot. I actually drained my battery with my dashcam because I don't drive enough to charge the battery. OOPS! lol. I was going to use my old 3Gs, but that phone loose battery power as fast as I lose money. ;)
 
#25 ·
Gracenote is built in, at least on my 3. Also OP, im sorry, your assertion of BT being better than hardwired/USB is incorrect. I know because i recently got a USB 2.0 thumb drive and the quality (same files as on my phone) is the exact same as over BT, with the difference being i can scroll through my phone faster than the thumb drive with 26 GB of data on it.
 
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