Edition 30 iphone sound quality question

[fozz1e]

I've got an Edition 30 with the standard head unit (I think it's an RCD 500?) which has an old-style iPhone connector in the glove box.

Using an adapter from the old iPhone connector to a lightning connector I plug in my iPhone or iPad to listen to music and I don't think the sound quality is as good as I'd expect, it sounds slightly compressed and tinny, definitely not as good as a CD. I'm using the Spotify app at extreme quality for playback and if I plug the iPhone or iPad into a portable speaker with an aux cable the quality is as good as I'd expect so I don't think the issue is with the device itself.

Is this a known issue with this older head unit? My girlfriend isn't convinced she can hear a difference but she would say that to stop me buying a new head unit!

[willni]

Pretty much newer units have better sound quality.

It's like saying vinyl sounded better than cd or cd sounds better than mp3. You remember it being great at the time but compared at the same this the newer sounds far better, there was a test on somewhere I watched about it before.

[fozz1e]

Ok thank you for the answer, sounds like what I expected unfortunately. I guess there’s something about the digital to analog conversion that it does better for CDs than with an Apple input on those older head units. Maybe the adapter doesn’t help either.