SD Card vs MDI Sound Quality with RNS510?

[AaronMc]

What of the 2 above give the best sound quality?

Was working on a Golf GTI MK6 at work yesterday whichg sounded phenomenal through the standard speakers and just running off an iPod nano 5th gen. Was only a RCD310 I believe too..

Im running the RNS510 with SD card and it didnt sound as good as that, but is that just normal?

[bacillus]

Are you comparing apples with apples i.e. what sound system did the Mk6 have vs yours.

[AaronMc]

They had the RCD 310 in a MK6 GTD. Standard Speakers but play music through their iPod Nano.

I have an RNS 510 in my MK5 GTi ED30. Standard Speakers, but play music through my SD Card.

Theirs sounded much bassier and crisp, compared to mine, but they are set on the same sound settings..

[MrDo]

What of the 2 above give the best sound quality?

Was working on a Golf GTI MK6 at work yesterday whichg sounded phenomenal through the standard speakers and just running off an iPod nano 5th gen. Was only a RCD310 I believe too..

Im running the RNS510 with SD card and it didnt sound as good as that, but is that just normal?

Probably related to on the quality of the mp3 files on each.

Eg if your SD card has mp3 files at 128kbps while the iPod had files at 320kbps then the higher quality 320kbps will sound crisper, bass will be punchier and detail much better. The trade off is higher quality files take up more space on your SD card or ipod etc.

Listen to a low Kbps and same song at higher Kbps (eg by ripping a bought cd twice) with headphones and you notice the difference in seconds.

[AaronMc]

Think all of their tracks were CD rips at 320 and also most of my music is 320kbps too.

We quite often get complains about sound quality difference between the same model of unit at work but can't seem to think what it is..

I guess their MK6 could of had better speakers to my MK5 but just wondered if it was because mine was SD vs his MDI..

[MrDo]

Hmmmmm anyone lucky enough to own a mk5 and a mk6 know if there's much difference?

[AaronMc]

Just seemed a lot bassier and crisp..

May just have different speakers in the Mk6..

[thejackal]

Any chance the iPod had EQ settings on eg rock/r&b/bass as this will affect sound quality

[AaronMc]

Yeah that's another possibility..

[Simmo]

The SD slot and MDI cable should be the same quality as both just copy the media (mp3/WAV etc) to cache memory in the 510 and use the same processing components to convert to analogue and send to the speakers.

I've had a scirocco 2010 which sounded a lot lot better than my golf so I'm thinking the speakers must be different / improved on the later models. I did notice that the 510 audio via Bluetooth wasn't nearly as good quality as the MDI due to compression of the audio data over Bluetooth which doesn't occur using MDI.

Cheers Andy

[AaronMc]

Thanks for that andy, may see how much the speakers are and if they would be a staight swap for mine..

Be happy with that quality, and usually OEM speakers arent much money..

[torque777]

Ive just removed a rcd 300 and fitted a rcd510 to my mk5 and got to say the sound quality is great much better than rcd300 , and ive found the quallty of sound is slightly better on sd card over the cd's I have in there , mind you I set iTunes at highest quality mp3 , and only managed to fit about 10 albums on a 2gb card

sent using my own fingers