Premium sound: only if you are going to listen high-quality CDs; makes no sense for MP3 format...

If you listen to CD's and/or HD Radio get Premium Sound...I can hear the differenece and its well worth the money.

not true...if you encode your MP3's properly and use a line out...you cant tell the difference between a CD.

What's then factor of 10 compression does? Zipping? It cuts high, low frequencies off, that's why each song becomes several Megs or so.

as I said if you encode properly (your songs will be 6-9 mb each) the quality is high enough that you cant hear the difference in a X5 sound system. Yes if you encode at a low bit rate or buy your music off itunes they sound like crap. But with 80-120GB ipods why do you need to do that.

I encode my music at no less than 193kbps and most at 256-320 kbps. I can switch back and forth between the original CD and Ipod and there is absolutley no way anyone can tell the difference between the sources.

The quaility may be high enough for you, but the informaation is lost during the encoding. It cannot be recovered by any high quality sound system...

I'll pay you $500 if you can tell me which source is ipod and which is CD inside my X5 w/ Premium Sound system.

There is no debate that somthing is lost, the question is can you hear what is lost inside an autos sound system. My testing says no.

One thing I can agree on, whatever investment you make, should keep you happy...

:popcorn:

Ditto for my non-premium system.;)