Question about the MP3 stereo.

The brochure indicates that the upgraded stereo is capable of playing MP3s burned onto CDs. A few questions regarding this if anyone knows:

Does the stereo play any other encoded format? Such as WMA? If not, what's the highest bit rate supported for the MP3s? Does it support VBR encoding as well or just CBR?

Anyways, thanks in advance for anyone that can shed some light on this.

mustang sallad said:

The highest bit rate mp3 encoding i've heard of is 256mbps. I think the norm is 128, i use 192.
Only mp3s on this thing.

Click to expand...

Hehe, 256mbps better be a typo.
At 256mbps, that's higher than HDTV encoding with full 5.1 DTS and 1080p@60 using the crap MPEG2 format. Actually, you can probably put about 10 of those HDTV streams in that kind of bandwidth.

The highest MP3 CBR encoding is 320Kbps (note the 'K').
The highest WMA CBR encoding is 192Kbps.

MP3 at 320Kbps is generally comparable in quality to WMA at 192Kbps.

MP3 at 128Kbps sounds like crap. MP3 at 320Kbps is barely acceptable. On a higher end car stereo system like the Shaker 1000, you should definately notice the difference between 128Kbps vs 320Kbps (if you don't, you've been playing your music WAY too loud and may be suffering from some serious hearing loss). On some types of music, you may even notice the difference between 320Kbps and raw WAV (non-encoded CD).

I think someone else posted in a different thread that the Shaker 500 system handled WMA without problems. I suspect Shaker 1000 will behave similarly.