iPod sounds better through Line Out

Nearly every room in my home and office has a decent stereo system playing in the background. Just about any time of the day or night, you’ll hear Classical 102.1 KDFC in our home’s dining and living rooms, and the conference room at BZ West. (We never turn them off.)

Meanwhile, my office’s stereo (a Pioneer VSX-D409 with two speakers and 12″ subwoofer) is connected to a dedicated iPod with an Apple dock and charger. I use the iPod instead of my laptop for playing music because it reduces my MacBook Pro’s CPU load and disk utilization, and frankly, the iPod has a better user interface for casual music listening than iTunes. Plus, the dock works with the MacBook Pro’s remote, which is handy when I want to skip a song or pause when the phone rings.

Every so often, however, I want to play iPod music elsewhere, such as our dining room or living room at home, or the conference room. Until now, the connection has been a standard cable with a stereo 3.5mm jack on one side, and two RCA connectors on the other. For convenience. there’s one of these cables permanently attached to each stereo’s “CD” or “AUX” line input.

Because this cable connects to the iPod’s headphone jack, sound quality is suboptimal. Why? The headphone jack is run through the iPod’s internal amplifier before it’s processed again by the stereo’s amplifier. Feeding an amplified signal into a line-in jack leads to distortion and poor sound.

This struck me last week, when I moved my iPod from my office (where it was connected via line out) to the conference room (where it was connected via headphone jack). Even though the conference room has a similar stereo and speakers, the sound was clearly inferior. Was it the connection? I moved the dock to the conference room. The iPod sounded better. Line-in makes all the difference.

But hmm, buying a lot of $40 docks seemed like overkill. Then I found the solution: a cable that has two RCA plugs on one side, and an iPod dock plug on the other. Instant line out! There are a number of these cables available; the one I purchased as a test was from Cables To Go (pictured), and it cost under $10 from Amazon.

If you currently use a 3.5mm-to-RCA cable to connect your iPod to a stereo, buy a line-out cable that uses the dock connector. You’ll be delighted with the improvement in audio quality.