Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions iPOD through A/V Receiver

My pioneer VSX has an ipod port and special cable that plugs directly into my ipod. It's really cool. shows the ipod screen on my t.v., etc., etc. I know ACC and MP3 aren't great quality recordings, but my complaint is I hear show much whining and static and the hard drive spinning up in the beginning of each song. Does anyone else experience this? Does anyone else play their ipod through their receiver? Just a curious question. Thanks

That's odd. I don't use the dock connector directly into the receiver, but I do have a dock that is attached to the receiver. I suspect that the files are still being sent analog to the receiver from the dock port line outs, as I doubt the receiver could handle decoding protected AACs. Sounds like there may be something wrong with one or the other.

I haven't heard the whining, but I've definitely heard the static. Now, I just discounted it as being my poor, old iPod that's had a long, hard life that's logged as many airline miles as I have. It's been toasted by magnets, xrays, and electrical fields and still works...kind of... I have to completely reload the software on it every few months because it starts hanging in the menus and gives up after playing the first few seconds of a song.

Not sure if what I hear is my iPod's problem, an iPod cable problem, or the VSX's problem. Until now, I assumed it was the iPod, but I might have to take a closer look.

I thought that too. The connector that Pioneer supplied plugs in to the bottom connector, where it would sit on a docking station or used to re-charge the ipod. The Pioneer does re-charge the ipod when the receiver is powered up. It's just very annoying.

I doubt it's the iPod. I use pretty high quality headphones with mine (ok, that's often the flash based nano), but the hard drive based one is hooked to my receiver playing through my 80s. The only time I hear heard drive noise is if I'm holding it in my hand, and the noise comes from the unit itself, not the speakers.

It's a very, very slight noise from my wife's 3G iPod. I just have a hard time believing that the root cause is the iPod, considering you've tried 2 different models--that leaves either a poorly shielded cable or something strange going on in the Pioneer.

I was thinking maybe an isolation transformer could help diagnose the problem
generic info

then for a more expensive solution. someone previously posted about an analog to digital converter, in another thread. that would probably be overkill.

my axioms severely showed the limitations of my mp3's, which i unfortunately had made at 128kb. now all my digital audio media is stored in flac.

hth
rperkins

So the noise is from the iPod itself, right? I think that's normal. My wife has a current gen 30gb, and she used to have a previous gen 20gb. Both make the same noises. My iPod Nano doesn't and it shouldn't because it's flash based.

If I'm understanding your problem correctly, it sounds like you are hearing the hard drive spin up & down when the iPod loads the file. It's a whine of the drive spinning and the tick-tick-tick of the hard drive heads finding the file(s) to play. It may be that the stand/dock is amplifying the sound by placing the iPod up against a hard surface. However, this shouldn't affect the sound quality of the music and you mention hearing static - so that does not sound normal.

I play music from both of the iPods on my receiver, but connected via a 25ft RCA cable to miniplug adapter -not a fancy dock. The iPod sits next to the couch and I select songs on it directly. If I hold the iPod, or set it down on the couch, it's harder to hear the HD noises. If I leave it on the coffee table, then the hd noises are more noticable. Still, none of the noises affect the sound that's sent to my receiver, so audio quality is as expected (apple lossless vs. 128kb mp3, etc). No humming or static.

FYI, I recently purchased and subsequently returned a Griffin iPod dock that offered similar functionality as you describe. Dock iPod, navigate tracks on TV, music through stereo. It was awful. So many buzzes, whines, and thumps that it was absolutely un-listenable. Loud thumps on changing tracks, constant whine in the background that changed pitch with the dock's volume level, and otherwise degraded sound quality compared to my el-cheapo radioshack miniplug-to-RCA cable.