Porsche's official iPod adapter

There's a lot I can't say currently but what I can say is the following: 1) It launches in Germany this month! 2) It launches in the US early next year. 3) Initially for all new series cars (997/987, etc.) 4) Soon thereafter for every Porsche ever made (or thereabouts) 5) Technical details are unique but not what I expected and not anything that I can share at the moment. Hope that helps!

Well, then. Until Porsche will tell us otherwise, I will assume that it is an over-priced OEM'd FM modulator and proceed accordingly. The only technology worth hiding is technology that isn't worthwhile. Like the Segway.

I can wait - but please tell me two details. Will it be good? Will it cost more than the iPod itself?

Wow, that's some big news. Spill the details already!

Yeah, but a Segway with an iPod dock, now that would be something...

Must we succumb to inferior technology? I personally have no time or interest for IPOD. 1. They are unreliable. Almost every person who has had one that I know has had problems with the mini hard disk. Crashes, wont boot, blah blah. 2. Sound quality is BAD. Even the highest bit rate is bunk. 3. Lossy compression. Music is modified. 4. ITUNES is garbage. PC problems. 5. The connectors break easily. 6. Nobody thought to make a ear piece lead that can last more than 1 week. 7. Batteries die or explode or catch fire. Need I go on? I prefer original CD or exact copy thereof or the tunes of the flat six. I rest my case yer honnor!

Not much interest in iPod . I want the iPhone hooked up to PCM in an elegant way.

Wowzers! I have a Gen 1 iPod that works fine with my abusive 11 year old. My entire music library is in Apple Lossless Codec and is bit perfect (as verified by Dolby 5.1 decode signal checks). I have never broken a connector and the original Gen 1 iPod battery still holds charge. As for the earpiece - I threw it away and use my Shure earpieces.

Ken, don't leave us in suspense. Surely you can reveal a bit more detail like will the Porsche solution fully integrate with PCM and will it give better sound then the FM modulators? PLEEEEASE.

Porsche shared the technicals details with me under promise that I would not reveal them so I am not going to jeopardize that relationship just to be the first to post how the unit works. I am willing to bet 100% that the first person who does post the technical details of the system or how they "think" it works WILL get it wrong as my first guess was wrong as well until I spent time with the Porsche folks talking about the details, the design, etc. While it might not be the solution that some think it should be, I think it is interesting what they've done and having Porsche do something is better than having them do nothing.

Hope it has an elegant interface for satellite radio as well.

+1! I don't much care to take my iPod on the road, but Sat Radio is a must. I am OK with the install I have now, but its a kluge, pure and simple. Didn't Porsche make an XM announcement last year or early this year??? It would appear that nothing yet has come of it, at least with regards to our Crocs . Brian

I just hope its a better solution than what Volvo pitched for the 05-06 S40s and XC90s. It was an FM transmitter that had "VOLVO" printed on it and a 30 dollar markup from the same unit that could be bought at Best Buy.

There is a PDF posted in the following thread on ********: PORSCHE IPOD INTERFACE - ******** Discussion Forums

Nearly everyone in the industry has a provision for an iPod or aux. component, how secret does this innovative future option need to be? Like it's groundbreaking news or tech, while in reality it's so late it's almost charming. Wonder how much they'll dink ya for. Retrofitable?

Porsche doesn't want it leaked that it uses vacuum tubes and lamp cord. Good note btw - I agree, you'd think they were on the leading edge of technology!

my i2 includes PSM - personal stability management Shot at 2007-11-04

Who needs an iSheep? I mean.. iPod . I'm going to do my best to avoid it. I have other means, like CDRW, SDcards, etc.

Hey let's not get started on digital sampling and codecs. Funny that someone would call a compression algorithm "lossless", well whatever. I thought that PDF file was interesting but of course they didn't post the TEQ page to tell you exactly how it worked. I can confirm that music navigation is on the ipod , zune, or mp3 player of choice. Porsche did this to accomodate more rather than fewer players. Which reminds me I should post something about Porsche , Variants and VW that all of you might find interesting.

ipod I want my Porsche IPOD adaptor.... YESTERDAY! Please post information as they become official. Thank you KmanS. Keep up the good work.

K-man, I'm not an iPod person but really want integrated satellite radio. Any chance this new solution would work with XM direct? By the way, this is my first post, great forum!

aha... so it isn't only an ipod adapter but a "universal" digital audio player adapter? does that mean that it is a fancy aux input? can i plug in my sirius radio? questions, questions! at least point us to the press release when it appears. thanks ken.

You can already buy an XM tuner from Porsche and install that, and if you can get your hands on one the older Sirius tuners for the Cayenne work as well. Both are very expensive from Porsche though, about $1000 for just the tuner. I do not believe this adapter is for sat radio as we only discussed ipod and bluetooth we didn't discuss sat radio. That's doesn't mean it won't do it, but only that we didn't discuss it so I can't say one way or the other.

K-Man S, Can you say, in your personal opinion - and without betraying any trust, if you would recommend waiting for the Porsche iPod interface over getting the GW 500? My CS is still on order, but the GW 500 is one of the first mods I am planning. I am willing to hold out if the Porsche device will be a more worthwhile addition. Also, will we be able to retro-fit the device to an existing vehicle? Thanks for any/all news and opinions!

If I have to change tracks on the player and not my steering wheel controls, this solution sucks.

Personally I like the GW500 solution better, but I've also been using one of them for awhile now so I am used to it, at first I didn't like its navigation/information reporting on PCM , now I can live with it as some things still don't work the way I think they should work. As for the Porsche unit I guess it would all depend on the cost too, if it is reasonable then I think it will be a viable solution for a lot of folks since it should be easy to install and yes it will retrofit into any 987 series car.

As soon as you can show me the verification that it is indeed lossless I will agree with you, what both of you are missing is that while lossless codecs are advertised and marketed as lossless SOME of them really aren't because they use shortcuts. Is there a federal regulation on the definition of lossless? No. What I am saying is that SOME codecs advertised as lossless are not truly 100% lossless and the only way to know is to analyze them. A couple of years back I read a report on the top 3 lossless codecs at that time and 2 of the three would actually take some shortcuts to store smaller files and while the compression was "virtually lossless" it wasn't truly 100% lossless. Could a human ear hear the difference? The makers of 2 of the 3 claimed no, of course the 3rd claimed yes. Who is right? Whose ear was used for testing? So again, I'm just asking for a technical verification that it is indeed lossless under all conditions as opposed to a marketing name. BTW, I hereby dub my Cayman as a lossless Cayman until proven otherwise. Oh and I see no one wants to address digital recording and what is lost in the act of digital recording vs. analog recording. Otherwise we'd all be carrying around tube amps to play our vinyl with right? Oh and nothing against Apple, I'm stating this generally across all codecs that use lossless in their name.

IIRC, the Exclusive dept produced the Ipod solution a few months back and i think i put up a link to the device in use and a PCM screenshot (as per smounic's post i see). Now, its hardly the elegant method as per K-Man S's descritpion, but it's a solution for everyone not just the iPant's crowd. Pop

I submit, for your consideration. 1) I have taken reconstructed apple lossless codec files into a wave editor, inverted them and added them to the uncompressed original. The net sum is zero. 2) According to nyquist theory, the maximum compression is related to the ability to reconstruct the original sequence. This means that the minimum data content permitted for lossless compression is 50%. Apple lossless codecs are at about 60%. They are fat and could be trimmed. 3) There is a digital 5.1 signal encoded in files. I have tried other lossless codecs. Upon reconstruction they are one bit out. That is the check bit on Dolby 5.1. The 'blue light' on the surround sound amp does not come on. The apple codec is perfect to the last bit. Did I mention that although I'm a Porsche-geek in training, I'm a hard core audio geek. Dfogal.

Finally, someone who has the time to conduct some actual audio dyno tests! Did the Apple codec increase HP or torque? I see you also concur that all lossless codecs are not created equal... speaking of which, which flavor of WMA is supposedly lossless and how did it score?

Bet it Bested the Ole Butt Dyno! :cheers:

You jest ... but ... One HP is 746 watts. If the codec were to remove dynamic range from the music and I had a really BIG amp, then it could in fact reduce the horsepower if I did not use a true lossless codec. But I didn't test that. I have a friend online who convinced me that I don't need to worry about HP. Alas, it's almost impossible to make a Windows machine bit perfect to the digital analog converter. The windows sound drivers downsample everything to 16 bits and then re-upsample to 24 bits. That is not a lossless transform. You can get special drivers called ASIO drivers that can bypass the audio drivers in Windows, but they don't work with many sound cards and can be very finicky. At the risk of going so far off topic that the moderator thumps me ... We did a side-by-side A/B toggle comparison of original CD transport and a reconstructed windows 'lossless' codec. On a super high end stereo (Macintosh amps, Benchmark Audio DAC, etc.) - the sound stage collapsed and it sounded terrible after the downsample and upsample when compared to the original CD. The same music played off the fiber port on a Mac with iTunes and Apple Lossless was indistinguishable from the original. Ironically Apple Lossless played back on Windows in iTunes is (for most normal people) not ... lossless.

Bingo dfogal. Now while you are at it, can you please track down my wife's iPhone . I'm supposing that you have some special Apple tools that Apple or AT&T support doesn't have.

I'm waiting for this thread to turn into hardcore physics where we can discuss wave-particle duality theorems, Schrodinger's cats, superposition theory, etc. Ken - if you're going to take the strategy that nothing is true unless it is verified I suggest we close this site. All of those Mustang dyno's out there that could be suffering from hysterisis, repeatability error's, inaccuracies, etc. OMG - if I don't observe it directly, it doesn't exist! AAAAAhHHHHHH!

I never said that, dfogal caught on with what I was getting at... not a big deal...

Would someone please send me a PM when this thread returns to topic? Please.

Im enjoying it.

Ken is withholding super-top-secret ipod interface information. If it works with PCM 2.1, then how top secret can it possibly be? It uses the MOST bus, decoding takes place in the ipod (it has to for DRM) and has some menu'ing system, that, at best, will be as good as the BMW and Alpine systems (full-speed) However, looking at the PDF on ********, it states "Volume control via PCM , Musicplayercontrol via Musicplayer" which means its a glorified aux-in.