Thread: Carputer and Headunit

Originally Posted by bdavid12

i want to use my headunit and soon to be biult carputer. my headunit has an aux in, this way i still have fm and a cd player if/when my carputer fails. my question is if i am going to be using th aux in is their any need for a high sound card since the headunit will be doing all the processing, or does the carputer still do the sound processing. this is what i am confused about. does the aux in just play want ever is coming through the 1/8 plug, so a good sound card is needed. can someone please clear this up for me.

I would get the sound card because the HU just recieves the signal and it plays.... The sound card processes the signal

Yeah, the aux in will play exactly what sound comes in.

If you need a higher end sound card depends on how you like the sound quality on the motherboard's build in soundcard, for mine I just used the built in one as everything I play is 128Kbit MP3's and there simply wasn't any noticable quality difference to me between that and my Audigy 2 on my home PC. Well there was one noticable difference but not something I could use with my headunit, the Audigy 2 can process it into surround sound, but since the headunit only has stereo in that's useless, i'd need a real high end headunit that supports surround sound.

i'd give it a go from onboard sound first. No need to spend the money if you really won't notice a difference.

While I would say that I'd notice a difference, depending on your ears and your system, you might not.