Phone settings for car audio

Just curious, and haven’t found an answer via google. I have an iPhone X, and a Kenwood headunit with Apple CarPlay, but I would think it would apply to android also.

Are there audio settings on the phone that can improve sound quality through the car stereo, or does the headunit override the phone settings? I use usb, never Bluetooth.

The audio sounds good as is, I was just wondering if anything on the phone could improve it. I know my iPod Classic always sounded better in the truck than my phone did, but it finally died about a year ago.

Anybody know the answer?

 

I'll admit that I know nothing when it comes to I-things but you might be able to try Equalizer apps.

 

Are you using the wired connection through the USB? If so, that should be the best audio, but it will depend on the source you are using from your phone. Iheart radio, Pandora etc are all compressed and will not sound like CD quality. They aren't bad, just not as good as it can be. If you have any CD's you can download them to your phone via Itunes, but remember to change the import setting to Apple Lossless Audio. That way it will import the same quality as the actual CD. Otherwise it will be compressed as well.

 

I know on pandora, if you use that, there is a setting in the advanced setting for "high quality sound". I have an old samsung so I dont have any fancy eq settings. But I did click that box in the pandora menu

 

It’s all through the Apple Music app. Mix of store purchases and cd’s I downloaded years ago. Yes, I use the wired connection. The sound is good already. What I’m wondering is if the music settings on the phone affect the output to the head unit. I’ll just mess with it and see.

 

I don't think it does. When I was spending way too much time researching hi-res audio via Iphone, I discovered that connecting your phone to a source unit (USB head unit) eliminates the phones EQ info and you are using the trucks EQ settings. Hope that makes sense.

 

I messed with it yesterday, and at least on my stereo, the phone settings DO affect the audio in the truck. I turned on “sound check”, turned on EQ, and clicked through the EQ presets on the phone. They all altered the sound. I turned it all back off, and it went back to the headunit EQ settings. This was through wired connection.

I didn’t pay attention to whether it was better or not, but it did answer my question.