Car Stereos: Auxiliary options, CD Changer input or Antenna input?, audio compression technology, cd quality music

Question
QUESTION: Hi Ed.

I have a 2005 Scion xA and recently I've been wanting to get my hoards of cds out of it and replace them with my mp3 player.

The newer year scions include an auxiliary jack, mine doesn't though.  So I was looking at two options:

1) A wire that connects to my external cd changer input on the back of my head unit and leads to two RCA plugs, in which I could plug an RCA Male-mini jack into and run my player from that. Or...

At best buy they have a wire that plugs right into your antenna input, and then you plug the cars antenna wire into a switch box connected to the auxiliary wire.

I would rather do the antenna wire now, because its cheaper and easier... but would it sound bad running through the antenna input?  I know it'll be directly wired (no nasty fm noise) but I'm wondering if maybe the antenna input isn't as quality as the cd changer input.

I hope you were able to understand what I'm talking about here. Haha

Thanks

ANSWER: Hi Matt.

there are so many ways you can incorporate an ipod to an stereo system and those 2 are a pretty good choice there is one thing you should know though about quality sound before you go any further.

imagine a song like a sandwich .mp3 format its an audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specifications. MP3 compresses CD-quality sound by a factor of roughly 10, for example, a 40MB CD track is turned into a 4MB MP3 file. so if you compress that sandwich 10 times when you are ready to eat it its not gonna be the same, same thing with the mp3 you loose all that cd quality music.

it really depends if quality its really a huge factor for you. but you are going to get about the same signal from both. but the best thing so far i have ever since about Ipod OEM integrations its this little toy

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-fdakEGb6VLa/App/Product/Item/Main.aspx?search=scion

if i was you i would go for the cheaper/easier way to go.
like i said its really up to you.

Hope this helps.

Ed.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Well I'm actually going to be using a Microsoft Zune, sadly I don't think there is any adapters to control it with the HU like there are with the iPod.  I tracked down an auxiliary adaptor made specifically for my unit with an RCA input on it, turns out the thing at best buy wasn't what I thought it was (you had to use it WITH an FM transmitter....yuck)

So it looks like the "Toy03aux/S" adapter is what I'll be getting so here is my final question:

My head unit plays .mp3 discs burnt as data cd's, its a nice feature but it still requires burning cd's.  My question is, since those are in .mp3 format, will the Zune thru AUX sound about the same?  I can be a bit of an audiophile, and I have noticed a downgrade in quality when using the mp3 data discs, but I can usually equalize it out to sound pretty good, hopefully ill be able to do the same with the Zune.

Thanks again Ed!

Answer
it will actually sound a bit better then going with burned cds. since the information its coming direclty from the resource wich its gonna be the zune mp3 player, when you burn a cd you might loose some information (quality) due to a unneficient cd burner, plus you have the cd player laser factor so by the time your cd gets to your radio the informacion has been transfered 3 times, cd-computer-cd-radio, i dont know if this makes sense, in conclusion you might be better off with a portable mp3 player then going with burned cds (mp3)