Are there any HUs that specialize in playing from I-pods or outside sources in general? Will it make SQ suffer with any HU? Right now I have an Alpine and it needs to be turned up much louder to make the same noise as a cd, and it never sounds quite as good. Is this something I have to live with, or are there options out there?
Auxiliary inputs never sound that great...even my plug and play XM radio suffers from somewhat of the same thing you're talking about. Are you using a Belkin adaptor for your iPod? They seem to be having problems with volume from posts i've seen in the past. Maybe you could try hooking your ipod up to it through the Aux RCA inputs if it has them with a wire that converts the headphone jack into RCA.