Improved sound quality in 4.2.1 - My imagination?

I play music from my iPod through a lead from the headphone socket into my car stereo's Aux input, also a 3.5mm headphone socket. Since I installed 4.2.1, the sound quality seems to have improved significantly; in fact, it's fabulous!
I saw in the 4.2.1 release note that it included improved audio quality via USB for car stereos, but I wondered if any gurus out there might be able to explain the difference I'm hearing: is it a result of that improvement? I'm also wondering how they effected the improvement via USB, since as far as I understand it (which isn't that far, obviously) in those cases the iPod simply passes the digital file for playback through the car stereo DAC. Is there some kind of decode, re-encode for USB process going on?
Any light anyone can shed would be gratefully received!

Did yo do this:
Try disabling the computer's antivirus and firewall.
- Next try the manual install method of:
iDevice Troubleshooting 101 :: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch
- Then try on another computer

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