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Audio connectivity, Qobuz, Hi-res?

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Amusing follow up BTW- according to the release notes anyway, the high quality setting requires wifi :)

Tesla release notes said:
TIDAL streaming is now available from the Media menu with a TIDAL account. You can listen to TIDAL playlists or albums in high-quality audio by connecting to Wi-Fi and pressing Download on the selected content.
 
I just read the update and it is a bit confusing. Will it play while tethered to my phone? If I must download first I assume it would be to a stick. I can live with this for now. I cancelled Tidal a year or two ago because it was superfluous to Qobuz at home but I'll resubscribe. I won't be cancelling Qobuz though because of all of the hi-res music on it and it is relatively cheap.

Will Tesla support MQA? I doubt it. Will it be CD quality? Probably. I still want full hi-res in the car but this is a start. What is in there now is unlistenable. I just don't automatically start playing music in this car like I've done for the last 50 years, and when I do it frequently gets turned off from listening fatigue.
 
It is confusing. My guess is Tesla will add the Tidal app but the app will require a wifi connection to operate and will not work over the built in Tesla LTE (as written). So if you run a cellphone hotspot you can run the Tidal app on the Tesla console while Tesla is connected to your phone wifi. Just a guess.
 
I'm going to try it as soon as I get the release on the car. When I use Qobuz at 24/96 in the car's browser it can barely keep up with the music when using the wifi, and over the LTE it only works about half the time. The wifi though may not be great where the car is parked by my house but it works well enough to get software updates. On my phone it always just works unless I'm in a very weak signal area. My conclusion is that the car's receiving power is lacking. I've tried using the browser for other things and find it slow in general. Maybe it is just the browser implementation. I didn't buy the car for the browser though so I didn't give it much thought. Netflix seems to work and that is the only entertainment that I really have used much, and only while waiting for a charge.
 
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In my house I can stream through the wifi in full bit perfect 24/384 or DSD512 but usually not more than 24/192 using DLNA. I never even thought to use BT. My daughter will use Airplay from her phone to the same endpoints on occasion and that is limited to 16/44.1. Apple has a newer version but hasn't licensed or published it for others to use. I can mix and match whatever I want using this system and it is free and easy, only the hardware costs money but not much. As a videophile maybe you can appreciate that I still use my Panasonic Plasma as my regular TV. It'll be a sad day when it dies. At the time it was high-end too, but plasma was on the way out.

My audio is all DIY tubes with the exception of the digital part. Speakers are DIY too. I could never afford the speakers that I really wanted so I built some myself using the same drivers that the super expensive ones use, with a crossover designed by one of the experts out there. No Bose nor Bang&Olafsen for me. I always cringe when I hear someone bragging about their car system based on those.

So yea, this may be a nitpicky point about the M3, but I take it seriously. I guess I can live with it unless it sounds truly bad.

Digital is whatever the standard is of the day but analog is forever...
When you are in your home, are you using Spotify Connect or Tidal Connect? EDIT: ok, if you are using Qobuz, it does not have its own ”Connect” app yet AFAIK. So in my house, I use the BlueSound app for that. I accidentally paid for a year of Qobuz, so have that to mess with too.

When Spotify or Tidal Connect is being used, the signal is not traveling through your phone, but is being controlled by your phone. The signal is from the streamer, into the DAC, into the system, whatever the system is. Apple Air Play does stream through the phone apparently. Though I have an iPhone, I rarely use Air Play or any of my old iTunes stuff any more. Roon does access a bunched of ripped CD quality files on my hard drive, a mix of FLAC and ALAC. But mostly, any more, I stream via the internet files using either the Connect app for the streaming service, or sometimes Roon. But thinking Roon is almost irrelevant for me any more, but for managing my FLAC/ALAC type files.

Would be great to understand what the DAC is in the head unit of my MYLR, and figure out a way to enable it to use the services better, and certainly access files on a drive better. Would be cool to be able to go optical or Coax out of the head unit and bypass the DAC too, if the DAC is not up to the task. But doesn’t sound like any of that is possible. Seems a shame.
 
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I'm going to try it as soon as I get the release on the car. When I use Qobuz at 24/96 in the car's browser it can barely keep up with the music when using the wifi, and over the LTE it only works about half the time. The wifi though may not be great where the car is parked by my house but it works well enough to get software updates. On my phone it always just works unless I'm in a very weak signal area. My conclusion is that the car's receiving power is lacking. I've tried using the browser for other things and find it slow in general. Maybe it is just the browser implementation. I didn't buy the car for the browser though so I didn't give it much thought. Netflix seems to work and that is the only entertainment that I really have used much, and only while waiting for a charge.
At my house, when I get my car, we have one of the eero units actually in the garage so Wi-fi should be strong and good. Will be interested where we are with all of this when I finally get my car. Currently scheduled for June.

I am finding it hard to believe no one has looked inside and seen the chips/architecture of the digital audio conversion part of the Tesla unit. I guess not though. At least as far as I have found via good old google So far.
 
The reason nobody has looked is that it is a $40k and up car! That's a lot of money to spend to check out the DAC. Everything is integrated and if you managed to get to the DAC you'd likely crash something and be out of warranty.

Feel free to be the first!

Also, I drove around today with Tidal playing over my tethered iPhone so I'd get wifi and it sounded pretty good. No issues keeping up that way and songs played instantly without a buffering lag. I'm driving around Brooklyn though where cell service is pretty saturated. I don't know what it would be like on the open road.
 
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The reason nobody has looked is that it is a $40k and up car! That's a lot of money to spend to check out the DAC. Everything is integrated and if you managed to get to the DAC you'd likely crash something and be out of warranty.

Feel free to be the first!
Yeah, I get that for sure. Was thinking in the whole wide world of the Inter webs that someone may have gained access to a crashed one and opened up the head unit and looked,

. . . or again in the whole wide world, carefully opened a head unit on a new one and looked in. But, guess not.
 
Sorry if this is posted, did not find in a search. Does anyone know of someone who does a hack for hard wired sound to the Tesla 3 from an iphone, either analog via aux in or via usb lightning or usb-c connector?, I'd love to have higher than bluetooth quality connection. (Yes I am an audio geek sorry) I use CD quality from Qobuz and sometimes even 24 bit in the car. (Or used to) Thanks!

Ron
 
Sorry if this is posted, did not find in a search. Does anyone know of someone who does a hack for hard wired sound to the Tesla 3 from an iphone, either analog via aux in or via usb lightning or usb-c connector?, I'd love to have higher than bluetooth quality connection. (Yes I am an audio geek sorry) I use CD quality from Qobuz and sometimes even 24 bit in the car. (Or used to) Thanks!

Ron

(moderator note)

I moved this to an existing thread on this discussion that you might not have seen.
 
Tidal sounds great in the car. The app doesn't have the full functionality of the Windows app but I'm able to work around the shortcomings. I made a custom playlist on my computer and have the car download while at home. I don't know how it's storing all those songs but I have a playlist with 400+ songs and it downloads in the car and they are all high quality. Sounds great.
 
Sorry if this is posted, did not find in a search. Does anyone know of someone who does a hack for hard wired sound to the Tesla 3 from an iphone, either analog via aux in or via usb lightning or usb-c connector?, I'd love to have higher than bluetooth quality connection. (Yes I am an audio geek sorry) I use CD quality from Qobuz and sometimes even 24 bit in the car. (Or used to) Thanks!

Ron
I started this thread a while ago and the answer is still NO unfortunately. With Tidal though we are partway there, bypassing the hacks and having it integrated. I still wish we had a way in from our phones other than BT but I don't see this ever happening. What I will say is this, when it comes time to get my next car I'll make sure that it can do this. I bought my M3 knowing that it couldn't and I didn't realize how much it would annoy me because I didn't know how bad the quality would be. I figured I could live with it but then found myself turning off the music. With Tidal at least I listen to it even if the interface is finicky, you don't listen to an interface.
 
The solution is simple, just install DSP ( I have e Helix P Six MK2), add hd usb and connect your iPhone. iPhone connected - stream audio directly to DSP with 24 bit. iPhone not connected, the system will play at CD quality from Tidal (Wi-Fi enabled)… the Tidal provides Hi-Fi quality and only for audiophiles among us… Masters collection at 24/96.
 
The solution is simple, just install DSP ( I have e Helix P Six MK2), add hd usb and connect your iPhone. iPhone connected - stream audio directly to DSP with 24 bit. iPhone not connected, the system will play at CD quality from Tidal (Wi-Fi enabled)… the Tidal provides Hi-Fi quality and only for audiophiles among us… Masters collection at 24/96.
What? This product appears to be an amplifier with Digital signal processor front end. How on earth does this help to get high res audio into the Tesla system? Are you saying replace the whole Tesla amp with this?

 
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After giving it a look, it would require running the speaker leads into the DSP/amp and then out again to the speakers and give you DSP on top of the car's dsp. In parallel with the speaker in, you also would have a USB input from your phone so you could select either. This will preserve the car's interaction with the speakers for all sound functions such as bongs and beeps, and allow use of the console for all built in audio. If you use the USB input though it would block that out so you wouldn't get warning sounds, as few as they are, or maybe not even turn signal sounds, unless the DSP allows mixing of the signal. You'd have no control over the phone of course so you'd have to use the phone interface into whatever service it is you are using.

To do something like this I'd want somebody that knows what they are doing to install it. I could probably do the physical connections but making it look nice is something else. Also, I'd want the sound to be all corrected and balanced since it isn't just a few sliders on a screen. My guess is that this is $$$$$.