Audio: Testing audio formats

[interleaf2]

I find a four minute track takes about 24 MB when compressed using FLAC encoding. USB hard drives are considerably cheaper than USB flash drives for the same amount of storage. 1TB drive costs about $70. But it is possible you may need to reformat with FAT for Model S to read them. I am continuing to experiment with different drives and file systems.

I have confirmed that several portable USB hard drives formatted with FAT32 will work fine with the Model S music system. However those formatted with NTFS will definitely NOT work and I suspect strongly that exFAT will also NOT work.

I now am using a new 1TB Buffalo Ministation Stealth 2.0 USB drive in the car which cost me $70 from Amazon and I calculate that it will hold about 40,000 average 4 minute tracks stored in FLAC format. The Tesla allows me to access by Artist, Genre, Song, Album or Folder. It looks up the album artwork and genre as it creates its directory. Obviously if you have a huge collection it is going to take some time to retrieve all this from the internet, so it's probably best to leave the drive attached when not in use.

Being lossless, I find that FLAC compression needs about 7 times as much disc space compared with typical good quality MP3 files or other lossy compression formats. The typical 128GB flash drive is also going to cost about $70 but will only hold about 5,000 FLAC tracks. Above 128GB flash drives start to get very pricey (although this will no doubt change quickly as time progresses).

So I reckon if I want to have 40,000 tracks at my disposal while driving I can either use MP3 format with a USB flash drive or FLAC with a USB hard drive. In both cases the storage medium is going to cost about $70. Of course if you use MP3 and a USB hard drive you could get about 280,000 tracks on a single 1TB disk drive. Since I paid extra to have the upgraded sound system in the car I thought I ought to avoid quality degradation due to lossy sampling and compression. Plus I don't have 280,000 songs.

You could get a 2 TB hard drive but the cost would treble for double the capacity, so it seems like 1TB is the sweet spot. It seems like 64GB is the current sweet spot for flash drives.

In a couple of years it should be possible to get 1TB flash drive for a reasonable price.

 

[Robert.Boston]

I'm glad the S supports FLAC. Would you mind sharing what size your average 4min song becomes once ripped? I'm thinking of also using FLAC, but I only have a 64GB USB key so I'd like to get an idea of how many songs I'll be fitting on there.

Using FLAC, one CD requires anywhere from 150 MB to 440 MB. A "typical" CD seems to be about 250 MB. Led Zeppelin's Mothership disc 1 seems to be an extreme outlier at 440; other "big" discs are more in the mid 300's.

 

[scriptacus]

I have confirmed that several portable USB hard drives formatted with FAT32 will work fine with the Model S music system. However those formatted with NTFS will definitely NOT work and I suspect strongly that exFAT will also NOT work.

I wonder if ext2, ext3, ext4 or other common Linux disk formats would work. It seems like they should since the consoles underlying OS is Linux, though I don't think you'd get much benefit from it (unless 2TB is not enough space for you)

 

[zax123]

Using FLAC, one CD requires anywhere from 150 MB to 440 MB. A "typical" CD seems to be about 250 MB. Led Zeppelin's Mothership disc 1 seems to be an extreme outlier at 440; other "big" discs are more in the mid 300's.

So on my 64gig USB key we're talking about 250 albums. For now, that's plenty.

Besides actually BUYING the physical media, is there someone online you can purchase lossless audio files? Does anyone know?

 

[ElSupreme]

So on my 64gig USB key we're talking about 250 albums. For now, that's plenty.

Besides actually BUYING the physical media, is there someone online you can purchase lossless audio files? Does anyone know?

I don't know of one. Amazon was advertising that they would offer that in the past. But like Robert.Boston I like the physical disc as an archival piece also.

Back when I was actually using CDs in the car, I would actually dupe my real CD and use the burned one in the car. That way if I ever removed a disc I could ​(not that I always did) just throw in on the floor and not really worry about it.

 

[clea]

So on my 64gig USB key we're talking about 250 albums. For now, that's plenty.

Besides actually BUYING the physical media, is there someone online you can purchase lossless audio files? Does anyone know?

Last time I researched this we had almost no support for good quality legal downloads (i.e. not mp3) with a decent selection in Canada. However I found a site that lists a bunch of sites supporting cd quality flac here Music Download Sites (16/44 a list) | AudioStream and some of them are supported in canada (one is 7digital but not a great selection yet) but they also give a list of better quality here HD Music Download Sites (a list) | AudioStream. Remember though that you need to test whether it will allow you to purchase and download once you state that you are Canadian. For example, hdtracks still only supports downloads to US residents.

 

[zax123]

Last time I researched this we had almost no support for good quality legal downloads (i.e. not mp3) with a decent selection in Canada. However I found a site that lists a bunch of sites supporting cd quality flac here Music Download Sites (16/44 a list) | AudioStream and some of them are supported in canada (one is 7digital but not a great selection yet) but they also give a list of better quality here HD Music Download Sites (a list) | AudioStream. Remember though that you need to test whether it will allow you to purchase and download once you state that you are Canadian. For example, hdtracks still only supports downloads to US residents.

Thanks for the info Clea.

I hate to say the obvious here and maybe it's a forum no-no, but what's stopping us from using a proxy to download them? We're still paying our dues to the artist/label... That kinda thing is gray to me...

I checked out the sites... definitely not as simple as iTunes or Amazon Music Store... yikes.

 

[clea]

Thanks for the info Clea.

I hate to say the obvious here and maybe it's a forum no-no, but what's stopping us from using a proxy to download them? We're still paying our dues to the artist/label... That kinda thing is gray to me...

I checked out the sites... definitely not as simple as iTunes or Amazon Music Store... yikes.

I believe that they are obliged to check and if you use a proxy you will also have to use a payment method that comes from the same source (i.e. use a US credit card). Often it seems it is the labels themselves that have the region based restrictions on its downloads and this is especially true of the higher quality tracks but i am ignorant as to what is behind the logic of a label making hd audio available in one region and not the other.

 

[rogbmw]

Ok gang - since you all know what you are all taking about - give me the "Readers Digest" version of how to do all this. Being quite a novice at this sort of thing, how about a step by step guide for a lay person like me to put music on say a 32 or 64 GB USB stick. I would really appreciate it. My experience level is putting stuff on I-tunes, then loading them onto the player to listen to.

Thanks!

 

[ElSupreme]

Ok gang - since you all know what you are all taking about - give me the "Readers Digest" version of how to do all this. Being quite a novice at this sort of thing, how about a step by step guide for a lay person like me to put music on say a 32 or 64 GB USB stick. I would really appreciate it. My experience level is putting stuff on I-tunes, then loading them onto the player to listen to.

Thanks!

Get a computer, preferably a desktop with at least 2 CD drives. But any computer with a CD drive will work.

Install a music program (you already mentioned it so), say iTunes.

Go into ripping settings and pick MP3 and pick a bitrate of 256. Higher numbers will get you better quality, but you will fit less of them onto your USB stick. (Save your settings)

Also in your ripping settings you should have a default folder where your files end up, remember this folder. (Save your settings)

Put a CD into the drive, it should ask you if you want to rip it, say yes. When done repeat. (Some software will let you do this with multiple CD drives at once).

Once you have your music ripped go to the folder you were supposed to remember with a file browser (explorer, Win; or finder, Mac). Plug in your USB stick. [THIS WILL REMOVE ALL INFORMATION FROM YOUR USB FLASH DRIVE start]Format it as FAT32 (it probably is default to this). Typically you just right click on the USB icon in your file browser and 'format' is an option.[ end THIS WILL REMOVE ALL INFORMATION FROM YOUR USB FLASH DRIVE] When this is done open your USB stick in a file browser window. Then drag your music folders (normally defaulted to artist) to your USB stick. You only need to format your USB drive once.

Properly remove your USB stick and insert into Model S USB port. Everything should work.

 

[Morristhecat]

What sort of music file, directory and name structure do you guys recommend for the s?

I currently have all my mp3's stored in one directory. Files are artist-song.mp3, with embedded album art. Usually I just shuffle it and it works fine. But I would like to know if I should modify this setup over the next 2 weeks before my s arrives.

 

[rcc]

Hi fellow Robert,

I'm glad the S supports FLAC. Would you mind sharing what size your average 4min song becomes once ripped? I'm thinking of also using FLAC, but I only have a 64GB USB key so I'd like to get an idea of how many songs I'll be fitting on there.

Thanks!

Rob

On average, I find that FLAC (or Apple Lossless) takes up about 1/2 the space of the WAV file and 2x the space of 320kbps AAC. Which is probably close to 256kpbs mp3.

So a reasonable rule of thumb is that FLAC or Apple Lossless will get you:

- twice the # of songs on the same drive as the uncompressed CD versions
- 1/2 the # of songs on the same drive compared to storing the songs in high quality mp3/AAC.

Not sure about 128kbps mp3/AAC though as I don't typically use those.

 

[Rodolfo Paiz]

What sort of music file, directory and name structure do you guys recommend for the s?

Years ago, when I started ripping my CD's, I wanted to be able to know everything about the file from just looking at its filename. At the suggestion of a friend, David Steele, I settled on a " ~ " separator (space tilde space) that wouldn't cause any problems in any reasonable filesystem, and I name files like this:

<Artist> ~ <Album> ~ <Track# in 2 digits> ~ <Track Title>.wav

Obviously I also tag the files when converting to other formats, but it's great that I can always tell anything I need from the filename, and also that programs like MediaMonkey can get the tags from the filename automatically... lots of time saved that way.

 

[rogbmw]

Get a computer, preferably a desktop with at least 2 CD drives. But any computer with a CD drive will work.

Install a music program (you already mentioned it so), say iTunes.

Go into ripping settings and pick MP3 and pick a bitrate of 256. Higher numbers will get you better quality, but you will fit less of them onto your USB stick. (Save your settings)

Also in your ripping settings you should have a default folder where your files end up, remember this folder. (Save your settings)

Put a CD into the drive, it should ask you if you want to rip it, say yes. When done repeat. (Some software will let you do this with multiple CD drives at once).

Once you have your music ripped go to the folder you were supposed to remember with a file browser (explorer, Win; or finder, Mac). Plug in your USB stick. [THIS WILL REMOVE ALL INFORMATION FROM YOUR USB FLASH DRIVE start]Format it as FAT32 (it probably is default to this). Typically you just right click on the USB icon in your file browser and 'format' is an option.[ end THIS WILL REMOVE ALL INFORMATION FROM YOUR USB FLASH DRIVE] When this is done open your USB stick in a file browser window. Then drag your music folders (normally defaulted to artist) to your USB stick. You only need to format your USB drive once.

Properly remove your USB stick and insert into Model S USB port. Everything should work.

Thanks!

 

[Robert.Boston]

If you want to buy high-def soundtracks, HDtracks high resolution audiophile music downloads has a very good collection of music that can be downloaded in lossless or other hi-def formats. As for organization, I create a folder for each album, which makes it simpler to move albums on/off a flash-drive for the car.

 

[inottawa]

Besides actually BUYING the physical media, is there someone online you can purchase lossless audio files? Does anyone know?

If you're into electro, beatport has the option to sell tracks as either AIFF or WAV. I have read the entire thread to see what's supported but those would be lossless and purchase'able'

 

[dadaleus]

Nice guide by Elsupreme. Personally, I'd argue for Lossless or 320k. Media is cheap and its possible to down convert. But you don't want to have to rip your disks again.

 

[ElSupreme]

Nice guide by Elsupreme. Personally, I'd argue for Lossless or 320k. Media is cheap and its possible to down convert. But you don't want to have to rip your disks again.

Yeah I just really simplified things, for people that just want their music in their car. 256bps mp3 is 'good enough' but not great. If you want to keep a library of all your music rip to FLAC or WMA/AAC lossless. Then down convert if you don't need the quality (read 'using earbuds'), or need more songs and don't have the space.


I normally put 192bps on stuff I use earbuds with. 320bps on things I use my (fairly crappy) headphones with. Things that have more than 100GB get full Lossless files regardless of what is being played. In my previous car I would use 320bps, because it was loud, and the Stereo was just OK. With the S I am thinking I need to pony up for a 128GB USB stick, so I can get a good portion of my music on there at once. I might buy a bunch of those super low profile 32GB ones and just swap out as needed.

 

[dsm363]

I've always encoded at 256bps mp3 and then 256 AAC with iTunes. Am thinking about encoding in ALAC since I have almost all Apple products. Does the Model S still not support ALAC or is FLAC the better way to go (as a general rule for future backup). I don't see Apple going anywhere anytime soon but if Tesla won't support it then maybe FLAC is better. Thanks.

 

[vcor]

Pardon a rookie question, but how can one tell if cover art is stored in the file? In my case I use M4a files. When I use the iTunes application or Media Monkey on my computer with these same files I do get the correct cover art for the Beatles Love album. I figured there was an additional graphic file on my computer that was not transferred to the USB thumb drive.

Anybody know how to force the correct cover art on when playing on the Model S?
Larry

The cover art only comes via the 3G connection. There is no way to override it and it ignores any art on your USB device.

Cover art can be imbedded in your audio file (some formats) and/or provided as a jpg in the same directory as the album.

I believe they are using CDDB, which is very comprehensive, but has errors, especially on collections. Also keep in mind many albums have been released with different cover art for the same album, so the one served by CDDB may be correct, but just not the same as your personal album.

Hopefully Tesla will have an update that allows us to select to prioritize where to get the cover art - local or via 3G CDDB.

Very strangely, I have one album that displays a photo of two people in portrait mode! They are not the artists and it is clearly not a CD cover. For me, I estimate about 5-10% of the covers are wrong.