Audiophile Question - FLAC 24/96 Playback

[Marcust99]

Been enjoying playing 24/96 FLAC files directly off an SSD in my new MY P. They sound really good. Given that there's not much in the way of info about what's going on during the playback process, is it safe to say that the car is decoding these files as is and not transcoding to MP3 prior to playback?

Anyone know?

 

[Miguelst]

I had the same question … and from my extensive searches I found that the car is decoding

 

[Marcust99]

I had the same question … and from my extensive searches I found that the car is decoding

I couldn't find anything.

Can you post some links to check out?

 

[rusmo]

Following. I had a Phatbox with a 128GB laptop hard drive in my GTI for over a decade before it crapped out. I have my whole music library in FLAC and now have some access to higher rez rips. Give me all the bits!!!!

 

[Johnny Vector]

There is no algorithm to go directly from FLAC to MP3, so it would have to decode the FLAC to get a stream of samples, encode that to MP3, then decode the MP3 right back to samples. There's zero chance that's how it works.

 

[FredMertz]

I was going to try this, but I decided to wait until I get a pair of ears that can hear the difference.

I kid! I kid!

 

[drtimhill]

Been enjoying playing 24/96 FLAC files directly off an SSD in my new MY P. They sound really good. Given that there's not much in the way of info about what's going on during the playback process, is it safe to say that the car is decoding these files as is and not transcoding to MP3 prior to playback?

Anyone know?

Why would it transcode them? Pointless and uses up power and bandwidth (especially encoding MP3).

And, to be a bit mean. Manually transcode a file yourself, then listen to both in the car. If you can’t hear a difference, then either (a) the car is transcoding them or (b) it isn’t and you can’t hear a difference. If you can hear a different (doing blind testing with someone helping), then you are in the clear.

 

[Johnny Vector]

Why would it transcode them? Pointless and uses up power and bandwidth (especially encoding MP3).

And, to be a bit mean. Manually transcode a file yourself, then listen to both in the car. If you can’t hear a difference, then either (a) the car is transcoding them or (b) it isn’t and you can’t hear a difference. If you can hear a different (doing blind testing with someone helping), then you are in the clear.

One caution about doing your own test: Make sure the levels are exactly balanced between the two sources. And be sure that it really is blind. Okay, that's two cautions. Also an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Three. Three cau... I'll come in again.

Or, rather than doing your own test, you could instead rely on the thousands of them done by people who do that sort of thing for a living, who find that nobody can tell a 256k MP3 from uncompressed audio. 128k MP3 can be distinguished from uncompressed sound in some cases under good conditions, but I suspect inside a moving car is not "good conditions". Basically, unless you are going to be doing some major processing to the sound or spending a lot of effort carefully doing A/B/X comparisons, any modern codec at a bit rate over ~160k will be indistinguishable from uncompressed.

OTOH, storage is so cheap these days that who cares about the larger file size of FLAC? So if that's what you already have then there's certainly no reason to mess with it.

 

[drtimhill]

who find that nobody can tell a 256k MP3 from uncompressed audio

Who find that the average person cannot tell the difference.

On a decent audio system, I can hear the difference, to the point where the MP3 sounds horrid. However, I do agree that in the sub-optimal world of car audio, any differences are swamped by background noise and the compromises of the car audio chain, and are thus essentially irrelevant.

I have a decent palate for wine, but I confess I could not tell the difference between two vintage years of a very good quality wine. However, I have no doubt that a good sommelier can ... just as there are people with trained ears who can hear subtle differences in audio that others cannot. (And yes, there are a lot of people who claim they can but really cannot, but that's human nature.)

 

[thesmokingman]

Transcoding isn't free. The media has to be decoded first for anything to be transcoded. Thus the issue is one of logic. If you're listening to these high bitrate flacs... that means it's being decoded. Then ask yourself why would the audio system decode the flac then transcode it for playback? Why would you think it's transcoding in the first place?

 

[Johnny Vector]

Who find that the average person cannot tell the difference.

On a decent audio system, I can hear the difference, to the point where the MP3 sounds horrid. However, I do agree that in the sub-optimal world of car audio, any differences are swamped by background noise and the compromises of the car audio chain, and are thus essentially irrelevant.

I have a decent palate for wine, but I confess I could not tell the difference between two vintage years of a very good quality wine. However, I have no doubt that a good sommelier can ... just as there are people with trained ears who can hear subtle differences in audio that others cannot. (And yes, there are a lot of people who claim they can but really cannot, but that's human nature.)

If you can find me a single published paper in which one or more people can reliably (let's say P < 0.05) distinguish between 256k MP3 encode-decode and the lack thereof, I'll retract my statement. I predict that no such paper exists.

 

[sleepydoc]

I do agree that in the sub-optimal world of car audio, any differences are swamped by background noise and the compromises of the car audio chain, and are thus essentially irrelevant.

This. Very few people can tell the difference between high quality compressed audio and lossless audio, but some can. I’d be willing to bet that virtually no one can tell the difference using a car’s audio system. If the car is moving it’s all but hopeless.

 

[Nick77]

Very few people can tell the difference between high quality compressed audio and lossless audio, but some can. I’d be willing to bet that virtually no one can tell the difference using a car’s audio system. If the car is moving it’s all but hopeless.

I'll second this.

I recently downloaded some FLAC files to my USB stick and put them in the car. I played them back to back with Spotify's identical tracks and I couldn't hear any difference. That was sitting parked in a quiet spot.

I can usually hear audio differences with headphones but only subtle. That said I'm in my 40s and years of gigs and guitar playing abuse has left my hearing less than perfect.

 

[RickCRNA]

Here’s a related question. Some of my car music is on a USB thumb drive in FLAC format. But I find it time consuming to code CDs using this format. Any suggestions for choosing a Tesla compatible format for transferring CDs to thumb drive? Thanks.

 

[jcanoe]

Here’s a related question. Some of my car music is on a USB thumb drive in FLAC format. But I find it time consuming to code CDs using this format. Any suggestions for choosing a Tesla compatible format for transferring CDs to thumb drive? Thanks.

The Tesla Model Y Owner's Manual is frustratingly silent on the media file types supported by the front USB port(s).

USB Connected Flash Drives

Connect a flash drive to a front USB connection (see
Interior Storage and Electronics on page 19). Touch
Media Player > USB, and then touch the name of the
folder that contains the song you want to play. After you
display the contents of a folder on the USB connected
flash drive, you can touch any song in the list to play it.
Or use the previous and next arrows in Miniplayer to
scroll through your songs.

NOTE: To play media from a USB connection, Model Y
recognizes flash drives only. You can play media from
other types of devices (such as an iPod) by connecting
the device using Bluetooth.

NOTE: Media Player supports USB flash drives with
FAT32 formatting (NTFS and exFAT are not currently
supported).

NOTE: Use a USB connection located at the front of the
center console. The USB connections at the rear of the
console are for charging only

(With regards to the Boombox function, the supported file types are .wav and .mp3. See Tesla Model Y Owner's Manual Page 203.)

My experience is that the front USB port(s) will accept a USB thumb drive formatted as FAT32, plays MP3 files.

See page 140: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_y_owners_manual_north_america_en.pdf

 

[MikeR99]

Here’s a related question. Some of my car music is on a USB thumb drive in FLAC format. But I find it time consuming to code CDs using this format. Any suggestions for choosing a Tesla compatible format for transferring CDs to thumb drive? Thanks.

Tesla doesn't handle playlists, so when you go plug in your nice new flash drive with all your playlists you spent so much time curating, don't expect to use them. Pretty pathetic really. The only way to create a playlist for USB use in a Tesla is to create folders and put all the songs from a single playlist in that folder, and same for any subsequent playlists. Real source of irritation for me. A 70k vehicle, arguably the most technologically advanced in the world right now, can't do playlists.

 

[TheLex]

The Tesla Model Y Owner's Manual is frustratingly silent on the media file types supported by the front USB port(s).

USB Connected Flash Drives

Connect a flash drive to a front USB connection (see
Interior Storage and Electronics on page 19). Touch
Media Player > USB, and then touch the name of the
folder that contains the song you want to play. After you
display the contents of a folder on the USB connected
flash drive, you can touch any song in the list to play it.
Or use the previous and next arrows in Miniplayer to
scroll through your songs.

NOTE: To play media from a USB connection, Model Y
recognizes flash drives only. You can play media from
other types of devices (such as an iPod) by connecting
the device using Bluetooth.

NOTE: Media Player supports USB flash drives with
FAT32 formatting (NTFS and exFAT are not currently
supported).

NOTE: Use a USB connection located at the front of the
center console. The USB connections at the rear of the
console are for charging only

(With regards to the Boombox function, the supported file types are .wav and .mp3. See Tesla Model Y Owner's Manual Page 203.)

My experience is that the front USB port(s) will accept a USB thumb drive formatted as FAT32, plays MP3 files.

See page 140: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_y_owners_manual_north_america_en.pdf

So that means you can't load more than 4 GB of songs onto a flash drive then due to the FAT32 limitation correct? Normally that's not that big of an issue but FLAC files can get kind of big. A single album can easily be 300-400 MB.

 

[Johnny Vector]

So that means you can't load more than 4 GB of songs onto a flash drive then due to the FAT32 limitation correct? Normally that's not that big of an issue but FLAC files can get kind of big. A single album can easily be 300-400 MB.

Nope, the 4GB limit is for a single file. So long as you're not trying to put the entire Ring cycle into one file, you should be fine. From the pffft of all knowledge: "The FAT32 boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting the maximal FAT32 volume size to 2 terabytes with a sector size of 512 bytes."

I have a 500 GB SSD that I split into two approximately equal partitions, one for music and one for Teslacam. I followed the instructions I found elsewhere in the forums (slightly modified since I'm using the Apple Disk Utility to format things). It works fine.

 

[laservet]

Nope, the 4GB limit is for a single file. So long as you're not trying to put the entire Ring cycle into one file, you should be fine. From the pffft of all knowledge: "The FAT32 boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting the maximal FAT32 volume size to 2 terabytes with a sector size of 512 bytes."

I have a 500 GB SSD that I split into two approximately equal partitions, one for music and one for Teslacam. I followed the instructions I found elsewhere in the forums (slightly modified since I'm using the Apple Disk Utility to format things). It works fine.

Does it actually have to be two partitions? Would two folders in the same partition work as well?

 

[jcanoe]

Does it actually have to be two partitions? Would two folders in the same partition work as well?

No; The Tesla Model Y's Dashcam/Sentry Mode software will detect and mount the USB drive used for Sentry Mode and Dashcam recordings for exclusive use. You need to partition the storage device, i.e. the SSD or else use one storage device for Dashcam/Sentry mode and a second storage device for storing Music and Boombox audio. In the current Model Y the two USB-C ports inside the center console can be used for the second storage device. The USB port in the glove box should be used for the Dashcam/Sentry mode recordings.