CD quality sound via FLAC files, my experience

[doctorwho]

Vern I'm disappointed that it won't play my reel to reel as of course 15ips R2R sounds better
Seriously though if you rip your CDs into flac level 0 you won't hear any difference, especially with the poor resolution of the Tesla audio system

 

[wdolson]

In my experience the car likes smaller memory sticks. It also seems to be a bit finicky about brands too.

If I remember right, most memory sticks come preformatted for FAT32, so there is no need to reformat. I've only had problems with one stick and it was a larger one I think I had used for something else in the past. I've always had new sticks work, but most of the ones I've tried are 8 GB. In any case, I took a new stick out the packaging, loaded music onto it, and it worked.

If you need to format something with FAT32, here are 4 methods:
How to Format FAT32

I'm an odd bird who has never owned a car with a CD player. My last car was a 1992 and the CD player was a somewhat expensive option. I had a bunch of mix tapes for years until the eject spring on the tape player got too worn.

I ripped some CDs to FLAC, but found with tire noise and what not I couldn't really hear the difference between it and MP3, but my ear is not as finely tuned as some. I just do MP3s now. I got most of the music I wanted on one 8 GB memory stick with room to spare and have another memory stick with audio books in it.

 

[Lawsteve]

Best sound quality is on CDs. I spent 100 thousand dollars on a car, and it won't play my CDs. I have maybe a thousand CDs that I have waited 20 years to listen to.

FLAC, FLUC. I want to listen to the 1000 CDs that I bought 20 years ago. Now that I have my car, and my retirement.

I had around 750 CD's myself. I sent them to a vendor in Calif (they once advertised on this site, but I now cannot recall their name). They ripped them all to FLAC format and loaded them onto a 1tb hard drive that I have been using in my car for the last year or so. Works and sounds great - and I get to enjoy all of my own music.

 

[zwede]

I've heard that some people have issues with USB stick bigger than 8GB. I haven't had any issues with my 32GB stick that currently has 19GB on it, but I formatted it in Ext3 instead of FAT32. Maybe something to try if you have issues with a large stick. Ext3 is a much better file format than FAT32.

 

[Logan5]

When I got my Model S last year I converted a large portion of my media library to FLAC using Tesla Tunes on the Mac and transferred them to a USB stick. The sound quality was appreciably better than streaming music from my iPhone via Bluetooth. But I quickly stopped using it and rely mostly on Slacker for music now.

The reason I gave up using the USB stick was that navigation is frustrating. I don't entirely fault Tesla for this- Using USB is a bit of a hassle on my other cars as well. Of course Tesla could do better with playlist support and I hope they'll make improvements to make it more user friendly experience, but really USB is probably a stop gap.

Maybe it was a mistake on my part to overdo it and get a large USB stick to put as much of my music collection on it?

As others have noted, a better option would be better mobile phone integration with the sound system. I want to access my phone playlists and streaming music apps directly on the Tesla touchscreen. I'm not going to complain too loudly about this on this thread because there are plenty of threads lamenting this problem elsewhere.

But I do have a question for USB users here- Is there a better way of organizing the music to make it easier to access? I'm especially curious to learn what users with large music libraries do to organize their tunes. I was considering giving this another shot with a subset of my music collection that I think will benefit from the FLAC conversion.

 

[whttiger25]

Best sound quality is on CDs. I spent 100 thousand dollars on a car, and it won't play my CDs. I have maybe a thousand CDs that I have waited 20 years to listen to.

FLAC, FLUC. I want to listen to the 1000 CDs that I bought 20 years ago. Now that I have my car, and my retirement.

You can rip 1000 CDs onto a 500GB portable hard drive formatted as FAT32, and have all 1000 CDs, in lossless quality, in your car at once.

I know it will be a labor of love to rip all those CDs, but once you do it, it's SO nice to just have EVERYTHING at your fingertips.

Would be nice is Tesla sorted albums by track number and not song title! I've submitted that bug report about 10 times now...

 

[idealsol]

You can rip 1000 CDs onto a 500GB portable hard drive formatted as FAT32, and have all 1000 CDs, in lossless quality, in your car at once.

I know it will be a labor of love to rip all those CDs, but once you do it, it's SO nice to just have EVERYTHING at your fingertips.

Would be nice is Tesla sorted albums by track number and not song title! I've submitted that bug report about 10 times now...

I did just that. Just started with a big pile and knocked it out
I'm at my computer a lot at home so it's not too bad
Put it all on 132gb USB flash drive and that music is easily the best I hear in my car

Now everything is digital in FLAC, and I can covert to MP3 or other formats should the need arise
The right software also helps. I'm a big fan of DbPoweramp. It's handles artwork and everything. I think I paid $39.

 

[whttiger25]

I did just that. Just started with a big pile and knocked it out
I'm at my computer a lot at home so it's not too bad
Put it all on 132gb USB flash drive and that music is easily the best I hear in my car

Now everything is digital in FLAC, and I can covert to MP3 or other formats should the need arise
The right software also helps. I'm a big fan of DbPoweramp. It's handles artwork and everything. I think I paid $39.

Agreed. I got a nice system down, pop a CD in, update album and track info through EAC, create/select directory, rip, and go do something else. Each night I probably got through 10 CDs. Of cousre...I only had about 200 CDs to rip, 1000.....it will just take longer

 

[Ocelot]

I remember using FLAC about ten years ago...and still cannot beleive they have not found a better (ie. faster) way to convert CD's yet. My new car has no CD player, and it is just a pain. Sometimes the 'outdated' stuff is just easier. The good news is streaming quality gets better and better and hopefully one day it will be a form of lossless audio.

My new computer does not even have a CD slot. Ha. I am looking into buying a bluesound Vault 2 to rip my CD's just unsure if after ripped can stick on a USB (which I imagine you can as there are two slots, but uncomfirmed)
Wireless Stereo Components - Bluesound

 

[whttiger25]

I remember using FLAC about ten years ago...and still cannot beleive they have not found a better (ie. faster) way to convert CD's yet. My new car has no CD player, and it is just a pain. Sometimes the 'outdated' stuff is just easier. The good news is streaming quality gets better and better and hopefully one day it will be a form of lossless audio.

My new computer does not even have a CD slot. Ha. I am looking into buying a bluesound Vault 2 to rip my CD's just unsure if after ripped can stick on a USB (which I imagine you can as there are two slots, but uncomfirmed)
Wireless Stereo Components - Bluesound

I've never felt it was too slow, remember you need to read the whole CD, and EAC does a otnof redundancy checking on top of that. You can set the FLAC encoder level to 5 or 6 out of 8 to marginally increase file size but significantly decrease compression time.

 

[Vern Padgett]

Vern I'm disappointed that it won't play my reel to reel as of course 15ips R2R sounds better
Seriously though if you rip your CDs into flac level 0 you won't hear any difference, especially with the poor resolution of the Tesla audio system

Thanks Doc.
I just have this thing about the 1000 CDs I bought 20 or 25 years ago, and have been storing for that day that I would have time to listen to them.
I get it-- your next post will be about my wanting to play 8-track tapes, or 33 1/3 rpm LPs. I get that. But I bought Naxos classical music CDs from Renaissance to Romantic-- 1500s to 1900s-- with the aim of someday listening to all of it-- and I will soon be able to do that. Maybe.

 

[doctorwho]

Maybe I'm just not obsessional enough but I've hd so many CD cases smashed whilst in a car that not having a CD player was a great relief to me, I wouldn't be tempted.

 

[wdolson]

Maybe I'm just not obsessional enough but I've hd so many CD cases smashed whilst in a car that not having a CD player was a great relief to me, I wouldn't be tempted.

Ultimately memory sticks are more convenient, though easier to lose.

 

[AcidTest]

I haven't used CDs in a car in about 12 years, since I picked up a 160GB iPod Classic. I've got a bigger collection than most (probably > 2500 titles then, 3500 now) so even at 192k MP3 that didn't come close to holding it all.

I took a hint from elsewhere on the forum and picked up a portable SSD USB drive which is FAR faster than a standard USB stick, and it was actually less expensive. I got a Samsung T3 500GB for $180 on Amazon last week, which was about $20 less than the least expensive decent looking USB stick of a similar capacity.

@Logan5 I am in the same boat as you, trying to figure out a better way to organize a large collection. I took note of @BertL 's great post on the USB Bug List thread for a starting point of how to convert from iTunes / M4A lossless to FLAC in MediaMonkey.

If Tesla would add playlist support, and correctly display Genre to navigate as Genre -> Artist -> Album -> track by #, that would go a LONG way to making me content with the USB player.

 

[Vern Padgett]

Jason, et al., I shall look into FLAC. And Slacker Premium. I'll search here on this Forum as a start. Thanks for info.

AcidTest, please say more about the route you took-- if you were to start again, would you

1) go with FLAC
2) Slacker Premium, or
3) iPod

Meanwhile, my audiophile buddy set me up with a portable CD player and a Bluetooth transmitter. I'll post his instructions asap.

Vern

 

[AcidTest]

@Vern Padgett - it depends a bit on what you're trying to do. #3 isn't an option unless you are talking about an iPod Touch with Bluetooth. For convenience that is ok, but the BT connection limits the sound quality which contradicts the topic of this thread ("CD quality sound").

1) and 2) are quite different types of content. I don't have a Slacker account so I can't speak much to the Premium service but it's still a "radio" style way of listening as opposed to playing your own music. Sometimes that's fine, and at least you can apparently set the Slacker app to use 320 Kbps for higher, very close to CD quality. But if you want to actually listen to your own music, i.e. CDs that you have copied to a drive, FLAC and the USB connection are the only way to do that so 1) is just the only option.

I personally can't see using a portable CD player even given the limitations of the USB interface. That's just way too limiting a format these days with having to carry a CD wallet of some kind. A fairly compact 2 disc tall one would be about 64 CDs; I have ~1400 albums on my USB drive.

 

[Vern Padgett]

Thanks AcidTest. I'll try several options-- we're driving tomorrow to the TMC Convention in Monterey so I'll see how the portable CD player works out-- But I'm seeing myself going with your advice long term.