Firmware 6.2 Audio Enhancements?

[EarlyAdopter]

I'm 35 years in hi-end audio business, plus I am a violinist. Your system will always sound better with Dolby off. Most direct path from the original recording with as little processing screwing things up obviously has to be better. The best audio products you can get offer zero tone control, zero processing and hopefully an analog source.

That has always been my experience as well, but with the change in 6.2 I'd almost describe the Dolby setting as "room correction" now, much like Audyssey MultiEQ.

Instead of over processing and coloring the sound, adding fake ambience, instead now it _de-colors_ the sound and removes artifacts from the speakers.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I'm 35 years in hi-end audio business, plus I am a violinist. Your system will always sound better with Dolby off. Most direct path from the original recording with as little processing screwing things up obviously has to be better. The best audio products you can get offer zero tone control, zero processing and hopefully an analog source.

So then let's all run out and buy a record player/cassette deck and two speakers. No thanks. I'll take digital source and 5-7 channel surround processing any time over outdated analog source with two speaker set-up. I'm a philistine.

 

[griffd]

Still no ALAC and much worse sound with 6.2 - Premium Audio

I was hoping that one of the new codecs supported would be Apple Lossless (ALAC)... It's not, I checked. I'll continue converting my 50,000 song collection to FLAC. Maybe some day it will happen since it is open source (discussed many places previously).

This made me sad as well, and is the first thing I tried. It takes me like 10 hrs to convert my ALAC collection to FLAC on a fast 1TB SSD. Horrible.

Also, 6.2 made my system sound MUCH worse. There is this horrible low end boomy bass sound that is awful! I find myself having to turn the bass down to -3, but it is killing other frequencies and making it sound much worse than before. I used to keep it around 2.5 bass 0 mid 2.5-3 treble and now I just can't seem to get good sound out of it. Anyone else experience this? Should I bring it in for service or is this considered normal now?

 

[zwede]

There is this horrible low end boomy bass sound that is awful!

With UHF sound? Yes, the UHF sub-woofer is very small and won't do low frequency bass. To compensate they exaggerate mid bass. Some music sounds ok like this but much of my collection suffers. Can't be fixed in software, needs a bigger sub.

 

[tomas]

So then let's all run out and buy a record player/cassette deck and two speakers. No thanks. I'll take digital source and 5-7 channel surround processing any time over outdated analog source with two speaker set-up. I'm a philistine.

The problem here is the word "better", which is subjective. Gene's "better" is more accurate reproduction of recording, and in that he is objectively correct. Amped likes immersion, which is not accurate, but many people like more. In either case, good analog (not cassette!) is generally best input with uncompressed digital close second. I find tesla system sound stage good, but it is unconventional for a car.

PS in the cassette days, in a dodge, sound processing was more herbal than electronic. I've heard.

 

[EarlyAdopter]

This made me sad as well, and is the first thing I tried. It takes me like 10 hrs to convert my ALAC collection to FLAC on a fast 1TB SSD. Horrible.

Also, 6.2 made my system sound MUCH worse. There is this horrible low end boomy bass sound that is awful! I find myself having to turn the bass down to -3, but it is killing other frequencies and making it sound much worse than before. I used to keep it around 2.5 bass 0 mid 2.5-3 treble and now I just can't seem to get good sound out of it. Anyone else experience this? Should I bring it in for service or is this considered normal now?

Sorry, not to sound like a broken record, but have you tried 6.2 with Dolby on yet?

Before 6.2 the Dolby setting ruined the sound, now I find it actually improves the sound quality tremendously. It seems to act as "room correction" or "speaker correction" and among other things tones down the boomy bass.

On 6.2 I recommend resetting your EQ and balance back to neutral, turning on Dolby, and then adjust from there

 

[Lloyd]

It seems like slacker loads a different version of the music when Dolby is selected on. I was playing with it today and when Dolby is selected either on or off, a new song is loaded like it requires a different format when either is selected.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

With UHF sound? Yes, the UHF sub-woofer is very small and won't do low frequency bass. To compensate they exaggerate mid bass. Some music sounds ok like this but much of my collection suffers. Can't be fixed in software, needs a bigger sub.

No, my UHF it sounded better before 6.2. After 6.2 things sound rather dull. Turning on Dolby in 6.2 makes this better whereas prior to 6.2, Dolby made things worse.

 

[zwede]

No, my UHF it sounded better before 6.2. After 6.2 things sound rather dull. Turning on Dolby in 6.2 makes this better whereas prior to 6.2, Dolby made things worse.

I had Dolby off before 6.2 as it made it sound worse. I didn't notice a difference with 6.2 and Dolby off, but Dolby on sounds better with 6.2.

 

[gtimbers]

I also believe 6.2 has made things worse. Although the sub is small, it is capable up to moderate levels. The problem is that the bass control covers too wide a range and alters the mid-bass along with the sub range. Using a separate amplifier on the sub can correct this problem and make the sub sound quite nice. It has good response down to about 30 Hz.

Other than the bass, my biggest complaint is that the midrange has a pretty noticeable rise between 1000 Hz and 2000 Hz. Turning the mid control down used to help this condition, but in the newer software, the mid control affects a very wide range so minimizing the peak also subdues the area between 500 Hz and 800 Hz which is equally annoying. It is not possible to get a balanced sound any longer with any combination of control settings.

I also feel the system sounds like Mono now vs a nice stereo spread in earlier software versions. I firmly believe that the current system is inferior to the $950 Studio Sound package in my 2013 Model S. Very Disheartening.

I have made the subwoofer improvement and that helps a bunch. I haven't found the wires to the dash speakers yet. When I do, I can design a passive filter to remove or minimize the response problem. This should help a bunch.

 

[Lloyd]

No, my UHF it sounded better before 6.2. After 6.2 things sound rather dull. Turning on Dolby in 6.2 makes this better whereas prior to 6.2, Dolby made things worse.

6.2 also set to Zero all of your EQ settings! Check your EQ and make sure that it is where you left it!!

 

[AmpedRealtor]

6.2 also set to Zero all of your EQ settings! Check your EQ and make sure that it is where you left it!!

That was the first thing I checked, and all the sliders were set as they were prior to the update. I've also rebooted twice since updating, moved the sliders to zero and then back to where they were, and the sound is still the same. Dolby helped a lot, but certain audio cues that I was able to hear before without Dolby are no longer audible unless dolby is turned on. I'm not an audiophile, but could what I'm experiencing be an increase in dynamic range? Seems like sounds that were barely audible before are now completely buried unless you crank up the volume, but then the peaks are much louder as well.

 

[dsm363]

Sucks about no ALAC support still. If you want this, please e-mail Tesla about it as well. Have already done so.

 

[tomas]

Grrrrrr!!!!! Another bug found with the POS media player. My main music source is usb drive with about 30,000 FLAC encoded songs. I usually listen to albums. Last couple of weeks, I've just been putting it on "songs" and random. Songs have been regularly (maybe 1 out of 20) popping up with no album or artist tag, and of course no album art. So, today I decided to investigate. Voila, when I brought up the album they should be on, these songs were missing. When I went to folder view, of course they were there. So, I unplugged the USB drive and connected to my computer to check tags. All tags are correct. So, I'm guessing that when the media player catalogs the tracks, it is just deciding to ignore certain tags - just as it used to ignore tracks with any non-american english characters. It is acting like my postal carrier - only deliver some of the mail!

Of course I'll report this, and of course it will go where all of the media player improvement requests go... nowhere! Grrrrr!!!!

 

[ra-san]

If you can figure out any specific limitations on characters, etc., I'd love to know about the, so I can filter in my TeslaTunes app. I wasn't aware of any from my limited testing.

 

[jerry33]

If you can figure out any specific limitations on characters, etc., I'd love to know about the, so I can filter in my TeslaTunes app. I wasn't aware of any from my limited testing.

As far as I know, the only limitations are characters not found on a U.S. keyboard. If you replace umlauts, accents and similar characters with the plain letters, the songs will play. Interestingly, if the system actually finds the song (a rare event) the umlauts and accents will show up in the title.

 

[tomas]

OK, still on random play of all songs, and still seething over bug that randomly fails to index FLAC tags... about 10% of songs that are randomly chosen show no artist or album, though if I plug the USB drive into my computer, the tags are clearly there. Oh, and if I take drive out of car and then re-connect it, some of the previously unrecognized songs are now displaying information, but new ones fail to!

PS, can you believe that it failed to find artwork for Dark Side of the Moon and Sargent Pepper... only two of the largest selling albums and most iconic album covers of all time?!?!?!

Love the car, sure wish they would either 1) fix the media player, 2) expand Bluetooth functionality so you could use display to control external player, or 3) enable other players to be used via browser. Getting sick of this amateur media player!

 

[Andyw2100]

PS, can you believe that it failed to find artwork for Dark Side of the Moon and Sargent Pepper... only two of the largest selling albums and most iconic album covers of all time?!?!?!

I agree the media player needs serious work.

As for those two albums, how long did you wait to see if the album art was found? I ask because I've noticed that often the album art may not be there initially, but shows up eventually. So if you had just added those albums, or perhaps just tried to play them for the first time, it could take some time for the art to appear. (Or it could just be broken! )

 

[Andyw2100]

Is there any good way to tag files that are part of a compilation album, such that the Tesla only shows the album in the album list once, but does show the correct artists associated with each song on the album while the song is being played? I believe the "correct" way to do this would be to have the "Album Artist" tag on each file set to something like "Various Artists" and to have the "Artist" tag for each file set to the different individual artists. But the Model S software does not seem to look at or use the "Album Artist" tag, as far as I can tell. So an album that is a compilation of forty songs, from forty artists, would show up in the album list forty times, and though I'm not sure of this, I also think it may be impossible to play the entire album. That's a moot point for me anyway, as I don't want the album appearing forty times in my album list.

Just for kicks, using MP3tag I tried mapping the "Artist" field over to the "Album Artist" field, to preserve the information, and then set the "Album" field to Various Artists. That did get the album down to just one album in the album view, but when playing any track, the artist shows as "Various Artists."

Naturally I have been changing the folder names to force the Model S to use the new tag information, and that has been working fine.

Any ideas? Is there a way to do what I'm trying to do?

Thanks.

 

[ra-san]

The way you describe is the only way I've seen as a work around. What was mentioned in another thread, and what I added as an option in my app was to (in addition) append the artist in the title tag so that the info isn't lost, but that is still pretty lame since sometimes the title already mentions the artist. I guess I could only append the artist if the name didn't already appear in the title. Either way, I hate messing with the tags when the stuff should really just work.