It looks like I have LTE enabled

[beeeerock]

Last I checked in my WiFi captures the slacker songs were 128kbit mp3s.

Safe to assume you went to your Tesla slacker account settings on slacker.com via your regular computer and set the max bit rate up higher? When I did that, I thought the sound was better and the download bar took longer to cross the screen. But it might have been wishful thinking - I've never sniffed any of it.

 

[Cyclone]

Safe to assume you went to your Tesla slacker account settings on slacker.com via your regular computer and set the max bit rate up higher? When I did that, I thought the sound was better and the download bar took longer to cross the screen. But it might have been wishful thinking - I've never sniffed any of it.

When I did this, I noticed a distinct change in my vehicle. However, I doubt it was the website change that actually did anything. When I got back to my car, I took the vehicle from Best -> Normal -> Best. It is now my belief that since I set my car from Normal -> Best before the Slacker account was even activated and then went through some firmware updates, the setting never "took". I have since tried Slacker back on Normal and it feels like the subpar sound I was getting when I first tried out Slacker. That said, this is a subjective test, so I have no what of scientifically knowing what quality of sound I was getting before to compare against now.

 

[TaoJones]

Agreed that default Slacker is/was 128Kbps. After I got my creds from Tesla and updated the Slacker website config for my account, I too detected a less feeble quality (noticeable when testing, for example, "Gunfight" by the Sick Puppies, or any classical piece with strings, even) and a longer download (bar filling) time.
Perhaps those who tested at 128Kbps can test again after confirming the 320Kbps setting.

The operational issue being that getting 320Kbps is connection quality-dependent... *and* you have to have made the aforementioned credentials/website-dependent change first.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

There may be a retrofit-specific thread but, will post it here all the same. Confirming a couple of posts from before, my local service center (Burlingame) contacted me yesterday and indicated that the LTE upgrade is officially available to me now for $500 and asked me when I wanted to bring the car in. I setup a date in late October in the hope that the Ludicrous upgrade will be ready as well by then so that I can get both done in one shot.

 

[hiroshiy]

Wow, great news!

 

[Ingineer]

I've noticed playing my own MP3's (regardless of bitrate), FLAC or WAV sound worse compared to playing the same exact files on my phone over Bluetooth. Even the 128k files in Slacker sound better than the same file when played over USB. I can't figure out how that would be. WTF?

I would love it if anyone concerned run their own tests. Have someone assist and do it double blind. I did it for a recording engineer friend of mine and he spotted the native (crappy) played file 100% of the time.

 

[vdiv]

Maybe the car's stereo resamples and transcodes files read over the USB port for security reasons.

Tesla should not call it ultra high fidelity sound without having proper analog inputs (why not balanced even?)