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Model 3 Audio Review
- Thread starter TM3RWD
- Start date
Please submit feedback to them. I did.
And yes, on wifi too. It's Tesla cheaping out on data usage. The low quality stream is about a quarter the size per song than the normal quality. Despite letting you stream as much Netflix as you want, this is what they choose to restrict.
Not only on data usage, on software development too (hopefully on non-critical software). It definitely would be possible to switch between rates depending on wifi / cellular.
Midnight Man
Member
Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but wouldn't the way around this be to download all your music, and stick it on an external SSD in the glovebox?
Does that allow the selection of playlists etc on the in-car screen? (Forgive me, I'm out of my Tesla at the moment and can't test/experiment).
There are ways of extracting a Spotify playlist to play locally...
Does that allow the selection of playlists etc on the in-car screen? (Forgive me, I'm out of my Tesla at the moment and can't test/experiment).
There are ways of extracting a Spotify playlist to play locally...
There are ways of moving yourself without a car too. They are workarounds, but on its own the fact that the bitrate is limited is interesting, worth giving a negative feedback to Tesla and definitely worth fixing.
Using the media player to access an SSD gives only a very basic user interface. There are no playlists, but you can arrange your music into folders (using your computer) and access those folders through the media player. I greatly prefer to use my own music instead of streaming, and find Tesla's media player very disappointing.
SalisburySam
Active Member
I’ve done the same, and from the beginning of our Model 3 ownership. Our SSD is in the console (2018 model) and is partitioned for the car’s dash cam/Sentry use on one side and music on the other. We did this since we needed a device for the dash cam anyway so why not do both. The music interface is somewhat limited but far easier to wade through than Tesla’s media choices UI, at least in the early days. Bonus: no worries about reception, media quality, content, and so on. By the way, our Samsung T5 512GB SSD is still working after sitting in the car almost six years. We remove it periodically to add music and delete videos using my desktop iMac.
Hi Sam, is your SSD plugged into the car with a short USB cable? In our model Y the glovebox socket is USB-A but all the current Samsung SSDs seem to be USB-C so I would hope to use an A-to-C cable and like you have one partition on it for music and another for camera footage. Can't see why this shouldn't work but would like to have it confirmed.
Cheers
That is how I do it. The car has a perpetual error saying that the connection is slow, but everything actually works just fine.
SalisburySam
Active Member
TL;DR - Consider it confirmed. The SSD came with a few short cables, one of which was a USB-A to USB-C, perfect for my car.
Details:
In my 2018 Model 3 there are two USB-A sockets in the console. They have very short cables that attach to hold downs in the part of the console designed to hold and charge smartphones. The car came with two cables, one USB-A to Lightning for Apple iPhones and one USB-A to an end for Androids. Having iPhones, I disconnected the OEM cable from the Android optioned USB-A port, added a short USB-A to USB-C cable that came with the SSD, and just leave the SSD flopping around inside the console. Has worked flawlessly since SSD purchase in November 2019 so 4½ years now.
The music partition on my SSD has always worked but the user interface to find and play music has changed with vehicle user interface updates. I wish I could say these updates have all made it easier to play USB music, but they haven’t. But it does work and SOMETIMES voice commands also work.
When I first got the SSD, I partitioned it in two halves: one for music and one for Tesla. If I were to do this again, I’d probably give the music a larger partition. The Tesla files are surprisingly small and I really don’t need half the SSD storage (256GB in my case) for them. The Samsung SSD has proven to be very reliable in the tough environment of an automobile. Mine is a T5, I’m guessing newer models are faster, better, cheaper per byte, etc., etc.
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Thanks Sam, I have gone to Officeworks and got a 1TB T7 SSD. I think I will create three partitions, one for camera and sentry, one audio and one spare for future use (eg photos or videos if we get a suitable viewer). I do a lot of photography so its always handy to have a fast storage device on hand as the cameras now produce images anywhere from 20 to 100mb each (hires options). Up to now i have been streaming my music via phone+bluetooth from my network storage unit at home but for long trips in the country its better to have my cds online to avoid dropouts and also (I believe) enhance quality (higher bit rate). Not to mention to avoid touching the phone. I have ripped about 200 of my fav CDs (about a third of what I have) at 320kbps amd thats about 40gb. So a partition of about 200 will be more than enough "forever" for me.
Two week road trip upcoming so looking forward to shaking it out.
Cheers
Two week road trip upcoming so looking forward to shaking it out.
Cheers
So I set up the SSD as outlined above and loaded a few cds on it to have a look at the media player. It comes up as a new entry "USB" in the audio devices list. As per others experience, the interface is very underwhelming, just a simple text only list of artists/albums/genre. No album art showing until you actually play something.
My preference is to view everything by Album but I was confused to see a couple of dozen of the same entry for one album (Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert across 2 CDs). Clearly a data issue with the tag metadata but confusing to me as I check it when ripping and other media players do not present it like this. On checking the files I found that while the Album name was the same on all tracks, and the "Album Artist" field was just "Bob Dylan", the "Artist" field was different for most tracks becuase it was a tribute concert, amd the original metadata had put the lead performer of each song (the likes of George Harrison, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, The Band etc) as the Artist in the track data. So what I expected to be a list of unique albums is blown out by "Album+Artist". As an IT guy I would call this a bug, not a feature. I foresee a lot of trouble with other multi-artist compilations.
I can change the metadata of the files on the SSD to dumb it down and put "Bob Dylan and Friends" or something in the Artist field with mp3tag, but that's going to really annoy me. Does anyone have any other approach? Should I (can I) report this to Tesla as a flaw? Or just roll over.
I echo JonDarian's feelings, the player for USB is disappointing and would hope someday to get something better whether by Tesla or a third party.
To think I thought the Synology "DS Audio" player interface was pretty poor, which is what is on my phone. It IS poor compared to the best, but it's still way ahead of this bare bones Telsa media player.
Sigh.
My preference is to view everything by Album but I was confused to see a couple of dozen of the same entry for one album (Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert across 2 CDs). Clearly a data issue with the tag metadata but confusing to me as I check it when ripping and other media players do not present it like this. On checking the files I found that while the Album name was the same on all tracks, and the "Album Artist" field was just "Bob Dylan", the "Artist" field was different for most tracks becuase it was a tribute concert, amd the original metadata had put the lead performer of each song (the likes of George Harrison, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, The Band etc) as the Artist in the track data. So what I expected to be a list of unique albums is blown out by "Album+Artist". As an IT guy I would call this a bug, not a feature. I foresee a lot of trouble with other multi-artist compilations.
I can change the metadata of the files on the SSD to dumb it down and put "Bob Dylan and Friends" or something in the Artist field with mp3tag, but that's going to really annoy me. Does anyone have any other approach? Should I (can I) report this to Tesla as a flaw? Or just roll over.
I echo JonDarian's feelings, the player for USB is disappointing and would hope someday to get something better whether by Tesla or a third party.
To think I thought the Synology "DS Audio" player interface was pretty poor, which is what is on my phone. It IS poor compared to the best, but it's still way ahead of this bare bones Telsa media player.
Sigh.
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