Playing personal stash of MP3/FLAC music

[Ritz]

Apologizing in advance....I did a quick search, but didn't see an answer to my question...

I'll be picking up my 3 Performance in about a week. I generally keep a 128GB USB fob in the car with my collection of MP3 and FLAC encoded music. I generally listen to that rather than the radio or any streaming services. Is that pretty straightforward to do? As things stand now, I have voice command control over playing music from that source. Is that the case with the Tesla audio system as well?

Best,

 

[tomas]

Apologizing in advance....I did a quick search, but didn't see an answer to my question...

I'll be picking up my 3 Performance in about a week. I generally keep a 128GB USB fob in the car with my collection of MP3 and FLAC encoded music. I generally listen to that rather than the radio or any streaming services. Is that pretty straightforward to do? As things stand now, I have voice command control over playing music from that source. Is that the case with the Tesla audio system as well?

Best,

Yes. Please note that system is very sensitive to input quality, so FLAC will sound much better. I have 1tb drive with all FLAC. People have had issues with tagging, art, resuming play, and excessive reloads. There are lots of threads about this. But generally, it works pretty well. Not sure about voice commands. I believe voice commands will try to play on slacker/Spotify rather than USB. I don’t use voice much. Somebody please correct me if wrong.

 

[Ritz]

Thanks for the response. Voice control is pretty convenient, but maybe not as necessary given all the screen real estate in the 3 compared to my existing car. I'll have to re-jigger my content to be more biased towards FLAC. Given how cheap flash drives have become, I may just dispense with MP3 entirely.

Best,

 

[tomas]

Thanks for the response. Voice control is pretty convenient, but maybe not as necessary given all the screen real estate in the 3 compared to my existing car. I'll have to re-jigger my content to be more biased towards FLAC. Given how cheap flash drives have become, I may just dispense with MP3 entirely.

Best,

Depends on how much of an audiophile you are. To me FLAC sounds an order of magnitude better. Some others don’t hear difference. One warning: FLAC is more prone to resume bug, where track restarts rather than resumes. I believe this has been somewhat fixed in recent releases, but isn’t 100%. I don’t trust my memory to rewrite the book here, but once you have it set up, feel free to PM me with issues if any.

 

[Ritz]

Depends on how much of an audiophile you are. To me FLAC sounds an order of magnitude better. Some others don’t hear difference. One warning: FLAC is more prone to resume bug, where track restarts rather than resumes. I believe this has been somewhat fixed in recent releases, but isn’t 100%. I don’t trust my memory to rewrite the book here, but once you have it set up, feel free to PM me with issues if any.

I'm reasonably picky. I've had audio systems that cost almost as much as a base Model 3.

Thanks for the kind offer. I'll be in touch once I get my sea legs with the new car.

Best,

 

[Kevy Baby]

WAV files also maintain the sound quality well, though at the loss of album art.

Also, not sure if you are getting an SR+ with Partial-Premium or a LR or P with (full) Premium, but the Partial Premium is pretty meh. It's not bad, just pretty lifeless, especially if you're used to high-end systems. Even the Premium has some shortcomings. In my SR+, I had a Reus system installed and couldn't be happier.

 

[Ritz]

WAV files also maintain the sound quality well, though at the loss of album art.

Also, not sure if you are getting an SR+ with Partial-Premium or a LR or P with (full) Premium, but the Partial Premium is pretty meh. It's not bad, just pretty lifeless, especially if you're used to high-end systems. Even the Premium has some shortcomings. In my SR+, I had a Reus system installed and couldn't be happier.

I ordered a 3 Performance so I guess I got whatever the default audio system is for that trim. I don't recall seeing options to buy anything other than what came with the Perf package.

C

 

[Kevy Baby]

I ordered a 3 Performance so I guess I got whatever the default audio system is for that trim. I don't recall seeing options to buy anything other than what came with the Perf package.

C

With Performance (and LR AWD), you got the full Premium Interior which includes the Premium Audio. See screen shots below from the M3 ordering page.

 

[RandyS]

I play music from a USB stick pretty regularly (all the way back to 2013 in both a Model S P85 and a Performance Model 3). Here are some observations:

* I play 256K mp3 files that I have ripped myself from my CD collection; they sound pretty good to me, and I make sure the artwork is correct when ripping

* I tend to play albums in their original running order; I haven't used the random play features very much

* Sometimes I'll play an entire album a few times. There is a "repeat" button on the screen that you'll have to press to enable this to happen. Otherwise the music will stop after it goes through the album once.

* With streaming music, you can't replay the track or even use your finger on the playline to move to a later (or earlier) part of the song. All you can do is skip to the next track. With USB music, all of those functions are available (replay, skip to 3 songs back, etc.)

* The re-indexing seems to be happening less frequently when starting up the car to drive, but it does happen occasionally

* Smaller drives re-index more quickly, obviously. That would be one reason why you may not want to have a super large drive for your music.

* I currently am using a 128 GB USB stick in my Model 3 that is about 75% full. There are times when I get in to drive and a re-index begins. It can take several minutes, and of course, you're without music during that time. In my Model S, I am using two 64GB USB sticks. The music is kept separate on the two sticks (you have to select a stick, then choose the music)...

* Most of the time, the music resumes where it stopped when I got out of the car. I've developed this habit without thinking where I press the pause button on the steering wheel to stop the music when I get out and then I resume it myself when I get back in. It may not matter as much now, but a few software releases ago in the Model 3 it seemed to help prevent a re-index.

* Voice commands don't work for USB music, only for streamed music. "Play The Who", for example...

* The streaming feature will play a song from the band you requested, and then play 2 or 3 more songs from other similar bands or artists. Then it will play a second song from the band or artist you requested, for example...

If you have any other questions, please let me know...

 

[sduck]

Some tips and tricks - I only use mp3 and flac files. They work identically well for me (performance, not soundwise). Do not use a partitioned drive, use a dedicated drive for music, and preferably plug it in directly to one of the front usb ports, without going through a hub. Use the fastest drive you can find - I use a NVME M.2 drive. If you can, format the drive as ext4 - it's what the car uses natively, and catalogs almost instantaneously. I always pause the music when getting out of the car, and press resume when I get back in. If you do these last few things, the car will always resume where you left off over power cycles without having to recatalog. Kevy Baby has a Reus system, and will remind you of this often. Music file organization - I could write a novel about this, but there are many ways to do it, find what works for you.

 

[Ritz]

Some tips and tricks - I only use mp3 and flac files. They work identically well for me (performance, not soundwise). Do not use a partitioned drive, use a dedicated drive for music, and preferably plug it in directly to one of the front usb ports, without going through a hub. Use the fastest drive you can find - I use a NVME M.2 drive. If you can, format the drive as ext4 - it's what the car uses natively, and catalogs almost instantaneously. I always pause the music when getting out of the car, and press resume when I get back in. If you do these last few things, the car will always resume where you left off over power cycles without having to recatalog. Kevy Baby has a Reus system, and will remind you of this often. Music file organization - I could write a novel about this, but there are many ways to do it, find what works for you.

How are you connecting a PCI device to a USB port? You've got a NVMe to USB enclosure? Ext4 works for me since my desktop is running Linux.

Best,

 

[Knightshade]

Use the fastest drive you can find - I use a NVME M.2 drive.

This is somewhat odd advice to me. Even WAV files are only 1411kbps which is 176 kilobytes per second.... FLAC and MP3 will be even less.

This is orders of magnitude slower than even a cheap found-in-the-gutter USB key will offer... let alone an NVME M.2 drive.

I suppose having a drive that WRITES quickly is nice for the very first time you fill it with music... but after that being fast does literally nothing for you....in exchange for the significant added cost/complexity of a USB->NVME bridge, needing a case for the drive, drawing significantly more power, likely having narrower operating temp specs etc...when compared to just using a regular USB key.

 

[Ritz]

Yeah, a $20 128GB Sandisk USB card at Walmart or Amazaon can read data @ 100mb/sec. That's plenty fast enough.

Best,

 

[Kevy Baby]

Some tips and tricks - I only use mp3 and flac files. They work identically well for me (performance, not soundwise). Do not use a partitioned drive, use a dedicated drive for music, and preferably plug it in directly to one of the front usb ports, without going through a hub. Use the fastest drive you can find - I use a NVME M.2 drive. If you can, format the drive as ext4 - it's what the car uses natively, and catalogs almost instantaneously. I always pause the music when getting out of the car, and press resume when I get back in. If you do these last few things, the car will always resume where you left off over power cycles without having to recatalog.

I use other file formats (in addition to MP3 and FLAC), use a hub (specifically, a Navak splitter), a cheap USB drive (same one since I got the car last August) formatted Fat32 and it is dedicated to music (no partitions), and never pause music when getting out. Since I discovered an important detail, my car never forgets where I left off in the middle of the song: I wake up my car for at least 10-15 seconds before getting in. It is as simple as getting out my phone and opening the Tesla app (don't even have to do anything - just open the app and it wakes up the car). It's easy enough to remember as I am walking towards my car (or getting up from my desk as I am leaving work, or whatever).

Since I started doing that, 100% success of remembering where I was in playback. It has updated the index a couple of times, but still picks up where I left off in the middle of a song afterwards.

 

[sduck]

This is somewhat odd advice to me. Even WAV files are only 1411kbps which is 176 kilobytes per second.... FLAC and MP3 will be even less.

This is orders of magnitude slower than even a cheap found-in-the-gutter USB key will offer... let alone an NVME M.2 drive.

I suppose having a drive that WRITES quickly is nice for the very first time you fill it with music... but after that being fast does literally nothing for you....in exchange for the significant added cost/complexity of a USB->NVME bridge, needing a case for the drive, drawing significantly more power, likely having narrower operating temp specs etc...when compared to just using a regular USB key.

Yes, I'm aware of these numbers, and while they make all kinds of sense, I've tried the best USB flash drives (several), sd cards and adaptors, ssd's (again, several), and the M.2 drive just works better. It's the only one that fires up properly every single time I get in the car (without having to pre-wake the car), with the track still loaded where i left off. I guess this is one of those things where there's more than numbers at play, so to speak (and I'm happy to admit there might be just a tiny bit of confirmation bias at play).

 

[ianc]

but after that being fast does literally nothing for you

True, if you don't mind sitting around staring into space for 5 min every time the car reindexes your drive...

ianc

 

[sduck]

How are you connecting a PCI device to a USB port? You've got a NVMe to USB enclosure? Ext4 works for me since my desktop is running Linux.

Best,

It's this - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077SL4FZG/ and one of these - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0788HBLDZ/
There are cheaper enclosures available, but this one works well. There's a lot of variance in M.2 drive speed though - if you find a cheaper one, make sure it's actually worth the difference.

 

[Knightshade]

True, if you don't mind sitting around staring into space for 5 min every time the car reindexes your drive...

ianc

I'm running a 256GB Samsung Bar Plus.

Can't recall ever waiting for it to index beyond the first time.

Granted I'm not always immediately playing from USB every single time I get in, so maybe it's just somehow only ever done it when I happened to be listening to something else... but seems unlikely I've somehow never run into it.

 

[Knightshade]

It's this - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077SL4FZG/ and one of these - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0788HBLDZ/
There are cheaper enclosures available, but this one works well. There's a lot of variance in M.2 drive speed though - if you find a cheaper one, make sure it's actually worth the difference.

Uh... that's not an NVME drive, it's just M.2 Sata.

And your second link (the enclosure) explicitly says in the description it doesn't support NVME drives.

 

[sduck]

Sorry, my mistake.