Seriously how hard is it to fix the audio system?

[BertL]

This has been my experience too. V6 really messed up audio. It does appear that v7.1 has fixed the playing overnight problem, although it's introduced a "have to reconnect the thumb drive" problem. And there is still a 90% loss of album art and the status bar.

I have the phantom playing problem as much with 7.1 as I did with 6.2 firmware originally delivered with my MS, as well as the occasional USB skipping issues, and random "unable to play" messages that occur when a track was playing when the car was locked, but when I come back, that message remains until I back up or forward a track to reset the crazy Media Player logic that got jumbled-up. I have never once seen any album art using Folders -- which is my primary method to listen to USB music (since I don't have a hardwired iPod capability to) as I maintain folders of playlists AND selected albums that duplicate tracks across the USB device making all the other USB music tabs fairly useless to me. I have spent the time to get album art assigned to each of the tracks sitting in my MS and going through say the Albums tab to cause it to pull album art from Gracenotes, but it still won't show in Folder view, even with my imbedded album art on each track (that would save all that cellular data movement and likely cost to Tesla if they'd just use it.). Sorry, you can likely tell I'm not very frustrated by all this. {

 

[jerry33]

I have the phantom playing problem as much with 7.1 as I did with 6.2 firmware originally delivered with my MS, as well as the occasional USB skipping issues, and random "unable to play" messages that occur when a track was playing when the car was locked, but when I come back, that message remains until I back up or forward a track to reset the crazy Media Player logic that got jumbled-up. I have never once seen any album art using Folders -- which is my primary method to listen to USB music (since I don't have a hardwired iPod capability to) as I maintain folders of playlists AND selected albums that duplicate tracks across the USB device making all the other USB music tabs fairly useless to me. I have spent the time to get album art assigned to each of the tracks sitting in my MS and going through say the Albums tab to cause it to pull album art from Gracenotes, but it still won't show in Folder view, even with my imbedded album art on each track (that would save all that cellular data movement and likely cost to Tesla if they'd just use it.). Sorry, you can likely tell I'm not very frustrated by all this. {

I generally play favourites or songs, so the album art will show, but what seems to happen is that if I add some new songs the album art shows up for awhile and then disintegrates over time. I suspect that a total reset would restore much of the album art because if I put the drive in a loaner the art shows up for most songs. However, a reset would cause all the other settings to be lost. My guess is that there is significant fragmentation of the memory which causes access times to be too long, and the system can't figure out that it needs to download new art.

 

[BertL]

...My guess is that there is significant fragmentation of the memory which causes access times to be too long, and the system can't figure out that it needs to download new art.

Agreed. The symptoms how my 17" will occasionally become unresponsive to touches then jumps around and catches-up, also seem to be tied to playing USB music. It's very much like the OS begins thrashing doing behind-the-scenes work it should have tried to do more proactively to sustain user interface responsiveness. Lots of issues with USB, and perhaps even some Linux things needing to be addressed.

 

[ArtInCT]

Agreed. The symptoms how my 17" will occasionally become unresponsive to touches then jumps around and catches-up, also seem to be tied to playing USB music. It's very much like the OS begins thrashing doing behind-the-scenes work it should have tried to do more proactively to sustain user interface responsiveness. Lots of issues with USB, and perhaps even some Linux things needing to be addressed.

BertL:
I recall reading somewhere here on TMC, that too large a USB stick (in GB) or certain brands of USB can introduce USB errors which equate to the symptoms you are describing.

Have any of you tried the newer USB 3.0 thumb drives by SANDISK? I have a few of them in 16 and 32 GB that I plan on using when my S arrives.

 

[BertL]

BertL:
I recall reading somewhere here on TMC, that too large a USB stick (in GB) or certain brands of USB can introduce USB errors which equate to the symptoms you are describing.

Have any of you tried the newer USB 3.0 thumb drives by SANDISK? I have a few of them in 16 and 32 GB that I plan on using when my S arrives.

Thx. Yes, have tried several:

• For the first week or so after delivery, I used both a 16GB Kingston and 8GB "No-name" USB 2.0 stick for trying to isolate what formats were supported in MS and to then decide how I wanted to organize my USB stick having come from 110GB of music on iPod Classics I kept hardwired in both of my former cars. I encountered the no album art, and "unable to play" problems with these. They were not really in my MS long enough to likely cause or be part of the other intermittent USB problems -- or at least that is what I tell myself.
• I don't recommend: PNY Turbo Attaché 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive - P-FD256TBAT2-GE. It was a real bust -- caused problems in MS and with my Mac, so likely a faulty device I returned to Amazon.
• I then went to a SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive (SDCZ43-128G-G46) for the capacity and to have the brand name I also have had great past success with. It's got a great low profile and is nice that it has fast transfer on my Mac, even though MS is only USB 2.0 and the speed really shouldn't be a concern for just playing back music. I've had all my USB issues occur with this, with the exception of the 17" slow-down/catch-up thing -- that could be because I only used this device for the first month or so of ownership as it didn't have sufficient capacity to maintain a decent subset of playlists and all the duplicate tracks that involves.
• For almost 4 months now, I have a Patriot 256GB Supersonic Magnum Series USB 3.0 Flash Drive With Up To Read 260MB/sec & Write 160MB/sec- PEF256GSMNUSB. All issues I've described occur with this one. It's greatest drawback is its too long and wide to fit in the Tesla Center Console with the flip-cover closed, so it requires a USB extension to make it fit ...and yes, I've got a certified USB 3.0 short extension -- not a cheap Chinese knock-off, and have encountered the problems with and without the extension in place, so I don't believe it's THE issue (although as you say, a 256GB stick could be ... but then, so was the 128GB )

 

[bob_p]

Still appear to be getting the auto-play overnight. I tried to use the "skip back" button on the steering wheel to find the song that had been playing the night before - and kept skipping and skipping and skipping - and never found the song that had been playing. I have the random play mode enabled. Since the song I had been listening too wasn't in the "back" list, either the back list has a limit of how far you can skip backward, or when it begin auto-playing overnight, it started at a different random song - and then kept playing and playing and playing.

I haven't done anything to see if there is actually any audio in the car when this happens - it may only be that the media player is running - even if the sound isn't.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I personally don't interpret Elon's statement to say "there WILL BE CarPlay / Android Auto". There would be licensing and therefore ongoing extra Tesla costs involved. Elon more likely meant exactly what he said -- Tesla attempting to provide (only) a iPhone/Android MIRRORING function, must like what Apple AirPlay has provided for years -- not the much more full-function CarPlay/Android Auto functionality.

I agree with the above. I think people are reading far too much into Elon's statements. If he meant CarPlay or Android Auto, he would have used those terms instead of "mirroring". Knowing how boneheaded Tesla's software has become, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Tesla implement some kind of AirPlay clone to allow mirroring, but nothing more - no interactivity, just literal mirroring. And Elon will hold a press conference about it.

 

[ArtInCT]

BERTL:
Ok, so I see you are taking the USB device very seriously and I applaud you for this. In fact, I am thinking more and more that making a good match with the device and the 17" display is very important and here is why.

I have a 128GB Sandisk Cruiser that I use in my Volvo XC60. When I play music using random or shuffle, it appears to me that the XC60 sound system reads in a subset of the drives directory and then randomizes within only that subset. Essentially ignoring all of the other music on the thumb drive. There is perhaps 2500 songs on the drive.

However, if I use my scroll wheel on the XC60 I can scroll up and down the USB's contents and play any song I can see. As I scroll I see pausing as it reads ahead in the USB.... so it appears.

Perhaps then, the XC60's implementation only has enough memory to capture just a subset of the USB's directory entries and then stops.

I think then, that USB to music subsystem player integration and limitations are a key item...

A buddy of mine, on his new Ford Focus has found that 8GB thumb drives work great and anything larger starts presenting problems....

Certainly this USB to MS music player matching is something we should experiment upon. I plan on starting small and working larger.... with both USBs and amount of media files.

I suspect the directory slots in the MS player to USB interface are not infinite and have a limit. If the limit is exceeded, perhaps bad things ensue.
That's just a going in hypothesis... we shall see...

Lastly and as an aside, did you happen to watch Bjorn's video regarding the Navigation system? He had some balky behavior going on with lagging and slowness. Come to find out when he made the service techs aware of this they looked at his stored destinations and it was LOADED with destinations. They recommended that he delete any old and unwanted destinations which his video shows ad-nauseum.... Then after that the navigation system worked briskly and as it should. So there are some limits... and high water marks in the S's computer systems that when reached, may cause poor behaviors to manifest. Reminds me of disk fragmentation.... sigh....

 

[BertL]

Jerry33:

I was just out running errands in my MS, with my USB music playing as it generally does. Within the first 10 minutes, I had 2 instances of the infamous studdering problem... The frequency of those problems have been increasing in recent days. To resolve, both times it took me switching away from USB music and back to it -- with a very-slow-to-respond 17" in-between... so thinking about our back-and-forth here, I rebooted the 17" while driving... And voila.... After the USB reloaded the folder/track structure, music started playing again and I didn't have a single failure for the 20+ minute journey home. Could be coincidence and is far from a definitive test, but sure sounds like the age-old memory corruption problems we've known with older Windows releases for years and early drops of new OS where a big 'ol CTRL-ALT-DEL or "IPL" fixes things. ...oh, and just because I was a bit shocked, my MS remembered which track was playing on that USB stick and starting playing the same track again after the re-boot -- when the crazy thing doesn't always do it in normal use.

ArtInCT:

Thx for the thoughts. As I've played with 8GB, 16GB, 128GB and now something over that on my 256GB USB stick, I'm not running into the problem you or your friend had with MS not seeing or remembering the tracks... They are all there -- it's just playback of tracks have intermittent challenges. ...and there are other Media Player problems with even FM just stopping for a second or two every now and then -- not static, very much like MS was off attending to something more important than pump FM though the audio software...

I did see the discussion about Nav History - Thx - and cleared mine out just-in-case a few days ago when that new tidbit appeared here on TMC. I'm still having the odd 17" slowdowns, and of course the USB music problems I've had since day 1 of ownership. My previous Lexus and MBZ both allowed unlimited number of tracks with native iPod/iPhones, but IIRC with USB music sources documented a maximum number of folder/subfolder depth as well as total max number of tracks allowed. Tesla documents nothing, so, well...

Perhaps some of these pieces are falling into place as a new theory however... We know MS has some fixed amount of memory... Fine. Everything does. There are also definate bugs with USB support (plugging in a device shouldnt cause MS to go screwy as some other threads suggest) and some of us have recreatable bugs that Tesla also acknowledges as issues requiring a future firmware fix that has no ETA. IF Tesla's Linux OS though isn't robust enough to deal with memory fragmentation, or how to prevent memory leakage issues between their own apps, or they have not quite got down some of the task prioritization things that need to be very carefully managed under-the-covers, and some of their apps are not doing a perfect job limiting a maximum number of things that consume memory (Nav history, USB tracks?), well, what we're seeing as some of these issues and how a reboot at least for a while fixes things sure point to those being problems that Tesla needs to resolve. They are certainly not sexy things that will gain positive press if resolved, but in my experience many years ago helping debug some early virtual machine and mainframe OS multitasking development, if Tesla does not step up to the plate, as they enhance and add functionality to the apps they have, the warts will show themselves even more. (Which is what seems to be happening to me... I most always listen to USB music, but it seems the frequency of failures is increasing since I've taken delivery -- and I'm now on my 4th firmware level -- each doing a lot more than the one before it. Hummm.). My experience was problems unfortunately compound in these areas and they are some of the worst bugs to shoot and then resolve. I hope it's a lot easier than that for everyone's sake -- and just a Media Player App that made its way to market before it was really ready, and needs to be brought up to snuff. It would probably also help if Tesla would simply document in their owners manual what USB device types and music sources, bit rates, etc that they wrote their code to support, vs all the trial and error some owners are going through and perhaps causing problems doing things Tesla never intended. Interesting though, isn't it? I think Elon really does need some good engineers, and not just to work on Autopilot.

===

I'll give some thought to limiting tracks and folders on my USB stick and see if that improves my situation. (Sure hate being a Systems Engineer again -- and for free with something I paid top-dollar for. I thought I gave up that techie life long ago!)

 

[jgs]

It does appear that v7.1 has fixed the playing overnight problem,

Not so much. Not sure if it's every time, but at least sometimes when I get into my car for the first time after it's done its overnight sleep thing, Slacker will be playing even if I left it paused.

 

[bob_p]

With onboard software becoming an increasing part of the driving experience, at some point reviews will start placing more weight on the reliability and capability of the onboard software.

And while the Model S/X would get high grades for having the largest touchscreen, and may be first to introduce new (beta) apps [such as AutoPilot], Tesla's scores for each app could be very low. With the Google maps, Tesla's navigation maps look fantastic, but the navigation functionality is very limited - and the media player has so many issues (stuttering, losing position/source, no playlists, ...).

Tesla's always going to be at a disadvantage on their software. Tesla is selling many fewer cars than the other major manufacturers, and even if Tesla invests proportionately more in their software development than the other manufacturers, their software teams are likely to be smaller than what is being used for other cars (such as the Chevy Bolt). And, even the larger manufacturers are partnering to get more capabilities (such as Apple/Android integration).

Rather than saying Tesla's going to have "mirroring", what would be better would be a visionary statement from Elon - that Tesla plans to aggressively address their obvious software shortcomings - and by the time the Model 3 is out - they plan to have software that is at least as good as - if not better than other vehicles competing with the Model 3, S and X - and if that means they'll partner more to get the functionality - that's OK.

The Navigon partnership clearly hasn't gone well. From a functionality standpoint, we've got this mish-mash because Navigon is providing part of the software - and Tesla's providing the software driving the maps and console. And what we end up with is map inconsistencies and a very limited subset of navigation features provided on other systems. The problem with this type of partnership is probably not the partner - but Tesla's design decision to do a large part of the development in house - without a commitment from the partner to provide full access to all of the navigation features.

And because of the lead time required to develop, test and deploy software - Tesla really needs to start making progress on fixing these issues soon - before this becomes an impediment to ramping up sales and production...

 

[PaulusdB]

You're right, B.
Of course TM management know this already and in a perfect world would act accordingly.
But reality is that they're coping with highly ambitious goals already and direct their attention back to the daily grindstone two seconds after fully agreeing with bob_p.

 

[bob_p]

Tesla will always have highly ambitious goals - like other technology driven companies.

And, as a startup, it's understandable that Tesla had to focus their resources on doing a few things well and leave out some of the expected functionality in order to get the car out there.

The Roadster was a prototype - so it really didn't count - Model S is Tesla's first real production vehicle - so it wasn't surprising to see that the software on the Model S felt more like an advanced prototype in the first few years - than a fully featured product you would expect from other manufacturers.

But Tesla now has around 100,000 cars on the road, they've introduced their second production model (X) and will soon announce their high volume, lower priced car next month for delivery late next year. At some point, Tesla can't use the "we're a startup" excuse any more - and customers will begin expecting to see fully featured products - without a growing number of "beta" software apps.

It's really surprising how forgiving we've all been with Tesla - for a car that cost many of us more than $100K, we've accepted software functionality and quality that we would not accept in other products, like our smart phones or smart TVs.

If Tesla wants to be a major player long term - they'll have to do better on their software - which shouldn't be that difficult with a company with such strong ties to Silicon Valley...

 

[lolachampcar]

Am I the only one here that have vivid memories of the less than useful BMW and MB nav packages that went obsolete within a year or so of buying the car? Perhaps I've not been exposed to the latest from the majors but I find the vendor developed systems used by most other manufactures to be functional but lack luster and very quickly dated.

I'm not defending Tesla so much as making sure I understand the yard stick I am using to judge them.

 

[BertL]

Am I the only one here that have vivid memories of the less than useful BMW and MB nav packages that went obsolete within a year or so of buying the car? Perhaps I've not been exposed to the latest from the majors but I find the vendor developed systems used by most other manufactures to be functional but lack luster and very quickly dated.

I'm not defending Tesla so much as making sure I understand the yard stick I am using to judge them.

Beyond a whole separate discussion about map database currency which plagues all mfgrs that have on-board map databases allowing for navigation even when there is no internet connectivity (which I and some other owners encounter) -- my personal issue with the Tesla Nav is it just lacks basic functionality that my former 2013 Lexus and 2014 MBZ had, and IMHO what many "non-luxury" mfgrs provide these days with their optional Nav packages. Even my 2006 Lexus and 2009 BMW had more standard capabilities. I spent several hours recently going through current Lexus, MBZ and Tesla documents to create a list of what I considered common missing functions in Tesla's Infotainment system. I personally don't care about some of the things I found, but tried to not introduce as much of my subjectivity and listed the functions anyway if it met my criteria. If you're interested in the detail, its in this thread: Tesla's Software To-Do List

 

[jgs]

Am I the only one here that have vivid memories of the less than useful BMW and MB nav packages that went obsolete within a year or so of buying the car? Perhaps I've not been exposed to the latest from the majors but I find the vendor developed systems used by most other manufactures to be functional but lack luster and very quickly dated.

I'm not defending Tesla so much as making sure I understand the yard stick I am using to judge them.

Well of course everyone has their own yardstick. In my case, I agree, the majors do not set a very high bar, to say the least. While some people seem to be upset about lack of polish and advanced features – and of course I would like those too – the thing that pushes my "WTF?" button is seemingly-simple bugs in a seemingly-simple subsystem. I think I said earlier in this thread something to the effect of "surely a summer intern could fix this one?"

Overall, I'd rather have complete, debugged, simple functionality than lots of fancy unfinished functionality. I will say that from my keyhole, the audio system, and to a lesser extent the navigation system, are the problem children. The "beta" label notwithstanding, the driving features seem to be taken seriously by Tesla, as they should be.

 

[Firewired]

I listen to audiobooks all the time and have never had this issue, but I am streaming off the Audible app on my phone. Couldn't you do that for the meantime until it is fixed or unplug the USB when exiting the car in the meantime?

 

[jgs]

I listen to audiobooks all the time and have never had this issue, but I am streaming off the Audible app on my phone. Couldn't you do that for the meantime until it is fixed or unplug the USB when exiting the car in the meantime?

Considering how long it takes the car to index my 256 GB USB stick, not that. But there are other workarounds, e.g. select FM and turn the volume down. It's just crazy that a workaround is still required, apparently years after the bug first cropped up.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

Whatever lead Tesla had in late 2012 and early 2013 with regard to the touch screen and its UI goodness has disappeared. Take a look at Audi's Q7 speedo if you want to see what a useful, impressive digital speedo display should look like. Quite simply, Tesla is outclassed here and the gap will continue to widen unless Tesla steps up in a big way. Tesla can't seem to strike a reasonable balance between form and function. But hey, we have this cool clock...

 

[bob_p]

I use Audible to listen to audio books. And every time I enter the car, I have to re-select my phone as the media source.

During a recent trip, I had a much lower cost rental car with BT support - and was surprised to see that it remembered my smartphone - and I didn't have to re-select it every time I got back to the car.

It's little things like this that Tesla has failed to implement in their software. The 17" touchscreen looks great - the Google maps look great - the user interface (even though it wastes a huge amount of space) looks great. But the functionality really is mostly "Version 1.0" or "beta" in quality.

And it's disappointing that after having my Tesla for 3 years, that they still haven't addressed the basic features missing in the standard apps (media, nav).

It's understandable that they can't retrofit hardware improvements, like AutoPilot, parking sensors, auto-folding mirrors, ... - but the software is different - and the missing functionality surely wouldn't be that hard to add - and would benefit all Tesla owners...