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Slacker radio credentials
- Thread starter talkingevs
- Start date
Everyone says that it is hit or miss and most don't seem to get their premium playlists on the Tesla app. I have been trying to decide if I want premium for the last few days but can't find a consistent answer on if it actually gives you anything.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
I mean yeah- if your friends are used to TV speakers or soundbars, Sonos does sound excellent.
Compared to real quality individual speakers though- not so much.
Apparently not...As I said, if Sonos is your judge of quality that's a pretty low bar.
Anybody who wants much higher quality sound than what Sonos offers?
Of course there is. Your system sounds incredibly mediocre to people familiar with better systems.
That sonos sub for example is missing an entire octave of sound it's too undersized and underpowered to be capable of physically reproducting.
You don't notice, because it's the "best" thing you've got, so you literally don't realize what you're missing.
that doesn't make what you are missing pointless though.
I didn't said it made them stupid. I said Sonos was an excellent solution for those who can't figure out how to set up a better sounding system.
If you're not in that group then then use of Sonos just means you overpaid for lower quality sound than you otherwise could've set up. As you note- it's not rocket science to set up better if you're a tech person.
You really would though.
You'd hear entire parts of soundtracks you didn't know existed because your Sonos can't play them.
Disclaimer- this assumes you listen to more than say reality TV shows and the news and sports- if that's all your viewing yeah you probably won't notice.
Things like action films, sci-fi fantasy content, many TV shows, and definitely some music- the difference would be noticeable, significantly so, to anyone with decent hearing.
Except that's completely the opposite of what Slacker explicitly says happens in a Tesla Model 3 with free vs your own account.
So if you're telling the truth then Slacker must be lying. Why would you think they'd do that?
More likely though you're imagining a difference via the placebo effect- you PAID FOR IT so it MUST be better.
Occams razor suggests that's the case rather than Slacker simply lying about it.
Especially when such a lie would be costing them money.
Since audio quality is a setting on the client side that explanation would only make sense if you also had different software on your car that enabled a bitrate choice.
As I said- the S actually DID have this for a while (but I don't think it does anymore) and you COULD get higher quality with your own account by enabling it.
But AFAIK that option has never existed on the model 3- and slacker explicitly states you get 64 kb/sec without it on a Tesla- no matter what type of account you use.
So unless you have such a setting and are the first to find it (please post a screen shot if so) the difference can't exist anywhere but your imagination.
This is wrong as i purchased the premium and the are no playlists at this time. Even frank from slacker support said they do not support playlists at this time.
It definitely works fine in my S. I haven't tried it in my wife's 3 yet though (she just uses the built in account) so the 3's music interface might not support it yet.
Weird, every song sounds bad on the free account? I have no problems like that. I do occasionally get a song that crackles and pops, but pausing and resuming fixes it. It's sort of a known problem, though since this is audio problem we're dealing with, probably won't be fixed any time soon ... otherwise it sounds indistinguishable from the premium slacker I have (I did log in briefly but since none of my stations would appear because reasons, I logged out again). I have tested Slaker's (non-Tesla) free audio bitrate vs premium audio bitrate in the Android app before and it's clearly noticeable difference, and the car's free account sounds more or less the same as the premium bitrate (though it may be lower just high enough to not be able to tell without proper A/B, it's certainly not 64kbps)
Weird. Other than trying a MCU reboot (click inwards on both steering wheel buttons and hold them in for ~15 seconds or so), all I can suggest is you contact Tesla. Hopefully they can just push some kind of settings update to your car so you don't have to take it to a service center.
Fernand
Active Member
Where can I find info on all the sources available on the premium model 3,
preferably with accurate info as to compression used, bit rates, etc? E.g.
which icon(s) pull up Slacker? What exactly are the other icons connecting to?
I listen to some international radio stations. How are those being connected?
If I connect my phone over Bluetooth, what's the expected format/bandwidth?
What happens when I play FLAC stored on my phone, is it always over
Bluetooth (which version? 2.x, 4.x?) or can I have a true one to one playback
over one of the 2 front USB jacks?
Have people tried using a small hub to share one of these ports between say the
phone and a USB "thumb drive'?
How about hooking up a full SSD or HDD (and powering it from say the 12 volt
receptacle)?
Anyway, is there a thread where these issues are active? Documentation?
Thanks.
preferably with accurate info as to compression used, bit rates, etc? E.g.
which icon(s) pull up Slacker? What exactly are the other icons connecting to?
I listen to some international radio stations. How are those being connected?
If I connect my phone over Bluetooth, what's the expected format/bandwidth?
What happens when I play FLAC stored on my phone, is it always over
Bluetooth (which version? 2.x, 4.x?) or can I have a true one to one playback
over one of the 2 front USB jacks?
Have people tried using a small hub to share one of these ports between say the
phone and a USB "thumb drive'?
How about hooking up a full SSD or HDD (and powering it from say the 12 volt
receptacle)?
Anyway, is there a thread where these issues are active? Documentation?
Thanks.
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People who claim to have looked at the code have stated that the Model 3 has Slacker locked to 64kbps with no ability to change it, even if you use your own login. However, if that's the case, Slacker has some miracle encoding technology, because while I could see an argument as to how high the bitrate is (112? 128? 160?), I can't see (hear?) it being 64kbps, and I haven't even bothered using my own account yet (I dabbled with it but at the time there wasn't an easy way to pin a "station" so it would actually show up in the car's UI, so it was useless at the time). Someone should be along shortly to tell me how wrong I am to doubt it's 64kbps because yadda yadda, but whatever. I am happy with the audio quality, it's not as good as FLAC, but it's not hideous.
If you're in Europe you'll get Spotify instead of Slacker and I have no idea whether it has same/similar/different bitrate options or lack thereof.
I can't recall if BT supports the AptX standard which gives you higher fidelity, but apparently that's not availble on iDevices even if it did, and whatever Apple would use isn't supported I don't think ? I have an android which supports AptX I believe (varies by device) but I pretty much never use it for an audio source other than phone which wouldn't be using AptX anyways so I can't really comment.
You might in theory be able to play music files off your phone, but at least with mine, I haven't found a way to do so. I think because it needs to appear as an actual USB mass storage device, not using whatever goofy media transfer protocol thing that phones usually use these days, even when you tell it to appear as a drive ...
I have a bunch of MP3s and FLAC stored on a USB drive (partitioned so one partition is music, one is dash cam). There's all manner of bugs and poorly implemented issues with the media playback though, so you'll want to use Jehoel/TeslaTags to massage your files so that they work reasonably well on the car.
Some people have definitely used USB to SATA adapters to use a SSD, no reason you couldn't use a HDD but that would just be asking for failure due to vibration.
This might be a relevant thread, though it is lengthy and started a few years ago and is also for S and X : Comprehensive USB Bug List
Fernand
Active Member
@jelly how do you play from Spotify?
I understand in the US it streams from Slacker.
I see "Radio", Phone and USB. But
I don't know what the other source(s) is/are.
Is there a clear statement anywhere?
Oh, and BTW, I ran some spectra of a WAV
playback over USB, and the same over BlueTooth,
and the only real difference was some loss above
16KHz, which most adults can't hear anyway.
See here Bluetooth Music
I understand in the US it streams from Slacker.
I see "Radio", Phone and USB. But
I don't know what the other source(s) is/are.
Is there a clear statement anywhere?
Oh, and BTW, I ran some spectra of a WAV
playback over USB, and the same over BlueTooth,
and the only real difference was some loss above
16KHz, which most adults can't hear anyway.
See here Bluetooth Music
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With my UHFS MS I recd my credentials, went on the web to find my account on low quality.and had to manually select high. It made a difference in the car.
I’m pretty sure I saw posts a while back where people were actually monitoring the data usage when Slacker was downloading songs and their results indicated that the Model 3 indeed only streams from Slacker at 64kbps.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Nope.
Again- Slacker support not only repeatedly confirmed directly that doing that doesn't change your in-car quality, Slackers official support website says exactly the same.
Changing it on the web does nothing for the car (or your phone, or anywhere else)
Quality settings are per client
The S, with UHFS, did have its own setting on the Tesla SW to change to 128kb for a while, don't think that option is still there though.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Nope.
Why would Tesla, which is paying for free bandwidth for most Teslas on the road, be paying for 5x the bandwidth when pretty obviously most folks can't even tell the difference.
Even back when the S has a dedicated setting with the higher end stereo the highest they let you go was 160kb/s and that was on a lot more expensive car than the 3.
Uh, not sure what that image is from?
The Slacker app in the car doesn't tell you the bitrate.
If you mean you changed it on the website, they doesn't do anything to the quality in your car.
Again, directly from Slacker themselves-
Audio Quality
Slacker said:
There is no question it made a difference for my car as I described. You may be correct with older vehicles - never saw the option you mention.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
No, it did not.
Placebo is a powerful effect. You paid money to be able to set something, so it MUST HAVE HELPED right?
You can tell it doesn't though because the people who run the service tell you that.
Again, here's slacker themselves telling you you're imaging this helped
Audio Quality
Slacker said:
The only place you can improve the audio quality of slacker in a Tesla is in the tesla on the tesla client.
The S used to allow this (up to 160kb apparently) but since removed the setting.
Changing it on your phone, or the website, or anyplace else, doesn't change it in your car- per direct explanation from the service itself.
