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Tidal and in car audio with 2021.40.x
- Thread starter MrBadger
- Start date
I finally pulled everything together and had Tidal streaming while the car wifi was tethered to my phone. Every song came through with the hifi symbol and it all sounded pretty good. I didn't have any dropouts, songs would start immediately when selected and playback was gapless when necessary. I found out that one of the updates to the car software had reset the immersion to be on high and when I turned that off the shrillness went down too. Is the audio great? No, I still don't think so but at least it was OK. Oh, my car is a 2021 SR+. I'm still thinking of replacing the drivers, both door and dash. Maybe I'll start with Infinity 4032 in the dash as those are cheaper, unless someone has another recommendation.
bo3bdar
Member
On the topic of streaming quality, Spotify actually streams at much lower than 96kibts/s. I always wondered where the information on Tesla streaming rates comes from?
The real answer is no one knows, because Tesla never provides any info about anything. It's an educated guess based on normal Spotify streams. Their Normal setting is 96kbit/s, and their Low is 24kbit/s. No one thinks it's 24 with current Tesla software at least, because it sounds much better than that. 96kbit/s Ogg encoding is roughly comparable to 192kbit/s MP3.
bo3bdar
Member
If you haven't read Travis' blog about upgrading his stereo, you might find it interesting and helpful. Since you are thinking about replacing speakers. Travis replaced all of his speakers and made some custom mounts for new tweeters.
Tesla Model 3 Stereo - Part 9: Summary and Lessons Learned
Blog about various hobby and engineering projects including mechanical, electrical, and software
I've been profiling the SR stereo with no immersion, and I think you can get the stereo to be pretty decent. But it does require tweaking the 5 band EQ, because Tesla bumps the midrange too much by default. The settings changed after I updated to 2021.40.6. I think they also improved their DSP settings for the SR stereos, because I no longer have to use extreme EQ settings. I'm currently dropping the mid range by -1.5 to remove the harshness, but will profile it with a RTA tool later today.
Might still not be what you like, because everyone is different, but the stereo actually measures out with a fairly flat frequency response, and tweaking the EQ for the bad spots helps a lot. You can't get rid of that 175Hz bass hole without a subwoofer though. That's the door woofers canceling each other out.
I'd read through that once before but I took another look. Two things jump out. First, he is also adding amps to his car and I wasn't looking to do that. Second, those drivers are EXPENSIVE!
I'll try your settings, whatever they turn out to be because that is easy. I thought about buying a measurement mic myself but decided I'd never use it again, or maybe just to take some measurements of my home systems. I have a Radio Shack analog SPL meter and I only used that a few times too. I guess those are getting hard to find.
I'll try your settings, whatever they turn out to be because that is easy. I thought about buying a measurement mic myself but decided I'd never use it again, or maybe just to take some measurements of my home systems. I have a Radio Shack analog SPL meter and I only used that a few times too. I guess those are getting hard to find.
Sunvalleylaw
Member
I have an app for my phone. Don't know if those are as good as the separate unit ones, but it does give me info, and helped me learn about what decibels I was running to listen at home. I keep it reasonable generally.
You really don't need to add a separate power amp even to the stock Tesla setup. I find the volume on 5 more than loud enough and when moving at M way speeds its not the lack of volume from the speakers that is the issue its the poor wind/tire noise insulation.
A separate powered sub would however make a difference but it depends on what stuff you listen to. But clearly if you are going down the power sub route you might as well connect the speaker to the amp too.
Just keep an eye on the budget, in car audio is like any other audio, if you really want to go buts you can easily spend £1k on speakers, another £500 on a sub, and £500+ on the amp, than the cost of fitting and setup by a decent car audio shop. Even after all of that sound at 70mph will still be dominated by wind/tyre noise.
This is why I stopped at speakers, otherwise you can loss control of your wallet very quickly!
A separate powered sub would however make a difference but it depends on what stuff you listen to. But clearly if you are going down the power sub route you might as well connect the speaker to the amp too.
Just keep an eye on the budget, in car audio is like any other audio, if you really want to go buts you can easily spend £1k on speakers, another £500 on a sub, and £500+ on the amp, than the cost of fitting and setup by a decent car audio shop. Even after all of that sound at 70mph will still be dominated by wind/tyre noise.
This is why I stopped at speakers, otherwise you can loss control of your wallet very quickly!
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Been alternating same content between Spotify and Tidal HiFi now in my M3P.
Notable differences in quality for sure.
Not all just hype then
Notable differences in quality for sure.
Not all just hype then
Just for clarity, by Tidal HIFI are you referring to downloaded or WIFI connected Tidal
Cnixon
Member
Slight off topic but in the cars sound settings you might want to allow "explicit lyrics" or tracks in existing playlists may be unavailable/greyed out(Tidal has an online way of transfering these from Spotify).
Yeh downloaded stuff with the “HiFi” tag attached
Been alternating same content between Spotify and Tidal HiFi now in my M3P.
Notable differences in quality for sure.
Not all just hype then
Thanks for reporting on this! Would you mind giving an example or two of songs/tracks that sounds different between Spotify and Tidal? I have Spotify and am thinking of a trial subscription to Tidal and I'd like to compare them.
I like to use John Williams to check things - can't beat a bit of London Philharmonic 
Huge differences between downloaded and streamed.
(Just found out the forum does aggravating things with media links.. had to use a code tag to stop it)
Huge differences between downloaded and streamed.
https://tidal.com/browse/album/5120649
https://open.spotify.com/album/3xeo92ykCYWfe32si3I6zF?si=rXBH8SvnQ2i6d1yvG0FxIg
(Just found out the forum does aggravating things with media links.. had to use a code tag to stop it)
My adult daughter was in the car and was streaming some Spotify (Goo Goo Dolls) from her phone to the car, and I looked for the same track on Tidal and played it in hifi. It was not a subtle difference. You could actually hear the instruments in Tidal. I need to set up more of my own music in Tidal, in playlists and downloads.
Does anybody have any sense of how much can be downloaded in terms of music hours? Are we talking 2-3 hours or 20 hours? I just want a sense of how much you can do before you need to start deleting. I've got the top 1043 rock songs of all time in a set of playlists but I doubt it would all fit. The list is based on NYC's Q104.3 station list from 2019, broken into 50 song batches. My wife and I always joked that the station played the same 20 songs over and over, but maybe it was a few more than that. The top 100 were certainly played a lot though.
I can always stream in any case.
I just thought of a new feature though, how about if we could download music we wanted in the car from the phone app instead of sitting in the car to do it? While my car is sitting within range of wifi it would be great if I could just kick off the download from the comfort of my couch. I know, I'm dreaming. They can barely get the app to work in the car properly.
Does anybody have any sense of how much can be downloaded in terms of music hours? Are we talking 2-3 hours or 20 hours? I just want a sense of how much you can do before you need to start deleting. I've got the top 1043 rock songs of all time in a set of playlists but I doubt it would all fit. The list is based on NYC's Q104.3 station list from 2019, broken into 50 song batches. My wife and I always joked that the station played the same 20 songs over and over, but maybe it was a few more than that. The top 100 were certainly played a lot though.
I can always stream in any case.
I just thought of a new feature though, how about if we could download music we wanted in the car from the phone app instead of sitting in the car to do it? While my car is sitting within range of wifi it would be great if I could just kick off the download from the comfort of my couch. I know, I'm dreaming. They can barely get the app to work in the car properly.
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I was thinking this would be great too. Along with saving downloads to the USB drive.
But I bet this feature isn't high on their priority list for the app...
bo3bdar
Member
I finally got a chance to do a quick profile of the current software on the car, that came with the Tidal update. v2021.40.6 I used an old AudioSource RTA because it's portable and convenient, but it's not as good as REW of course. I'll do an REW pass soon.
EQ set to all zeros. At 75% volume, this is what I get when playing pink noise:
That's a nearly perfect sample for a Harmann curve. Boosted bass, flat across midrange, taper off the highs.
Depends upon what people want to hear, but the Harmann curve is sort of the expected standard nowadays. I think the SR stereo was also tuned up by Tesla for that last update, because this is better than my original tests with different firmware.
I typically try to get a completely flat response from the EQ, but it hasn't worked that well in my Model 3 because it drains out too much bass. So for the time being I'm going with the Harmann curve as well.
So based on this quick test, I'd say starting at all zeroes, then slightly tuning the EQ to suit is probably a good path. If you think it's too shrill, you can drop the center EQ by one or two DB for example. If there isn't enough bass, you can bump the far left EQ.
I think it's a little muffled sounding, so I bump the far right EQ to +1 to help with clarity. The SR doesn't have any tweeters, so we are missing anything above about12K.
Sunvalleylaw
Member
Interesting. I have typically scooped an EQ a bit, in a car with a bit more bass on the left, and boosted highs. Then I tend to center the sound to the rear of the front seats in terms of fade. On my test drive, I put the center on the rear floor just at the front of the rear seat. Didn't mess too much with it. Was listening to Spotify. Sounded pretty good, but that I would want to play with it some more. This was in a MYLR.
Sure
Weirdly enough (wife’s choice) it’s been Xmas music, namely Bubles Xmas Album (the Santa Claus is Coming to Town Track, blew Spotify away). Also Fred Again, Actual Life 2. Again, every track really just sounded better on Tidal.
Thanks for doing this. I've played around a bit and having the mid down 1db, and boosted the base by 1db. It sounds pretty good this way.
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