Disappointed in the media situation so far (No CD player in Model S)

couple of 128gb usb sticks... one for the wife, one for me.

Cashoverass said:

Picked up my 40kwh Thursday. I'm loving life right now for sure. Especially since I haven't sold my Lotus yet so my garage looks like a dream come true.

I'm bummed about the media situation. I didn't realize I bought a 70k dollar car without a CD player. Not saying that would have been a deal breaker but I do have an extensive CD collection that I enjoy listening to.

I also have a 160 gig ipod with 35,000 songs that I've really enjoyed having at my finger tips. As well as a external hard drive with the back up.

I can't deal with this internet radio stuff. this isn't how music was meant to be listened to. I want to listen to the exact artist I want to hear not random artists that I may or may not like in the similar genre. and I want to listen to an an album from start to finish.

I can't put 35,000 songs on my phone storage and bluetooth it over.

Anyone have a solution yet?

Click to expand...

Put it on a big USB flash or hdd device(*), plug into the console, done.

* Not sure if bus powered drives work, may require both ports.

Sorry for the bummedness but there are solutions.

For playing digital songs:

1. Buy a reasonably large USB drive and plug it in. $54.99 @ newegg. Take your ipod songs and move them to the drive and keep the drive plugged in the model S.

2. Buy a ipod/iphone to Bluetooth dongle and use your ipod through the Bluetooth link. Many at amazon (some that plug in to the headphone and others that plug in the the ipod adapter).

3. Wait until the interal harddrive is updated to allow access to the internal storage.

4. Switch to Android or wait until Tesla/Apple agree to USB ipod/iphone connections.

For spinning media (CD's):

1. Rip all your CD's to MP3 and use one of the above solutions. Takes a while but you will be free of spinning, space occupying mass.

2. Buy a old school small portable CD player that runs on batteries and connect with option 2 above? Can't verify this would work, but it should.

CDs are dead. Think cassette tapes, even 8 track.
Everything is digital these days. Time to rip your collection. But it kind of sounds like you have, at least partially, since your iPod (digital) collection is so big already.

Disappointed in the media situation so far.

Cashoverass said:

Thanks guys for the responses so far. So it has to be a "flash drive". I can't use an HDD External hard drive? What's the difference exactly.

Two people above pointed to 128gig flash/thumb drive. if there is a difference between flash drives and larger external hard drives, is 128gigs the largest flash drive available on the market?

Thanks again

Click to expand...

I got one of these with a 64GB chip. Works well, though the Tesla interface is just by artist, song, genre - no shuffle mode.

Things you may not have discovered about your Model S?! - Page 17

Update : link didn't seem to be working correctly so here's the content.

medved said:

And I use nano mini USB card reader:
View attachment 17823

with this:
View attachment 17822

Click to expand...

One of the things I love about the Audi Q5 is that in the glove compartment are a variety of plugs for connecting different personal media devices like iPods. I keep an iPod in there just for road use. I interact with it through the main multimedia display on the dash. The Audi also provides two slots for SD cards, and I plop 64 GB of more music into those. So the car basically has my whole music collection. The Audi does also have a CD drive (which also takes DVDs which can be video or audio or data).

I too have been a bit chagrined about the Model S lacking a CD drive. But I've already ripped my CDs so it's not too much of a problem.

I also have zero interest in streaming music services (or even Sirius/XM). I don't wanna hear about Slacker or Spotify or any of that stuff. The audio quality is lousy, service is spotty, they lack many songs/artists I like, and I'm a believer in owning music not renting it. I hope the upcoming 3G/4G/LTE data services Tesla will/may offer do not force you to get unwanted bundled streaming music services.

What's a CD?








J/k

SCW-Greg said:

PHP:

CDs are dead. Think cassette tapes, even 8 track.
Everything is digital these days. Time to rip your collection. But it kind of sounds like you have, at least partially, since your iPod (digital) collection is so big already.

Click to expand...

Technically, CD's are digital also. That said, I started collecting CD's 30 years ago and switched to MP3's over a decade ago. According to Wikipedia sales of CD's (worldwide) are down over 50% since 2000, and its more than 70% in the U.S.

Here the link to the relevant chart documenting the death of old media formats, including CD's -

How iTunes crushed music sales - CNNMoney

Tesla is right about this, just like Apple was right to kill floppy disks/cdrom/dvdrom etc.

I can fit my entire CD collection in a flash drive that is the size of my thumbnail. Ripping your collection will take a lot of effort. I recommend getting kids to do it for you. They always love the idea of knowing how to do something that you don't (even if you actually do) and they'll work like dogs to prove it

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Cashoverass said:

Thanks guys for the responses so far. So it has to be a "flash drive". I can't use an HDD External hard drive? What's the difference exactly.

Two people above pointed to 128gig flash/thumb drive. if there is a difference between flash drives and larger external hard drives, is 128gigs the largest flash drive available on the market?

Thanks again

Click to expand...

A flash drive is better than an HDD. HDD's are busy being obsoleted by flash drives and SSD's as we speak.

I bought this 500gb USB Hard Drive for my partners very large itunes library (over 200gb > 40,000 songs - and growing!)....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009R66EEE/ref=oh_details_o07_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Although it can take 5-10 minutes to index the music when plugging it in, it works like a charm!
All I did was copy the iTunes/iTunes Music folder straight over to the drive....

Aaron

Cashoverass said:

Picked up my 40kwh Thursday. I'm loving life right now for sure. Especially since I haven't sold my Lotus yet so my garage looks like a dream come true.

I'm bummed about the media situation. I didn't realize I bought a 70k dollar car without a CD player. Not saying that would have been a deal breaker but I do have an extensive CD collection that I enjoy listening to.

I also have a 160 gig ipod with 35,000 songs that I've really enjoyed having at my finger tips. As well as a external hard drive with the back up.

I can't deal with this internet radio stuff. this isn't how music was meant to be listened to. I want to listen to the exact artist I want to hear not random artists that I may or may not like in the similar genre. and I want to listen to an an album from start to finish.

I can't put 35,000 songs on my phone storage and bluetooth it over.

Anyone have a solution yet?

Click to expand...

aaron.s said:

I bought this 500gb USB Hard Drive for my partners very large itunes library (over 200gb > 40,000 songs - and growing!)....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009R66EEE/ref=oh_details_o07_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Although it can take 5-10 minutes to index the music when plugging it in, it works like a charm!
All I did was copy the iTunes/iTunes Music folder straight over to the drive....

Aaron

Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the majority of the music in your iTunes library were downloaded from the iTunes Store, then the songs won't play throught the flash drive due to format copy protection or something.

Clint

Most of the music in the iTunes store for the past 2-3 years has been copy protection free. In my particular case, most of the music in my partners iTunes library (95%) is ripped from his own CD's.... Music is his passion and he owns thousands of CD's and LP's...

Aaron

Clint Eastwood said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the majority of the music in your iTunes library were downloaded from the iTunes Store, then the songs won't play throught the flash drive due to format copy protection or something.

Click to expand...

Clint Eastwood said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the majority of the music in your iTunes library were downloaded from the iTunes Store, then the songs won't play throught the flash drive due to format copy protection or something.

Click to expand...

Mostly they won't play because Tesla doesn't support Apple Lossless compression. You just convert them to FLAC (right on the thumb drive) and problem solved. None of mine had any protection problems. (Admittedly I don't have 10,000+ songs so the sample size is small.)

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PeterK said:

I got one of these with a 64GB chip. Works well, though the Tesla interface is just by artist, song, genre - no shuffle mode.

Click to expand...

Playing by song (alphabetically) works almost as good as shuffle mode with the exception that if the same song is on several albums you'll get the song repeated.

jerry33 said:

Mostly they won't play because Tesla doesn't support Apple Lossless compression. You just convert them to FLAC (right on the thumb drive) and problem solved. None of mine had any protection problems. (Admittedly I don't have 10,000+ songs so the sample size is small.)

- - - Updated - - -

Playing by song (alphabetically) works almost as good as shuffle mode with the exception that if the same song is on several albums you'll get the song repeated.

Click to expand...

None of the music Apple sells on the iTunes store is Apple Lossless though. I believe it is all AAC and unprotected at this point too so it will play fine. If you converted all of your CDs into Apple Lossless then you are right, it won't play.

Older iTunes songs might have copy protection but just sign up for iTunes match for $25 (one year) and match your music and convert it to the higher rate unprotected version.

dsm363 said:

None of the music Apple sells on the iTunes store is Apple Lossless though. I believe it is all AAC and unprotected at this point too so it will play fine. If you converted all of your CDs into Apple Lossless then you are right, it won't play.

Older iTunes songs might have copy protection but just sign up for iTunes match for $25 (one year) and match your music and convert it to the higher rate unprotected version.

Click to expand...

Ok, I suck with this stuff. I have my iTunes library filled with old iTunes downloads, new iTunes down loads, and loaded CDs I ripped to iTunes. What is the best was for me to get all of my library on my new model s until it supports plugging iPod or iPhone via USB. I don't want to play via Bluetooth audio because you have to select the music playlist from the phone which is dangerous while driving. Can you dumb it down for me? What flash drive, how to load it all on the flash drive in an appropriate e format to plug into the USB port in the car etc. I suspect if someone can really walk us less inclined users it may help quite a few people around here.

steve841 said:

What's a CD?








J/k

Click to expand...

Something a bank uses to hold your money for a guaranteed low interest rate.

Buy a flash drive you like the look of/has good reviews on Amazon/has good value, etc (with enough capacity to hold your music... just buy a really big one). Insert into computer. Open iTunes file folder. Find file with all your music. Pull the files you want into the USB drive file folder (I like to use 2 windows for this, resizing so each takes up half the screen). Done!

Clint Eastwood said:

Ok, I suck with this stuff. I have my iTunes library filled with old iTunes downloads, new iTunes down loads, and loaded CDs I ripped to iTunes. What is the best was for me to get all of my library on my new model s until it supports plugging iPod or iPhone via USB. I don't want to play via Bluetooth audio because you have to select the music playlist from the phone which is dangerous while driving. Can you dumb it down for me? What flash drive, how to load it all on the flash drive in an appropriate e format to plug into the USB port in the car etc. I suspect if someone can really walk us less inclined users it may help quite a few people around here.

Click to expand...

If you have a lot of the old iTunes protected AAC music you'll have to sign up for iTunes Match I believe. It's $25 for a year but you can always cancel after you've matched your music and it is converted to the non-protected AAC format.

This might be helpful
How to upgrade tracks to iTunes Match, fast | Macworld

and

Using iTunes Match to convert protected tracks from other iTunes accounts | iLounge Article

Clint Eastwood said:

Ok, I suck with this stuff. I have my iTunes library filled with old iTunes downloads, new iTunes down loads, and loaded CDs I ripped to iTunes. What is the best was for me to get all of my library on my new model s

Click to expand...

The easiest way, assuming you have Apple Lossless files, is:

1. Copy the directories with finder containing the music to a thumb drive.

2. Use a program like Max to convert the Apple Lossless to FLAC on the thumb drive. Set the program to delete the original files.

3. Insert the thumb drive in the Model S.

4. Enjoy.

If you don't have Apple Lossless files, then just rip the CDs directly to the thumb drive.