Do AIFF files play on the Studio Sound System

artsci · Jul 17, 2013

I'll be getting the Reus upgrade soon. I'm converting my entire set of about 500 CDs to digital files for use in the car. I want to use the purest sound files with no compression of any kind so WAV or AIFF are my apparent choices. I understand that WAV files have a problem with metadata but AIFF handle it just fine. Does anyone have experience with AIFF files on his or her Model S. And please don't tell me to use FLAC. I'm not going there.

MikeK · Jul 17, 2013

Yes, AIFF plays fine. Just don't use Apple Lossless. It's the only format that I regularly use that the car won't currently play. (Or, at least not last time I tried...)

I'm not sure why you're opposed to FLAC, unless like me you just don't want to deal with the hassle of something that isn't supported by iTunes and the Apple ecosystem. The sound quality of FLAC is identical to uncompressed, though (as is ALAC).

artsci · Jul 17, 2013

MikeK said:
Yes, AIFF plays fine. Just don't use Apple Lossless. It's the only format that I regularly use that the car won't currently play. (Or, at least not last time I tried...)

I'm not sure why you're opposed to FLAC, unless like me you just don't want to deal with the hassle of something that isn't supported by iTunes and the Apple ecosystem. The sound quality of FLAC is identical to uncompressed, though (as is ALAC).

I'm so glad to learn that. I also created a few AIFF files to test tonight on the car.

As for FLAC the Reus people strongly recommended I do everything in WAV. Given the metadata issues with WAV I concluded that AIFF was a better choice for functionality given that the sound quality is exactly the same.

Denarius · Jul 17, 2013

I tried apple lossless last night and it still doesn't work.

ElSupreme · Jul 17, 2013

artsci said:
I'm so glad to learn that. I also created a few AIFF files to test tonight on the car.

As for FLAC the Reus people strongly recommended I do everything in WAV. Given the metadata issues with WAV I concluded that AIFF was a better choice for functionality given that the sound quality is exactly the same.

Is there some reasoning behind WAV over FLAC?

Sure it takes a few clock cycles to decompress FLAC, but my understanding if you are getting audio out of FLAC it is indistinguishable from WAV.

Both are LOSSLESS formats. FLAC is just compressed. MP3 and AAC are LOSSY formats and information is lost when the file is compressed.

The way I rip my CDs (in WMA LOSSLESS) I can recreate EXACT replicas of the CD's audio with my rip (WMA files, and another file) that will reconstruct everything exactly as on the CD.

artsci · Jul 17, 2013

ElSupreme said:
Is there some reasoning behind WAV over FLAC?

Sure it takes a few clock cycles to decompress FLAC, but my understanding if you are getting audio out of FLAC it is indistinguishable from WAV.

Both are LOSSLESS formats. FLAC is just compressed. MP3 and AAC are LOSSY formats and information is lost when the file is compressed.

The way I rip my CDs (in WMA LOSSLESS) I can recreate EXACT replicas of the CD's audio with my rip (WMA files, and another file) that will reconstruct everything exactly as on the CD.

There are lots of debates over the sound quality in WAV and AIFF versus FLAC. Some believe there is a noticeable difference others argue not. Still others argue that any loss in quality is the result of hardware ripping issues. Since I have to have my entire CD collection converted anyway and the cost is the same for WAV, FLAC, and AIFF, I'm not taking any chances.

artsci · Jul 17, 2013

Now another question. The few test AIFF files I created on the flash drive play fine but the album artwork and other metadata don't show. I created the files with XLD.

MikeK · Jul 17, 2013

Let me put it this way: anybody who argues that FLAC (or ALAC) sounds different than WAV is either:

Doing it wrong.
Misinformed.
Delusional.

It would be equivalent to saying that if you created WAV files, then compressed them into a Zip archive to email them, and un-zipped them on the other side, they sounded worse. It simply doesn't happen. The very definition of a lossless codec is that the exact same bits come out that went in.

So, feel free to use AIFF -- it's definitely an improvement on WAV because of the better support for metadata. But unless the Model S's FLAC decoder is defective or you use a defective FLAC encoder, you'll get the same results with FLAC.

artsci · Jul 17, 2013

MikeK said:
Let me put it this way: anybody who argues that FLAC (or ALAC) sounds different than WAV is either:

Doing it wrong.

Misinformed.

Delusional.

It would be equivalent to saying that if you created WAV files, then compressed them into a Zip archive to email them, and un-zipped them on the other side, they sounded worse. It simply doesn't happen. The very definition of a lossless codec is that the exact same bits come out that went in.

So, feel free to use AIFF -- it's definitely an improvement on WAV because of the better support for metadata. But unless the Model S's FLAC decoder is defective or you use a defective FLAC encoder, you'll get the same results with FLAC.

Thanks for that info and advice. I think I'll go with FLAC.

jerry33 · Jul 17, 2013

artsci said:
Now another question. The few test AIFF files I created on the flash drive play fine but the album artwork and other metadata don't show. I created the files with XLD.

For some odd reason, Tesla get it's own metadata and doesn't use what's stored in the file. It ends up like this:

artsci · Jul 17, 2013

jerry33 said:
For some odd reason, Tesla get it's own metadata and doesn't use what's stored in the file. It ends up like this:
View attachment 25889 View attachment 25890

So I assume that would be true for any file format, including FLAC.

jerry33 · Jul 18, 2013

artsci said:
So I assume that would be true for any file format, including FLAC.

Correct. Works like that with FLAC.

MikeK · Jul 19, 2013

The metadata situation with music on USB sticks is ... puzzling. I did test AIFF (created with iTunes) at one point, and the metadata was correct, although I think the car fetched its own cover art over the air rather than using what was in the file.

Also, beware. The car's player does not properly handle multi-disc albums. I have a 2-disc set, and it plays both tracks with #1, then both tracks #2, etc. It is ignoring the disc number tag, which is present in the file.

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Do AIFF files play on the Studio Sound System

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