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CD quality sound via FLAC files, my experience

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I am now the proud owner of a new Tesla for about a week. When I began researching the Tesla I was surprised that it did not include a CD player (I would love to see a study comparing the universes of people who can afford a Tesla with people who have a collection of CDs they would like to play in a Tesla) and initially this seemed like a deal breaker for me. My previous car came with a system that played MP3s and I found the sound quality unacceptable.

My first thought was to see about having an aftermarket installation of a CD player, but then I discovered this forum and began reading to see if there were others with similar issues. That’s when I learned about FLAC files and how they might be the answer to my problems. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. The important word in here is lossless. This means that there is no loss in audio quality when a CD is converted into FLAC files. The file size is also compressed somewhat, not at much as MP3, but with no loss in audio quality.

Next there was the big debate about whether the Tesla could play FLAC files. No one at Tesla will say for sure, but the forum seemed to agree that as long as the file format was FAT 32 it should work.

So, about a month before my Tesla was due to arrive, I decided to make a test FLAC file and take into the dealership (which for me was on the second floor of a shopping mall called BelSquare) to see if it worked.

A little research showed that the preferred program for ripping CDs to FLAC was Exact Audio Copy(EAC). Unfortunately, my experience with EAC was not good. The website would not let me download the latest version; so I downloaded an earlier version. Setting up the system requires pages of decisions and even though I had some help from the internet, it was simply too complicated for me. I did rip one CD which took about 45 minutes, but it didn’t copy the track titles for reasons I did not understand. The web page for EAC did contain an ad for Easy Audio Copy which gave you 14 days before having to pay about $30. I was frustrated enough with EAC that I tried Easy Audio Copy and found it really was easy, probably too easy with too few ways to tweak the end product. However, it took me only 8 minutes to rip the same CD to FLAC.

Next I got a 64 gig flash drive and tried to format it to FAT 32. I have a new computer with Windows 8.1 and it would only let me format the drive to exFAT. I thought, “well it sounds like it’s close to FAT and it’s my only choice; so why not.” I have a TV that has a USB interface and plays FLAC files; so I tested it and found that it worked! I went in to Tesla and tried the drive, but the car did not even recognize that I had a drive inserted in the USB port. Back to the drawing board. I did some more research and discovered that FAT 32 means that it is not intended for flash drives larger than 32 gigs. In fact when I inserted one less than 32 gigs, windows had no trouble formatting it to FAT 32, which, in fact, turned out to be the default format for the drive anyway. A tech person at the office formatted my 64 gig drive to FAT 32 with some external software and I returned to the Tesla store armed three drives, 4, 32, and 64 gigs respectively all with my CD copied to FLAC files. Surprise, it worked on all 3.

I had only one problem. And this, to me, is the genius and frustration of Tesla. Someone decided that the track title displayed on the Tesla media screen doesn’t need to be longer than 25 or 30 characters. There is a giant screen with a lot of empty space and a track title in the middle that is simply way too short. It is clear to me that this programmer does not actually listen to music. Maybe there is a way to increase the number of characters displayed in the track title, but I haven’t found it. OK, that’s my rant. Let’s move on.

Let me finish with a couple of things I have discovered about Easy Audio Copy. The good news is that it numbers the track titles so that the copied CD will play in the right order. If you have multiple CDs you can hold down the shift key while pressing the album cover and it will number the tracks for all the CDs so that they play in the right order. Also just before you start the copy process, it shows you what the track titles will look like. You can edit them from this screen and the results will show on the Tesla screens as well.

So now I have a new Tesla that plays my CDs via FLAC files on my 64 gig drive. Maybe some day someone will publish Exact Audio Copy for Dummies and I will at last understand how to use this excellent, but too arcane for me, program.
 
Welcome to the forum, and to Model S ownership!

For you and others that might be interested, lossless WMA files also play properly in the Model S. I was initially surprised because I figured licensing or whatever might be an issue.
 
My USB flash drive is formatted with ext3 and the Tesla reads it. Not surprising as ext3 is a Linux file system. Max drive size for ext3 is 16 TB (16,000 GB). No problems fitting most people's music collection. :)

Haven't tried the newer ext4 FS yet.
 
EasyFish -- an enjoyable first post. I converted most of my CD collection to FLAC as well. I would say that I don't think there was a debate about whether or not the Model S would play FLAC files, but that's not important.

In any event, I found Exact Audio Copy to be complex, but not too difficult to use because I found an excellent set-up tutorial here: EAC Setup Guide and an operational guide here: EAC Ripping Guide. Despite EAC working well, I found the process to be endless because some disks ripped quickly and others slowly, and I didn't have long blocks of uninterrupted time to sit in front of the computer. On the upside, it's a do it once and be done exercise.

One thing to note, like many others here, the car balked at first when starting up with the flash drive inserted. It seems to have stopped this behavior now.
 
FYI, the car will play FLACs in at least 24/96K format. I haven't tried 192K yet, so I don't know if it can handle that

I use dbpoweramp to manage files and rip CDs, which works very well. It also allows you to Rip to both FLAC and MP3 at the same time, if you want to keep 2 sets of files for different players
 
Did we ever have a complete list?

Lossless:
FLAC
AIFF
WMA

Lossy
MP3
M4A

Others?
There were various discussions. Here is one of them:
Audio: Testing audio formats

Some highlights from that thread:
Audio: Testing audio formats - Page 4
Audio: Testing audio formats - Page 4
Audio: Testing audio formats - Page 7

- - - Updated - - -

Giant post about audio file quality with no mention of the how the audio sounded...... :confused:
We've had multiple threads about Model S audio. First step is "what will the car recognize, (decode,) and play". Second is what sounds better/best. Third was whether the upgrade was worth it. Fourth was aftermarket vs. OEM offerings. Fifth is people starting new threads instead of using the search function of TMC to find previous discussion themselves. ;)
 
Tesla sound quality

I can see by this and other posts that I was remiss in not talking about my reaction to the sound quality. In my defense I thought the post had rambled on for way too long already. Still...

I think the FLAC files sound exactly like CDs would if the Tesla had a CD player. I am still trying to adjust the sound (I did get the upgrade package) to my own personal likes and dislikes. I don't know yet if I will want to make tweaks to the system or not.

I am currently listening to Mozart's Don Giovanni in preparation for the Seattle Opera production in 3 weeks. This is a great test of the system and it seems to be passing with flying colors. This is also the kind of music that really demonstrates what is wrong with MP3.

In completely unrelated news. I tried to demonstrate the ability to find music on the internet to a passenger and entered the audio command, "Play Beatles." A lot of choices came up and I selected one at random. Turned out to be a group called Beatless. :mad: Sigh.


Nice write up. What do you think about the sound quality itself?

More info about how to format a drive as fat32 in this topic:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...SB-thumb-drive?p=246748&viewfull=1#post246748
 
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I use a portable 2TB Toshiba HDD formatted in FAT32. For those who use OSX, FAT32 seemed to be removed as an option with the 'upgraded' Disk Utility but the formal labelled as MS-DOS (FAT) is actually FAT32. It plays uneventfully although the car does spend ages reading the disk when it's selected for the first time after re-connecting. I mainly use flac level 0 compression and the sound is OK but really the (standard) Tesla audio system is fairly ordinary when it comes to resolution that this is the limiting factor rather than lossy or lossless music files.
I had no luck with 192k music files.
 
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I was in the same position as the OP when my Model S was on the way. I guess my research was similar. I decided to rip my CDs to FLAC. I found EAC and bought a 64GB flash drive and started ripping. No problem ripping to the pc and transferring to the flash drive. I don't remember formatting it at all and it worked fine.

It turns out I have hardly used the flash drive between Slacker, Tune-In, and a trial on XM radio. :rolleyes:
 
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I have pretty good ears and even the upgraded stereo is just "good." I wouldn't call it great. I have tried A/B comparisons with uncompressed and compressed audio and the difference is almost inaudible. IMO not worth the effort/time... This could be because I can't get past the rattles and resonance issues especially in the front passenger woofer.

Once the vehicle is moving at highway speed you get so much road noise it makes it even harder to tell any difference at all between lossless compressed, uncompressed, and compressed at anything above 192...
The newer cars have more sound deadening materials and some stereo tweaks... my MS is a 2013 which I think is pretty much original so YMMV
 
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FYI, the car will play FLACs in at least 24/96K format. I haven't tried 192K yet, so I don't know if it can handle that

I use dbpoweramp to manage files and rip CDs, which works very well. It also allows you to Rip to both FLAC and MP3 at the same time, if you want to keep 2 sets of files for different players
Both the S and the X will play 192k/24 files. If you download quality hires music files the sound is great! I have a Reus aftermarket audio system in my S and when I play a good source material 192k file it is incredible.
 
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Best sound quality is on CDs. I spent 100 thousand dollars on a car, and it won't play my CDs. I have maybe a thousand CDs that I have waited 20 years to listen to.

FLAC, FLUC. I want to listen to the 1000 CDs that I bought 20 years ago. Now that I have my car, and my retirement.
 
Best sound quality is on CDs. I spent 100 thousand dollars on a car, and it won't play my CDs. I have maybe a thousand CDs that I have waited 20 years to listen to.

FLAC, FLUC. I want to listen to the 1000 CDs that I bought 20 years ago. Now that I have my car, and my retirement.
There was a time in my life when I had many albums on vinyl. I subsequently replaced some of the vinyl with 8-tracks and cassettes because I wanted to listen to them in the car, and that was the supported car audio format. Then I replaced the rest of the vinyl with CDs because the quality of that format was a noticeable improvement. CDs typically use a sampling rate of 16-bit/44.1kHz, which is not the best sound quality anymore. Lossless audio files can be much higher quality than CD audio.

If you have your car, and you're retired, you probably can carve out some time to start converting those 1000 CDs into FLAC format with a computer. Imagine being able to go on a trip with all your music in your pocket, on a USB stick the size of your thumb tip, rather than toting around a big bulky binder full of plastic discs like we did in the '90s.
 
FLAC on USB is pretty good. And even CDs are dependent on the DAC for really good playback, not that the Tesla system is particularly reveling so the DAC doesn't matter as much.
Bite the bullet and get FLAC. Or get Slacker Premium, which is 320K MP3s and hard to tell from CD quality. The included Slacker bit rate is only 128 -- most people can tell the difference, but it isn't huge.
 
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