Audio: Testing audio formats

[brianman]

I was considering bringing a USB key with me for the Amped event. Any of the audiophiles out there care to suggest which formats to test and recommend some quick and free tools that will produce most or all of the suggested formats?

[Tommy]

I was considering bringing a USB key with me for the Amped event. Any of the audiophiles out there care to suggest which formats to test and recommend some quick and free tools that will produce most or all of the suggested formats?

I use Max
Max from sbooth.org

and Audacity
Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder

on my mac, both are free source.

Flac or wav files if you're an audiophile; I would be surprised if Tesla has enough space for these to properly demonstrate their potential.

[brianman]

I should have mentioned: My house is free of Apple hardware at the moment. I'll need x86, x64 or Hyper-V-compatible VM.

I'm not looking to evaluate potential/quality so much as "will it decode and play the format at all."

For example, I'm betting WMV (with any internal codec) is a no-go.

[Tommy]

I should have mentioned: My house is free of Apple hardware at the moment. I'll need x86, x64 or Hyper-V-compatible VM.

I'm not looking to evaluate potential/quality so much as "will it decode and play the format at all."

For example, I'm betting WMV (with any internal codec) is a no-go.

Here's where the window version of Audacity is: Audacity: Download

[ElSupreme]

Might as well test WMA lossless! I have all my music in that format.

[Larry Chanin]

I was told by a TMC member that the Model S does not support Flac. I believe he spoke to a Tesla representative. Checking this would be useful.

Larry

[Todd Burch]

I expect that uncompressed/PCM formats (like .WAV) are not supported.

Also, I expect that the audio formats that lean more toward the Apple side (such as AAC) are more likely than the Microsoft side (such as WMA). In fact I think someone mentioned that AAC is or will be supported.

[shokunin]

As stated on the Tesla Model S specs page:

200 watt, seven speaker stereo system with AM/FM/HD radio. Supports MP3, AAC, and MP4 music formats. System includes four speakers, two tweeters and one center channel speaker. Flash memory storage for up to 500 songs.

I would be surprised if the stereo could not handle uncompressed .wav. As the system would have to uncompress the formats internally to PCM in order to play the music anyways. Problem with .wav and PCM formats is that they lack tagging capabilties that other formats have. I'm wondering if it could handle anything higher than redbook 44.1/16bits, then again with the lossy compression, it's probably not worth it...

[kevincwelch]

As stated on the Tesla Model S specs page:

200 watt, seven speaker stereo system with AM/FM/HD radio. Supports MP3, AAC, and MP4 music formats. System includes four speakers, two tweeters and one center channel speaker. Flash memory storage for up to 500 songs.

I think a reasonable question would be whether it will decode music downloaded from the iTunes store, which is AAC format, but with DRM. For obvious reasons, many players will be incapable of decoding these AAC files. (There are commercial ways around that.) I'm not sure how many people actually have their music encoded in AAC format that isn't from Apple.

Personally, I have mp3 and flac. Shame flac isn't supported...

[SByer]

Media Monkey can reflect whole trees into other formats and keep them sync'ed, if it comes to that.

(Says the guy that still has to re-rip his collection into FLAC).