I've now have this on mine. Once it seems to start it gets quite bad. I've talked to service again this morning (after having the concern logged with them since its been a month) and already started logging events. I also think having nav and AP on makes this start sooner. I even seen it happening when trying to pump up the volume (not conclusive yet). Even lost my favorites 3 times. Slacker connectivity once in which I had to call in to get it reconnected (Captcha error).
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Music skipping with UHFS with USB, flac
- Thread starter hiroshiy
- Start date
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- Model S User Interface
Yeah, I think some people notice skipping but most of them don't. I once played drums and mine skips bit by bit almost every song. Unix is not a realtime OS so until Tesla modifies the console to play music / video (in the future) with a dedicated sound processor. Just a wild guess.
Petra
Member
This has nothing to do with it not being a realtime OS or needing a hardware decoder, it's just crappy code. Same with the 10% accelerated playback bug from late last year, crappy code. You'd think Tesla could write a media player application that actually works correctly...
Windows plays music just fine and it's even less realtime than a standard UNIX distribution.
Hmm, thanks. I thought Windows lacks realtime processing but PC had a sound processing hardware mandatory, since Sound Blaster era. Without sufficient buffering and hardware assistance on sound playback, I think Unix or Windows running on automotive grade (slower) hardware can't catch up.
I agree that if the code wasn't crappy, it should work but hey, there are many crappy codes!
It's not really fixed. Play a very long song like computer music with fixed BPM, and use your stopwatch. It skips beat every now and then.
Petra
Member
Either way, the nVidia Tegra 3 T30 SoC that's in the center display computer unit has built in harware audio/video encode/decode... and it's not particularly slow. Performance comparsions across architectures are difficult (especially when talking parts optimized for specific use cases), but Geekbench puts the T30 somewhere around a Pentium D 820 I think... so, not slow.
Todd Burch
14-Year Member
Model S *used* to reliably play music without skipping--like in the 2012/2013/2014 days. But dangit, this issue is still around. Way more frequent skipping than there should be.
Thanks, @Petra! Does Tegra 3 have D/A and sound buffers in its SoC? I mean, it seems to have some audio decoding engines or accelerators, but real latency issue lies in adequate buffering management. With PC, most of sound playback is done by the sound hardware itself (required by Windows), not CPU, making skipping virtually impossible.
Anyway it seems Tesla needs to improve the sound playback...
Yea same. Seems to be worse in my new car vs. the previous. I've been noting times and providing them to service to see if they can track this one down. If I could rip the stereo out of the car and replace it I would. (I'm slightly annoyed). I'm missing my Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. Sad
omega731
Member
Hey all, going to be receiving my car in a few weeks and I wanted to have this all sorted out before it arrives. Apparently brand is important (Kingston, Patriot and Sony) as is type of files (Flac etc.). Does storage space have an effect? I was going to get a 256gb. Also does USB 3.1 vs any other version matter? Thanks in advance for your help.
BertL
Active Member
There will be lots of opinions. My personal net:
- I've not had a problem with name brand sticks. There are comments from some that no-name brands may cause issues, and the challenge is, Tesla's USB error support does not seem to be super robust, so I would save my money somewhere else to avoid possible spurious issues that could drive you nuts. Others will say their no-name sticks work fine. Good for them!
- I've tried sticks up to 256GB and that does not seem to have any negative impact. What may, is the number of tracks you elect to store, and perhaps if you go too deep with your folder parent-child relationships (all of that takes both time for MS to parse when you put the stick in, and consumes memory somewhere in the CID so your Media Player can associate your tracks and folder structure to the USB tabs within Media Player.)
- MS Is USB 2.0, which is plenty fast by itself to play music of whatever format you choose. The possible benefit of buying a 3.0 stick is it will take substantially less time for you to place music onto the stick from your Mac or PC -- Assuming you have 3.0 ports on your computer.
An early congrats on that new MS. Enjoy!
ArtInCT
Always Learning
I have played plenty of FLACs on SANdisc USB sticks in 8GB and 16GB sizes. Not ONE skip. None.
The sticks were mastered on an iMAC.
They work perfectly on my March 2016 P90DL.
The Conan the Barbarian soundtrack in FLAC is just amazing as the timpani and orchestration really allow the UHFS really shine.
Worth the listen even if the music is not your style.
The sticks were mastered on an iMAC.
They work perfectly on my March 2016 P90DL.
The Conan the Barbarian soundtrack in FLAC is just amazing as the timpani and orchestration really allow the UHFS really shine.
Worth the listen even if the music is not your style.
omega731
Member
Bert, thank you for your time and effort. I am going to check out your website, once again thank you.
BertL
Active Member
NP. Post or "PM" if I can be of help. I'm far from being a guru on the subject, but have spent man-days (or weeks) scratching my head, reading other's experiences, and trying things, so happy to share my perspective if it helps save you a bit of time.
Dithermaster
Member
I've noticed songs slip the beat by a fraction, enough to know it's the car and not me. I'm using 256 kbps AAC on FAT32 (I think; the drive is in the car right now). It's especially noticeable on songs with a strong beat. It doesn't happen frequently, but when it happens it's just enough to notice.
Tesla needs to put someone who cares about music on this project. I know that realtime playback of digital audio is not trivial, but they have smart people who can get it right. Just give them the assignment to fix it.
The other cringe-worthy audio playback issue is when you un-pause. Half the time it does a quick start-stop-start-stop-start like a needle dropping hard on the record. It should just start, or better yet have a short fade up.
Tesla needs to put someone who cares about music on this project. I know that realtime playback of digital audio is not trivial, but they have smart people who can get it right. Just give them the assignment to fix it.
The other cringe-worthy audio playback issue is when you un-pause. Half the time it does a quick start-stop-start-stop-start like a needle dropping hard on the record. It should just start, or better yet have a short fade up.
Hi, Bert, enjoyed your web site. Learned a lot of things about how Tesla tries to organize music files. My library has still multiple artists in one album so I'm using By Folder to play songs in one album in order.
BTW I am using SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB FAT32 and I have skipping on every song. Do you listen to more classical music, or high BPM music like dance, electronica etc? My Tesla is pre AP.
BertL
Active Member
Thx. I listen to lots of Pop, Vocals, Country, Soundtracks, and Broadway for the most part -- only some Rock and little Classical.
FWIW, I normally keep Nav on the top half of my CID with Media Player on the bottom. The last few months, I have only occasional USB skipping, and it's happened with SanDisk, Patriot and Kingston USB sticks -- can't say there is any difference in skipping across the name brands I'm using. I also don't seem to notice a difference if I'm using Nav to a Destination or just letting it display my location. ...and others will disagree with me I'm sure, but I seem to have a lot less skipping as I've taken the time to limit the number of bookmarks I have in MS Browser, keeping Nav history to a minimum, keeping less than 6,000 tracks on my USB stick (all under a single folder), and I stopped using the Google hybrid Nav display, which I suspect takes at least more computing cycles to download and display than the line version of the maps, if not also more memory. Despite others belief, I truly believe having too many tracks on my USB stick, combined with a too complex folder structure on the USB stick, takes more memory that has to come from some limited amount the CID has, and that is likely shared with Nav History, and Browser Bookmarks, so to the degree I decrease what I can that potentially uses memory, I seem to have less problems.
I still think Tesla has problems with their memory management, not prioritizing audio as high as it should be to avoid the skipping we occasionally encounter, and perhaps the CID Processor is becoming overly taxed with all that it's being expected to do (like extensive logging back to the mothership). I don't use Autopilot enough to notice if there may be an additional correlation when I have it on, of USB skipping is more or not...
Anyway, try reducing what you can that may tax memory, and see if you get a little better result as I seem to. I hate having to try to deal with all this in my otherwise great car, but until Tesla does something to improve it for us, "we've got what we got" (pardon the bad English!). My best.
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