listening to music in the car

Well, guys, if Yokohama still produces tires model AVS dB you may guess why they named them that way. I bought them, many years ago, just for that reason. They were supposed to be quiet and quiet they were. It was a drastic change in silence from whatever my stock tires were at that time. Having said that, they were quiet for about, let's  say, 5000 miles and then they were the loudest thing you could have ever imagined. They somehow warped and ended up having ridges, valleys, hills, etc. on them. I was in love for a few thousand miles and afterwards had to admit that first passion does not always last so they went away. It turned out I was not the only one who noticed this increased noise so, maybe, they improved it afterwards.

albertporter,

I am by no means adept at computers beyond turning on/off and a few more very-low-user actions. I learn the dumbest way, from own experience, so I deducted a few things from your story and my experience. CarPlay has to be used via iPhone. SD card probably goes some other way and the fact that car has Carplay does not mean SD card will behave in any similar way. My iPod was bought in May 2015 and I believe it is 5th generation. My car was bought in December 2015 and, surprise, iPod cannot connect via Carplay at all. I am not sure about now, but iPod simply did not come with Carplay. That is just so you do not buy an iPod and find out it is not Carplay compatible. On the other hand, just being an USB device works great. As far as USB devices go, I did connect Solid State Drive and it worked well. I also have a SONY NW-35 (small $200ish Walkman) and it connects and plays via USB without a problem. It becomes just another SSD connected via USB. Android phones have something parallel to Carplay (Android Auto, I think) and they frequently have expansion slots for more memory. However, I got an impression that you have an iPhone and, if you ever connect it to the car for phone purposes, I wonder if you would be able to connect another Carplay/Android Auto device at the same time. I would not be surprised if the car thought you were connecting two phones as it might see them that way.

As far as functionality goes, I hope your Bose is as accomodating as VW Fender system. Whatever I connect (SD, iPod, Solid State Drive) it shows album covers and songs and all that it is supposed to. It does not matter what media it is coming from. There are some minor issues (albums with same name, at least first 20 letters or so of it become clumped as one album so you have to change metadata a little bit, think "Greatest Hits", "The Best Of", etc.), but in the end it works out like an unbelievably convenient system. The only unexpected detail that does not work with my SD card is voice control for songs. If I try voice control to pick the song from the whole SD card, it says there are too many songs. I believe I have 12000-15000 and that is what confuses it. It has no problem picking albums or artists via voice control and then picking the song from that album.

These are just a few of my observations. I would still try with SD card and FLACs. I think that dBpoweramp even has some free trial version, but do not hold me to it. You need it for the simplest operation it can do, anyway.

albertporter,

with my experience, if I were you, I would do what I already did. I waved the white flag, bought 512 GB SD card (that is how I know it works despite instructions saying it is only up to, if I remember correctly, 64GB), and bought dBpoweramp program to transfer whatever to whatever. Basically, I converted all the AIFFs to FLACs and put it on that SD card. Then the card went to the slot, conveniently out of sight and out of way, and it is all there. There is still some space left on the card, but not much. As AIFF it was not even close to 12 TB so you may not be too happy, but it fits some thousand or more albums. Granted, those are albums and not 80-minute CDs so some are barely 30 minutes, but most are 1960s-1970s-1980s so think more like 45 minutes. The downside of dBpoweramp is that, for all I know, it does not convert DSD, if that is what you need, but I have heard that it is the best one to transfer album art without glitches. I would have to agree, although I was surprised that some things I did have to smoothen out to make it all really perfect. That is another topic and feel free to ask if you ever go down that route. I, eventually, settled for Volkswagen and this sound system convenience was one of the three or four important factors. It is just that I am now looking for a new car because I cannot stand the sound. I mean, I am not trying to be snobbish or pretend that my ears are descedants from some royal dynasty, but it hurts. I was hoping that new (2018) batch of VWs along with the new screen accidentaly got something in amplifier changed. I went to the dealership last weekend and I believe it might have happened, but will check a few more times before I give money away. I feel your pain with having to juggle needs/wants of the car as a vehicle and some decent sound system that would play what you would expect it to play in 2017-2018. I end up with VW because I do fit in it comfortably (6'3"), they do come with manual transmissions, if you pick carefully, and they still have some sort of spare tire or at least space to put a temporary one without taking away the whole trunk.

I think that sound system quality is sort of an afterthought in most cars. They simply do not expect a driver with an iPhone to connect any other way but Bluetooth or care about files it can play. In fact, the young man who was showing me Tesla (Model S, I went just for curiosity and completness sake) was surprised with my discovery of "only Bluetooth from your phone". It turns out that he, the person representing allegedly very technologically advanced company, had never thought of any other way but Bluetooth, nor had anyone who ever walked in that store in over a year that he had been there. However, in his sales pitch he did talk about wonderful sound system with so many speakers and Watts, and what not. Accept it, we are a minority that is easier to ignore than to do small tweaks for.

I am glad I found this thread because I do not feel fully an oddball anymore. I accepted that car environment and, probably, lesser quality electronics will degrade sound from what I am used at home. Still, when looking for a new car, I went around checking sound systems specifically. Huh, that was an experience. I brought an iPod Touch and one USB jump drive with different types of files (DSD, FLAC multiple resolutions, WAV, AIFF, nothing under 16/44.1) and puzzled each and every car salesman along the way. All the listening was done in stationary, non-running cars and some also during driving.

After all, I was disappointed with some that I had expected to be top-notch. Burmester in S coupe, for example. Not bad compared to others, but not as stunning as pedigree would make me think. For some reason, Jaguar XJ with Meridian system was the most pleasing to me. Another revelation was inconsistency of what a certain system could play. Pretty much nothing I tried could play AIFF, unless played from iPod, and pretty much everything could play FLAC, but resolutions varied. Tesla would play from iPod (or your iPhone) only via Bluetooth despite having an USB port which serves for...charging. Nothing I tried played DSD at that time. BMW was charging $1200 for Harman/Kardon upgrade, but deep at the end of instructions that most would never read, says that it would not play anything over, I believe, 320 Kbps. I had no mp3s, but it had no problem with AIFFs, for whatever it is worth. Volkswagen with Fender system was the most convenient by far with SD card slot (works even with 512 GB card) and USB port that actually connects. Unfortunately, Fender made sure that your opera will sound like a garage band. Everything else, too. It was basically unlistenable on most of the material/genres. So, these days we got to the point that sound is just a half of the problem.