listening to music in the car

glupson,

Your experience is much like my own.   I had a BMW X5 that had iPod connection in glove box.  It played all the files I had on the iPod but I admit most were ripped from CD rather than high res downloads.

Then I lost my mind and bought a C7 Stingray.  Terrible car but I'll skip that conversation and just say that listening at almost any speed was impossible due to noise and quality of the factory Bose system.

That car lasted about year, it was driving me crazy for many reasons but now addicted to performance and handling but needed a SUV I had a time finding something that would do both.

A friend suggested Porsche Macan, I drove one and it was instant love affair.  Ordered the Turbo (highest performance version) but skipped the Burmester in favor of other options.

Noise level is about 66 DB for my model with special glass.  Making it  quieter than Cadillac, Jag and Mercedes. 

Even with nice quiet levels the Bose is not great,  and like you I find it hard to play AIFF other than iPod.   Mine has option for SD cards and it recognizes the card but won't play unless it's FLAC or MP4.   I find that strange since Car Play is supposedly backed by Apple and AIFF is an Apple format.

I need more space in my iPod but currently the new iPod touch is available with maximum 128GB.   These days with memory so cheap I don't understand why Apple does not offer a premium model with 512 or even higher memory.  

Sync music to iPod is simple and reliable and plugged into the USB on car with Car Play it displays everything about what's being played and can be controlled a number of ways including voice command.

I've looked at other high end portable players but none seem to be compatible with USB much less Car Play.   I guess could buy a used iPhone and turn off the SIM which essentially converts it to an iPod but what a hassle and waste of money just to get some additional music space. 

My home system has a server with 12TB of music.   512 GB does not seem to me an unreasonable requirement for a portable player. 

My Sienna van has a pretty crappy system with it's ear piercing  pillar mounted tweeters and door speakers that rattle.    It makes coming home and turning on my system much more enjoyable. 

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.

Oddiofyl,

I feel for you.  I've not owned a Sienna but there is no shortage of bad car audio and tweeters do seem to bring out the worst. 

glupson,

VW is a great car, but I have not heard their sound system.   I believe you when you say it hurts.   That's the same problem had with the C7 Stingray but a great deal of that problem was ambient noise and listening too loud to overcome same.

I will look into your suggestion on  dbpoweramp.   I don't think I've used their software but memory cards are cheap so it's worth a shot. I currently have two SD cards and no where near full. In fact just a few dozen albums on each since I kept hoping for a higher capacity iPod.

My experiments with SD card was frustrating and how I learned about FLAC, MP4 and AIFF and compatibility (or lack there of)  with Car Play.  

My iPod music is on my personal computer so it would be easy to sync up all the existing music to larger iPod in a matter of minutes.   I have more music on my computer than current iPod will hold.   To me it's easier than loading SD cards.

I enjoyed your story about the Tesla salesman, it's true most people don't care that much about sound, in the car or at home. We are the minority and as you implied, we have to live with it.

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.