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Playing Music using a USB drive...best format?

24K views 6 replies 3 participants last post by  macdarren 
#1 ·
Well I have been playing with sync for a the last few days and I am finding using a usb drive to store my music is how I want to go for the time being.

What I have found however, is that certain bit rate and encoding styles seem to give sync problems (slow startup or brief pauses during playback are the big issues). I am just guessing that maybe the Sync CPU is not quite fast enough for some of the higher quality compression formats to say nothing of the Apple Lossless format which I can't get to work at all even though it is ACC and should be, according to all the info I can find from Ford, Sync compatible.

I have tried WAV files which are not compressed and they seem to play fine with no odd pauses. WAV however doesn't embed the artist and other meta data so its use is limited.

I am now embarking on a mission to re-encode most of my music library to a format compatible with Sync. Before I start I want to select the best quality format that will work without problems on Sync. So the question is what bit rates and encoding formats have people used that work well with sync?

I would prefer to maximize sound quality, over compression.

What works for you?

TIA
 
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#3 ·
To be honest I haven't tried too many MP3 combinations as I have stuck with AAC for most of my tests since I was trying to figure out why I was getting the pauses in the first place.

I am thinking maybe 256 bit MP3 with or without VBR might be the way to go but the skipping problem has been sort of hit and miss so I am hoping with all the people here, having tested more songs at more encodings will tell me the best choice before I start a mass conversion, even though as you as Audrey suggested it is really pretty easy to do in iTunes.
 
#4 ·
#6 ·
I am using one of the approved file structures and I have no problem using voice commands, indexing takes some time but it is a one time deal, same ith building te voice commands.

I am not trying to use DRM music, my source material is all apple lossless ripped from my CDs a while back. I'll check out "all2mp3" and see what it offers. I am using a Mac though I could use a PC if there was a need so far I haven't seen that it makes much difference I have the sme results from both.

I am using a FAT32 file system and have done a opulent reormats while playing around. The software 'syncmyitunes' from the above site doesn't really do much besides clean up meta info. It doesn't re-encode and really is more or the indexing and voice part I think not for the actual playback. It would be nice if it at east checked the file format for compatibility but it doesn't.
 
#7 ·
A 'final' update to this thread:

I settled, for now, on 256 VBR encoding for my music on the Fiesta Drive.

It is kind of a pain to keep the lossless AAC and assorted other AACs and the MP3 versions for those that skip but the MP3s don't skip and the lossless are of course nearly perfect copies that I can always use to recreate different encodings from in the future.

The new MP3s sound good with the stock 6 speaker system, my biggest complaint now is that unless I compress the dynamic range they have to retain
levels that make them quieter than the typical radio station so I have to be careful when switching from MP3 to radio so I don't blast myself or passengers.

I eventually plan to put in some Polk speakers to replace the paper factory units, which I think will improve sound quality but really for a factory system in an expensive car the stock stuff sounds pretty decent now that it isn't skipping, and I have the DSP and EQ stuff kinda set up the way I like.
 
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