[MANNAXMAN]

Originally Posted by ember1205

Considering a CD has a bitrate approximately six times that of the BEST bitrate of an MP3, the sound can absolutely be better. If was recorded and mastered correctly. And is sampled appropriately by the player itself. And fed through amps that can reproduce the detail. And played through speakers that can handle the frequencies. Which are positioned properly. Etc., etc., etc.

Yes, the CD is certainly capable, but audio systems are all about the weakest link in the chain. And audio systems in a CAR are pretty much nothing but weak links. :(

As far as FLAC goes, I -thought- I had read somewhere that you actually CAN play them simply be renaming them to .mp3?

Originally Posted by ember1205

There's a high likelihood I'm wrong about it... And, even if it works, it may not genuinely play correctly or as true lossless... Just because the system sees it as a supported container, it could still refuse to play the content if it's not encoded in a manner that the unit understands.

Yes, someone posted in the Audio section of this forum that changing the extension to .mp3 allows FLAC files to be played. I have not tried it myself to see if it actually works.

[FarmerFran]

Originally Posted by ember1205

Yeah, I think that's about right.

I've worked with technology for a very long time. One thing I have come to appreciate is that most people don't care -how- it works, they just care -that- it works. These sort of situations get a little more tricky because there's more expectation -that- it will work and all of a sudden it requires a little bit of understanding -how- it works.

pretty much this

[arpad_m]

Originally Posted by ember1205

Yeah, I think that's about right.

I've worked with technology for a very long time. One thing I have come to appreciate is that most people don't care -how- it works, they just care -that- it works. These sort of situations get a little more tricky because there's more expectation -that- it will work and all of a sudden it requires a little bit of understanding -how- it works.

Originally Posted by FarmerFran

pretty much this

Revenge of the Law of Leaky Abstractions

[shoe5163]

My mp3 player has 128gb of music, makes hands free phone calls, does waze and radar app all over Bluetooth and android auto when plugged in.

[Msquared]

My 2020 seems to be able to play FLAC files without renaming. I wonder if that changed when they went from MOST to the new ethernet-based communication protocol in 2019?

[ember1205]

Originally Posted by shoe5163

My mp3 player has 128gb of music, makes hands free phone calls, does waze and radar app all over Bluetooth and android auto when plugged in.

Understood... The downside to that is that you are chewing up a ton of storage on your phone to hold music (do you really have 128G of music on there? Must be a 256G phone?).

I hate BT headphones - they all suck. So, listening to music on my phone is an absolute no-go. Plus, headphone quality is poor and doesn't benefit from higher bitrate MP3 files. That means that 128G of storage is either being heavily 'wasted' on higher quality files than BT headphones could ever reproduce (which is an expensive price to pay to upgrade the storage in a phone) or there are enough low-quality MP3's on there to start your own streaming service. Just listen to the radio at that point...

[FarmerFran]

Originally Posted by Msquared

My 2020 seems to be able to play FLAC files without renaming. I wonder if that changed when they went from MOST to the new ethernet-based communication protocol in 2019?

My 2020 does not. I have the 2SS 8" but not the nav system.

[ctrlz]

I really wish these cars played Edison wax cylinders, 100% analogue with no electronics in the chain. Closest thing to being there!

Anyway, something else I found with problem USB's is they are more likely to be recognized if you wait for the splash screens to finish in the gauge cluster prior to hitting the start button.

[ember1205]

Originally Posted by ctrlz

I really wish these cars played Edison wax cylinders, 100% analogue with no electronics in the chain. Closest thing to being there!

Anyway, something else I found with problem USB's is they are more likely to be recognized if you wait for the splash screens to finish in the gauge cluster prior to hitting the start button.

Which Start button are you referring to?

As an aside, I periodically have an actual USB drive just simply "go missing" from the car periodically, similar to what another poster had mentioned. Turn off, run into store, re-start, and it's present again (most times).

Are there drives that have some issues? Yes. But, those same drives fail to be recognized by my computer. So, what's different? Oh yeah... the crappy software that these units run.

[Msquared]

Originally Posted by FarmerFran

My 2020 does not. I have the 2SS 8" but not the nav system.

How strange! Mine is a 1SS, but the same system 8" screen without nav. You and I should both have the IOS system, therefore. Don't know what to make of that...

[ctrlz]

Originally Posted by ember1205

Which Start button are you referring to?

My car sits unlocked in the garage every night.
When I open the door to get in, the "Camaro" business scrolls across the gauge cluster. When the last "Camaro" fades out I hit the engine start button.
This is just a habit I formed when I was using other USB's. Sometimes I would have to stop the car (meaning engine off), pull the USB, and reinsert to get the music to start. I am very anti-radio, so this is important to me. Anyway, I noticed that waiting for the splash screen to finish improved the likelihood of the USB playing normally. My Samsung USB BAR is not 100%. Maybe once every few months it won't start. Then I typically go to an FM station (where I invariably hear an ad, not music!) and back to media. I don't have to turn the engine off anymore.
So, my theory is there is some kind of polling of the connected devices going on while the splash screen is splashing. Hitting "start" too early diverts power from infotainment, and corrupts the polling.

[ember1205]

Originally Posted by ctrlz

My car sits unlocked in the garage every night.
When I open the door to get in, the "Camaro" business scrolls across the gauge cluster. When the last "Camaro" fades out I hit the engine start button.
This is just a habit I formed when I was using other USB's. Sometimes I would have to stop the car (meaning engine off), pull the USB, and reinsert to get the music to start. I am very anti-radio, so this is important to me. Anyway, I noticed that waiting for the splash screen to finish improved the likelihood of the USB playing normally. My Samsung USB BAR is not 100%. Maybe once every few months it won't start. Then I typically go to an FM station (where I invariably hear an ad, not music!) and back to media. I don't have to turn the engine off anymore.
So, my theory is there is some kind of polling of the connected devices going on while the splash screen is splashing. Hitting "start" too early diverts power from infotainment, and corrupts the polling.

Ah... I follow what you're getting at now.

Opening the door does seem to trigger a sort of "light boot-up" where certain components in the car begin to initialize. And I could see where waiting for that to reach a certain point (you're measuring that point by waiting for the splash screens to finish) would put the various components into a minimal level of initialization to where they're more "ready" for the full power-up to occur and process everything correctly.

My deeper suspicion is that this is yet another example of half-assed software coding on the part of whomever develops and maintains the Infotainment software for GM.

[arpad_m]

Originally Posted by ember1205

My deeper suspicion is that this is yet another example of half-assed software coding on the part of whomever develops and maintains the Infotainment software for GM.

Heh, it's called "focus on most value delivered" (edge cases be damned) and "agile" (go-go code monkey, finish the jira already and pull down the next). I'm not defending sloppy coding, but often there is simply no allowance (time & manpower) for polish.

There was, or is a similar module init bug in the 2.5 software around the remote start sequence that caused some settings to never appear in the infotainment until the car is started next time, there were a few threads about it.

I for one never wrote software for cars (only UAVs), but I can imagine there can be tricky timing issues depending on the language/platform used.

[ember1205]

Originally Posted by arpad_m

Heh, it's called "focus on most value delivered" (edge cases be damned) and "agile" (go-go code monkey, finish the jira already and pull down the next). I'm not defending sloppy coding, but often there is simply no allowance (time & manpower) for polish.

There was, or is a similar module init bug in the 2.5 software around the remote start sequence that caused some settings to never appear in the infotainment until the car is started next time, there were a few threads about it.

In my Silverado, I have the integrated brake controller. If I press the rocker switch on the wheel to change from one radio station to another, the station doesn't change until the system at least -starts- painting the graphic in the cluster that shows the list of preset. This generally results in about a 1-1.5 second delay between button press and station change.

If I squeeze the brake controller level as if I were manually applying trailer brakes (even with no trailer connected), -IT- paints a graphic in the cluster that shows brake gain and it will remain for about 30 seconds after the last adjustment is done. If this graphic is present when I press that station change rocker switch, the change is immediate and nothing displays in the cluster. It's a moronic approach to restrict the actual change of the station until it determines whether or not it can paint a graphic...