Leaf Audio/Music Features

[LEAFer]

The first (main) SD slot (on the right) is for the map data. The second SD (sub-) slot on the left is for updating the Audio, Visual & Nav System software.

 

[LEAFguy]

I still haven't heard an authoritative answer on whether the audio system has the random/shuffle option. That's important for those of us who don't want to have to load files in "random" order onto the USB drive or, alternatively, listen to a whole album of one thing at a time. Can anyone confirm?

Rat - I am currently driving a 2010 Altima with a USB port. One of the radio station preset buttons acts as a "random" selector for USB play. It can select "random all" or "random folder", so if you have all country music in one folder and all rap in another, you can select either musical type or select all to hear everything. It is likely that the LEAF will be similar.

 

[evnow]

In all other Nissan vehicles there is a chapter called "Monitor, climate, audio, phone and voice recognition systems". In the Leaf manual the same chapter is called "Ventilators and climate control systems".

I wonder whether they will update the Leaf manual or we won't get a manual on "audio, phone and voice recognition systems" at all.

Anyway, as I posted early on checkout the any other Nissan vehicle manual for Audio/Music/Phone details.

 

[EVDRIVER]

I still haven't heard an authoritative answer on whether the audio system has the random/shuffle option. That's important for those of us who don't want to have to load files in "random" order onto the USB drive or, alternatively, listen to a whole album of one thing at a time. Can anyone confirm?

Rat - I am currently driving a 2010 Altima with a USB port. One of the radio station preset buttons acts as a "random" selector for USB play. It can select "random all" or "random folder", so if you have all country music in one folder and all rap in another, you can select either musical type or select all to hear everything. It is likely that the LEAF will be similar.

I thought they recently changed the USB standard to stop playing country music?

 

[garygid]

It is not also likely that the LEAF's Nav, Audio, Plone support functions might be "different" from other models in significant ways?

Yes, "grabbing" another system might be easy, but maybe none had the flexibility to integrate into the CAN, program new menus, handle Cell-Phone data connections, etc. and Nissan HAD to use a "new" Nav/Audio/Control/Communication unit?

Has anybody used the LEAF's audio features enough, and used other models enough, to do a good comparison?

Random
Jump Back
etc.

 

[evnow]

It is not also likely that the LEAF's Nav, Audio, Plone support functions might be "different" from other models in significant ways?

Yes, "grabbing" another system might be easy, but maybe none had the flexibility to integrate into the CAN, program new menus, handle Cell-Phone data connections, etc. and Nissan HAD to use a "new" Nav/Audio/Control/Communication unit?

While taking the code from other models and modifying it should be simple enough - that is probably not what they did - if they are using Windows Automobile 7. A lot of this functionality might come standard with the OS and they would just add the EV navigation, charging, telematics part.

But the important thing is upgradeability.

So, the functionality may be different from other Nissan models (unless all of them are using Windows Automobile now).

 

[Rat]

I still haven't heard an authoritative answer on whether the audio system has the random/shuffle option. That's important for those of us who don't want to have to load files in "random" order onto the USB drive or, alternatively, listen to a whole album of one thing at a time. Can anyone confirm?

Rat - I am currently driving a 2010 Altima with a USB port. One of the radio station preset buttons acts as a "random" selector for USB play. It can select "random all" or "random folder", so if you have all country music in one folder and all rap in another, you can select either musical type or select all to hear everything. It is likely that the LEAF will be similar.

Thanks, that's reassuring. I got a new flash drive for Christmas so I can start loading my music on and not have to worry about the order.

 

[Bud]

Pardon me if this has been answered before, or is a dumb question...I've only had dumb phones before. I felt compelled to make the leap to the iPhone since it will talk to the car, and also has an app to monitor our solar system. But this is more about using the phone IN the car....

Since the car has a USB port, does that obviate the need for a dedicated iPhone interface gadget for charging and transmitting audio...meaning, can you just use the phone<->USB cable that came with the phone to not only interact with the audio system but charge the phone? Also, I know you can go handsfree with bluetooth
(I assume there's a mic somewhere in the cabin?), but would docking the phone with its own USB cable achieve the same thing?

I guess what I'm asking is does the USB port simply consider anything attached to it to be a removeable drive with storage, or is there more to it (such as providing the charge current and/or interfacing to the phone)

I brought my Apple-supplied iPhone USB cable to the test drives and plugged it in. The car 'found' my music right away (folders, playlists and all) AND charged my phone. The steering wheel controls also worked for next, back, volume, etc. :mrgreen:

Does the volume control have infinite settings or is it a click adjust? It always seems that the click setting that I currently have is always one click too loud for what I want.

 

[Jimmydreams]

Pardon me if this has been answered before, or is a dumb question...I've only had dumb phones before. I felt compelled to make the leap to the iPhone since it will talk to the car, and also has an app to monitor our solar system. But this is more about using the phone IN the car....

Since the car has a USB port, does that obviate the need for a dedicated iPhone interface gadget for charging and transmitting audio...meaning, can you just use the phone<->USB cable that came with the phone to not only interact with the audio system but charge the phone? Also, I know you can go handsfree with bluetooth
(I assume there's a mic somewhere in the cabin?), but would docking the phone with its own USB cable achieve the same thing?

I guess what I'm asking is does the USB port simply consider anything attached to it to be a removeable drive with storage, or is there more to it (such as providing the charge current and/or interfacing to the phone)

I brought my Apple-supplied iPhone USB cable to the test drives and plugged it in. The car 'found' my music right away (folders, playlists and all) AND charged my phone. The steering wheel controls also worked for next, back, volume, etc. :mrgreen:

Does the volume control have infinite settings or is it a click adjust? It always seems that the click setting that I currently have is always one click too loud for what I want.

I can't say, Bud....it's been too long since I sat in the demo car. Now, if my crossed-fingers work, I'll be sitting in MY blue Leaf within a week, and I'll tell you then!

:mrgreen:

 

[Randy]

New things I learned about the Leaf Audio, Visual, and Navigation system by reading the Service Manual...

I am currently reading the 213 page Service Manual for the Leaf on the Audio, Visual, and Navigation system....Here are some tidbits of information that are new to me....There's a lot of material in this manual, but here are some items that stuck out. Most notable is the limit of 510 music files total supported on CD or USB. That means no large USB sticks of music.....

Here we go....

* When the display is opened, the map card SD slot is located on the right, and the card slot used for import/export of data is stored on the left.
* The audio system consists of 4 channels x 45W per channel.
* The backup camera display has a "possible route line" drawn based on the steering signal received from the steering sensor via CAN communication.
* Five units of Bluetooth communications devices including audio devices and cell phones can be registered to the AV control unit
* iPods listed in USB section under "iPod action" are iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic, iPod 5th generation, and iPod nano 1st-5th generation
* Is compliant with Bluetooth A2DP 1.2 and AVRCP 1.3
* Audio system has speed sensitive volume function. A table shows attentuation profiles.
* Front door and rear door speakers are 16cm or 6.2" and are rated at 2 ohms
* Front tweeters are 3.5cm and are rated at 4 ohms
* Front speakers pass mid and low range sounds (high freq are routed to front tweeters)
* Rear speakers pass low, mid, and high freqs.
* For better reception, an amplifier is used in conjunction with the AM/FM antenna, powered from the AV control unit
* The GPS antenna is under the drivers side dash, while the cell antenna is in the middle under the dash.
* The hands free microphone hole is on the ceiling next to the map lamp assembly.
* The review camera has a mirror processing function, so a mirror image is sent to the AV Control unit as if it were being viewed by a rear view mirror
* The rear view camera is a 1/4" CCD and is approximately 250K pixels
* The AUX in jack is a 3.5mm audio input
* Map data is memorized in an 8 GB SDHC card
* The Carwings "Reading voice" takes precedence over a hands-free cell phone call
* Music is lowered by 10db when the Carwings "Reading voice" is active
* MP3 files supported on CDs and USB sticks can be 8-320kbps; WMA files can range from 32-192 kbps
* Ouch! Only 510 max files are supported on CD or USB, including a max of 255 in one folder. 255 max folders are supported.
* The system does not support any display of static or motion pictures
* USB sticks can be formatted in FAT16 or FAT32
* USB extension cables are not recommended

and much much more.....

Randy

 

[evnow]

* Ouch! Only 510 max files are supported on CD or USB, including a max of 255 in one folder. 255 max folders are supported.

Lots of great info. Thx.

At avg length 512 tracks is just 2500 minutes or about 2.5 gig. No point getting a 32 GB stick.

 

[prberg]

That is a bummer about the 500 file limit on a USB drive. My music library isn't that big.. and I have about 2500 songs. I bought a few USB drives to use for my music.. and now this will really limit how much I can put on each one. Think they might increase that number in the future? What if someone plugs in an ipod? Will it only access the first 500 songs?

thanks,
Peter

 

[Randy]

After thinking about it overnight, it just doesn't make sense that there would be such a "low" limitation on the number of files. I'm hoping it is a typo, but it does appear in the manual in a couple of places (CD specs and USB specs)...When I tested out the USB stick music play in September, I just used a spare 512MB stick I had laying around (and of course it worked great)...

I don't see myself carrying CDs around anymore. In my last car, I had an Empeg car stereo that had an 80GB hard drive, and I sure got spoiled from that device...

So maybe I'll be carrying a bunch of 5GB sticks in the glovebox?

 

[tps]

According to my Sony Walkman MP3 player, I currently have 2043 songs. It's a 16GB model; at the bitrate I'm encoding I should get ~2400 - 2500 songs. I'll probably be using a 32 GB device by the time I get to order my LEAF here in PA. I wonder if the iPod integration is different than the USB memory? Maybe you get more songs with iPod. I HATE iTunes, which is why I've never considered buying an iPod, but maybe I'll have to reconsider... If Apple had a "transfer only" version, that would be great, but I don't need iTunes "helping" me and screwing stuff up.

 

[evnow]

Is compliant with Bluetooth A2DP 1.2 and AVRCP 1.3

Since Leaf supports AVRCP 1.3, if you get a phone which supports this profile - you will get a lot of functionality. Almost like USB/ipod.

1.0—Basic remote control commands (play/pause/stop, etc.)
1.3—all of 1.0 plus metadata and media-player state support The status of the music source (playing, stopped, etc.)
Metadata information on the track itself (artist, track name, etc.).

 

[garygid]

How does 2 bytes imply 510 tracks?

Maybe you mean 510 requires over one byte to store?

The data allocated for each track might be 256 bytes (title, artist, etc.) or even more (256 bytes more for the file name), and some programmer might just have set such a limit.

Until somebody tests it, we will not really know.

 

[evnow]

How does 2 bytes imply 510 tracks?

Oops. Brain freeze.

 

[Coffee_Slurry]

There's a well-known limitation of 512 entries in the ROOT directory of FAT media.
(One of these is occupied by the Volume Label.)

I wonder if this is in reference to just the root directory, rather than all the file counts in subdirectories combined?

A connected iPod will certainly have more than 512 songs, so it seems like the head unit can handle it at some level.

 

[tps]

How does 2 bytes imply 510 tracks?

Oops. Brain freeze.

Actually, 2 bytes sounds right; 255 folders and 255 files per folder, 1 byte for folder and 1 byte for file-within-folder, which would give a max of 65K tracks. In the immortal words of Bill Gates: "enough for anybody". In fact you'd have to have a lot of very short tracks, very low bit-rate, or a lot of memory to hit the 65K limit. Right now, I'm averaging 300 tracks/GB. If 510 tracks is the limit I could do this with 2GB USB memory. However, I hope that's not the case! My Sony player doesn't seem to care that all ~2050 tracks are in the same directory, but I can split it if need be...

I'm sure we'll know before I get a chance to touch a LEAF in DC this March, but I'll plan to take some media to test the audio, anyway.

 

[Randy]

Here's the actual text from the Service Manual....

Max. number of files 510 (Max. 255 files for one folder)
Max. number of folders 255 (including the root folder)

Since my mp3s average about 8-10MB, it calcs out to be about 4.5 -5GB max...Some files are smaller, etc.