Leaf Audio/Music Features

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evnow

Well-known member
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Taking over the thread to keep the first post updated.

What we know so far
- USB stick works for music
- CD player works for audio cds and compressed music (mp3 etc)
- Audio CD-RW: Works as regular audio CD. If it has CD-text, it will be displayed.
- MP3s on CD-RW: Works. Each folder of MP3s is an album. No cover art.
- MP3s on DVD+RW: Not recognized. I guess the disk player only works with CDs and their variants.
- iPhone: Tested Bluetooth A2DP and it works but its functionality seems limited to pause/play of whatever is currently playing.
- Radio text is displayed-for example, KOST FM will show name of current song.

What we guess
- Leaf has BlueTooth AVRCP Level 1 which will allow devices with bluetooth (mostly smartphones) to play/skip/pause music. metadata etc will not be shown
- The SD card reader may or may not play music. "I couldn't get it to recognize this card in Slot A. It is possible that you would have to navigate the menus and maybe "mount" it. Slot B was already occupied by an SD card for the NAV system."

Check the chapter 4 of Maxima 2011 manual. The features are likely to be same.

http://www.nissan-techinfo.com/refgh0v/og/Maxima/2011-Nissan-Maxima.pdf
 
Frank and Gary:

Based on current Nissan technology the audio system fully controls the iPod/iPhone (including display on dash) and will also charge it. Apple has changed many things over the years, so not all units will charge, and most will be controlled via audio. Only way to know is to plug it in. It may be able to stream bluetooth audio (some Nissans do already), but don't know for sure.

A flash drive will display folders and have control over song selection. It's been verified usable with up to an 8GB flash drive. You really want to manage the flash drive when you set up your recordings as the audio system pretty much just plays what it sees.

USB will also control any other USB enabled device - doesn't need to be an i...
 
LEAFguy said:
Frank and Gary:

Based on current Nissan technology the audio system fully controls the iPod/iPhone (including display on dash) and will also charge it. Apple has changed many things over the years, so not all units will charge, and most will be controlled via audio. Only way to know is to plug it in. It may be able to stream bluetooth audio (some Nissans do already), but don't know for sure.

A flash drive will display folders and have control over song selection. It's been verified usable with up to an 8GB flash drive. You really want to manage the flash drive when you set up your recordings as the audio system pretty much just plays what it sees.

USB will also control any other USB enabled device - doesn't need to be an i...

If it can stream Bluetooth music (A2DP) that would be very nice but Nissan so far has only stated that Bluetooth will be used for phone calls. One of the head units in the 2010 Altima can stream A2DP Bluetooth music so if you consider a 2011 Leaf to be a higher tier Nissan model than the Altima it should also have the A2DP feature.

The reason I asked about which iPods work is that I would like to purchase an iPod and would use it primarily in the Leaf if all of the tracks, playlists, and albums are shown on the Leaf's screen (the album art would be nice too :) ). I like the Nano but am not sure if I like the 5th generation or the new smaller 6th generation better. I would only want to get it if the Leaf would charge it through the USB port in the Leaf. Why hasn't Nissan released more specific info on the audio system when the vehicle is supposed to begin production this month?
 
And again, since it's related to this thread:

Tap 2 Go Back, please!!

Can't I just hit a well-placed button to go back 7 seconds? Just tap it? Not hold it down between 3-5 seconds to avoid it sending me to the beginning of a chapter if too short or back to far if too long. The seconds shall be 3 to 5 and 3 to 5 shall those seconds be. 2 is right out! I mean, why does this have to be so complicated. Just tap to go back, like the skip-back button on the TiVo or many DVRs. >sigh<
 
Many simple, well accepted Audio, Video, Phone, USB, and Nav features are VERY helpful, and not difficult to implement.

However, many of these are way beyond the normal "car-design" thinking.

Multi-point Nav routing can bu used to force a route to go where you want to go, maybe avoiding a big hill, or actually visiting several e-stations.

But, concentrating on the basic car functions, stopping, braking, skidding, handling, charging, and regen, etc. is usually a MUCH bigger concern for Generation-1 vehicles.

However, to help make the high cost of the EV seem more tolerable, Nissan could put in most of the useful, high-end, "nice" functions already found in their higher-end vehicles.

For example, will the voice "training" for the voice-input of 3 people (in the Altima?) be included the LEAF?
 
As I posted on the Street Smart thread, I auditioned the Leaf audio system today...

Here is the Photobucket link for my album:
http://s811.photobucket.com/albums/zz40 ... pt%202010/

Here is a photo showing the audio system running with a USB stick installed:
http://i811.photobucket.com/albums/zz40 ... 010/01.jpg

Before leaving the house today, I threw some mp3 files onto a USB stick. I got there early. Tom from Nissan was great (thanks Tom) and powered up the Leaf and let me do my audio thing! I'm giving what I saw 2 thumbs up, as it was better than I expected. I plugged in the stick and within a couple of seconds the USB screen popped up (I think; we were messing with the radio at the time). The screen you'll see is what I took a photo of, and it showed all 6 folders, and had titles for all of them. My mp3 files had the "Tags" populated, and all the information showed up correctly.

The car seems to have 6 speakers, 2 in the rear doors, 2 in the front doors and 2 tweeters up above the driver and passenger (L and R, respectively). We couldn't turn it up too loud, but it sounded better than I was expecting it to.

Check out the photos...It was great to see the car and meet the Nissan guys.
 
Randy said:
As I posted on the Street Smart thread, I auditioned the Leaf audio system today...

Here is the Photobucket link for my album:
http://s811.photobucket.com/albums/zz40 ... pt%202010/

Here is a photo showing the audio system running with a USB stick installed:
http://i811.photobucket.com/albums/zz40 ... 010/01.jpg

Before leaving the house today, I threw some mp3 files onto a USB stick. I got there early. Tom from Nissan was great (thanks Tom) and powered up the Leaf and let me do my audio thing! I'm giving what I saw 2 thumbs up, as it was better than I expected. I plugged in the stick and within a couple of seconds the USB screen popped up (I think; we were messing with the radio at the time). The screen you'll see is what I took a photo of, and it showed all 6 folders, and had titles for all of them. My mp3 files had the "Tags" populated, and all the information showed up correctly.

The car seems to have 6 speakers, 2 in the rear doors, 2 in the front doors and 2 tweeters up above the driver and passenger (L and R, respectively). We couldn't turn it up too loud, but it sounded better than I was expecting it to.

Check out the photos...It was great to see the car and meet the Nissan guys.

Randy - Thanks for conducting the audio experiment. I tried the links you posted but couldn't get to the photos you took.

When the audio head unit recognized your USB flash drive what happens when you select a song to play? Does the album name and track name show up on the screen? What about the album art, does that display? What happens when the song selected is over, does it play the next song in the folder?

Edit: The links on this post work: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1229
 
I've got a Sony 16GB MP3 player with ~1700 tracks (more every day!). I guess I could either connect it via USB or just get a memory stick and make a duplicate for the car. Right now all the tracks are just in the "music" directory with no subdirectories. Most of the time, I just set it on "shuffle" for the entire 1700 track library. Hopefully the LEAF USB wouldn't have a problem with this...
 
tps said:
I've got a Sony 16GB MP3 player with ~1700 tracks (more every day!). I guess I could either connect it via USB or just get a memory stick and make a duplicate for the car. Right now all the tracks are just in the "music" directory with no subdirectories. Most of the time, I just set it on "shuffle" for the entire 1700 track library. Hopefully the LEAF USB wouldn't have a problem with this...
Actually this is a bit of a concern of mine, although I'm sure I can deal with it somehow. I have a lot of music burned onto my computer or on CD's that I want to be able to play in the car, but primarily as an alternative to an audio book, which is typically what I listen to, and which I will get from the library in CD form. That means I don't want to pop in one CD when I want to follow the story, then eject that and put in a music CD, etc. Either the book or the music has to be on the USB flash drive so I can switch from CD to USB when I want. It makes much more sense to have the music permanently on the USB since otherwise I would be constantly burning multi-disc audiobooks onto the flash drive and toting it back and forth from the car to my home computer, whereas I could put all my music on one flash drive and just leave it there instead. The problem would come in if the audio system cannot play in random mode from the flash drive. I have very eclectic tastes and don't want to listen to all one type of music. On a CD I might have oldies rock, barbershop quartet, Hawaiian slack key guitar, a Haydn quartet clip, ragtime piano, folk, Buddhist chant, etc. I really don't want to listen to 30 - 60 solid minutes of any one of those but there's no easy way to copy what's on my hard drive in mixed order to the flash drive since they're organized on the drive by albums or genre. I want to be able just to copy everything in bulk and let the stereo play them randomly.
 
tps said:
I've got a Sony 16GB MP3 player with ~1700 tracks (more every day!). I guess I could either connect it via USB or just get a memory stick and make a duplicate for the car. Right now all the tracks are just in the "music" directory with no subdirectories. Most of the time, I just set it on "shuffle" for the entire 1700 track library. Hopefully the LEAF USB wouldn't have a problem with this...
What I would like to know is I have an iphone and it has a USB connector but it is for charging not playing music. Will it work or do I need an adapter?

Man I would like it to have the Ford sync speak to call and select music. :evil: :x :cry:
 
I guess the fallback position is to skip the USB and plug the audio from the player into the 3.5mm auxiliary input. Among other things, that would mean no titles on the LEAF's screen.

Like Rat, I have lots of music from various genres, and shuffle play is very important to me. The best situation for me would be to copy my MP3 files to a USB memory stick (probably 32GB and maybe 64GB) and have the LEAF play them back in shuffle mode. It'd be nice if shutting off the LEAF did not disturb the shuffle sequence, so it would pick up where it left off when the car was restarted (asuming that the memory stick was not removed). I guess I'm trying to emulate programing my own radio channel.

So far as types of files, they're all MP3. A few are purchased from Amazon and other sources, but most are encoded using WinLAME in "High Quality, HiFi, home or quiet listening" mode, tagged with MP3tag and then pushed through MP3gain with a loudness setting of 86 dB. I have both stereo and mono MP3 files; most popular music from the 1960's back (I have a few songs from as far back as the 1920's) is mono, and I convert such files to true monaural before encoding, which not only saves space but fixes the usual sins of CDs mastered from mono sources.
 
I plugin to my USB in our 2010 Prius and play my iPod music on bluetooth, phone/iPod sync to the Bluetooth at the same time without any problems
 
tps said:
I guess the fallback position is to skip the USB and plug the audio from the player into the 3.5mm auxiliary input. Among other things, that would mean no titles on the LEAF's screen.

Like Rat, I have lots of music from various genres, and shuffle play is very important to me. The best situation for me would be to copy my MP3 files to a USB memory stick (probably 32GB and maybe 64GB) and have the LEAF play them back in shuffle mode. It'd be nice if shutting off the LEAF did not disturb the shuffle sequence, so it would pick up where it left off when the car was restarted (asuming that the memory stick was not removed). I guess I'm trying to emulate programing my own radio channel.

So far as types of files, they're all MP3. A few are purchased from Amazon and other sources, but most are encoded using WinLAME in "High Quality, HiFi, home or quiet listening" mode, tagged with MP3tag and then pushed through MP3gain with a loudness setting of 86 dB. I have both stereo and mono MP3 files; most popular music from the 1960's back (I have a few songs from as far back as the 1920's) is mono, and I convert such files to true monaural before encoding, which not only saves space but fixes the usual sins of CDs mastered from mono sources.


Using the mini jack renders poor quality as the D/A conversion and pre-amp on an ipod sucks. I have an aftermarket dock on my truck that takes the digital signal to the stereo and the meta data and the quality is far superior.
 
EVDRIVER said:
Using the mini jack renders poor quality as the D/A conversion and pre-amp on an ipod sucks. I have an aftermarket dock on my truck that takes the digital signal to the stereo and the meta data and the quality is far superior.
Yes, the DAC in the Sony MP3 is better than an iPod, but it's not perfect; probably the DAC in the LEAF's audio system is better, so USB is the way to go unless it has problems with shuffle mode, which would be a show stopper for me.
 
EVDRIVER said:
Using the mini jack renders poor quality as the D/A conversion and pre-amp on an ipod sucks. I have an aftermarket dock on my truck that takes the digital signal to the stereo and the meta data and the quality is far superior.
That's news to me. I have read that the DAC in all mp3 players are essentially the same, but instinctively I knew that didn't make sense. So assuming that the Leaf's audio system has a high quality DAC then it would be best to offload onto a USB flash drive and plug it right into the Leaf. But we don't know the specs for the Leaf's DAC.
 
johnr said:
EVDRIVER said:
Using the mini jack renders poor quality as the D/A conversion and pre-amp on an ipod sucks. I have an aftermarket dock on my truck that takes the digital signal to the stereo and the meta data and the quality is far superior.
That's news to me. I have read that the DAC in all mp3 players are essentially the same, but instinctively I knew that didn't make sense. So assuming that the Leaf's audio system has a high quality DAC then it would be best to offload onto a USB flash drive and plug it right into the Leaf. But we don't know the specs for the Leaf's DAC.


To be more specific, it's not just the DAC but for many reasonable car audio systems it is better to go direct with digital usually. The biggest improvement is not using low res mp3 files. I use 320 on all my mp3 files and my home system is all WAV and FLAC using A modified Sonos into a high-end DAC and then to a high-end pre amp. This configuration yields audio quality similar to a $7000 transport.
 
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