FLAC & HD Radio Support

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

SBCLeaf

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 25, 2020
Messages
84
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the 2020 Leaf audio system supports FLAC even though the owner's manual doesn't mention it. Just thought I'd throw it out there for anyone who doesn't know.

EDIT - Apparently it's in some places in the manual, but not others.
 
Regrettably, experimentation finds that it does not understand FLAC+CUE or embedded CUE sheets.

I was also surprised to learn the radio doesn't support HD radio. I didn't even know you could buy radios that weren't HD radio capable anymore. Kind of like buying a car with no FM radio in the 1980's. I'm pretty sure even Toyota's crackerbox Corollas come with HD radio.
 
SBCLeaf said:
Regrettably, experimentation finds that it does not understand FLAC+CUE or embedded CUE sheets.

I was also surprised to learn the radio doesn't support HD radio. I didn't even know you could buy radios that weren't HD radio capable anymore. Kind of like buying a car with no FM radio in the 1980's. I'm pretty sure even Toyota's crackerbox Corollas come with HD radio.
MANY MANY vehicles do not have HD Radio. My '19 Bolt doesn't have it. If you look at https://hdradio.com/get-a-radio/ under Chevy, very few Chevys have it. I've never ever owned nor leased a vehicle with "HD" Radio.

https://hdradio.com/new_car_manufacturer/nissan/ claims it's standard on Leaf. On many other brands, it's available but not standard. https://hdradio.com/new_car_manufacturer/toyota-3/ has it available on many cars but not standard on Corolla.

As someone who doesn't care much about somewhat esoteric file formats, I couldn't personally care less about FLAC or CUE sheets. I'd never even heard of the latter. Often, the support for digital music playback from flash drives on cars has pretty poor UI or features or just is a bad experience. It's not something that's even worth the time IMHO. Long ago, I used to just use an 80 gig iPod Classic via headphone jack. Why bother w/the complications of directories, weird tools to make playlists, no song ratings, etc.?

For my Bolt, I just use my iPhone 8 w/CarPlay. I have a bunch of music synced to my phone via iTunes but also play some streaming music via Spotify, Pandora, etc. and also listen to some SiriusXM (yeah yeah, the sound quality is poor).

On the note of FM radio, when Tesla started offering $2500 MCU1 to MCU2 upgrades (for older Model S and X), one would lose AM, FM and Sirius XM: https://electrek.co/2020/03/02/tesla-mcu-infotainment-upgrade/. After months of complaining, news come out about another $500 on top of that (https://electrek.co/2020/10/28/tesla-brings-back-radio-infotainment-retrofit/) to restore AM and FM.
 
cwerdna said:
As someone who doesn't care much about somewhat esoteric file formats, I couldn't personally care less about FLAC or CUE sheets. I'd never even heard of the latter. Often, the support for digital music playback from flash drives on cars has pretty poor UI or features. It's not something that's even worth the time IMHO. Long ago, I used to just use an 80 gig iPod Classic via headphone jack. Why bother w/the complications of directories, weird tools to make playlists, no song ratings, etc.?

It only matters because that's how a large number of audiophiles store their music collection. You save compact discs to a single FLAC file with cue sheet. That allows you to create a bit-for-bit identical copy of the original CD as needed, to listen to an album with the pre-track gaps or gapless tracks as they are on the original recording, store album artwork, and other features all in a single file. Supporting that format eliminates the need to convert your entire audio collection to some other format or arrangement that is supported by the car. To me it's much less messy to have 150 FLAC files, each one a CD, rather than 2,000+ tracks with the common problem of no gapless playback and having to name them in a peculiar way just to make sure the car's audio system plays them in the order they are on the CD.

It's not a big deal, but I often wonder why it's not supported since there's any number of open source software available for them to cut and paste into their units.
 
SBCLeaf said:
It only matters because that's how a large number of audiophiles store their music collection. You save compact discs to a single FLAC file with cue sheet. That allows you to create a bit-for-bit identical copy of the original CD as needed, to listen to an album with the pre-track gaps or gapless tracks as they are on the original recording, store album artwork, and other features all in a single file. Supporting that format eliminates the need to convert your entire audio collection to some other format or arrangement that is supported by the car. To me it's much less messy to have 150 FLAC files, each one a CD, rather than 2,000+ tracks with the common problem of no gapless playback and having to name them in a peculiar way just to make sure the car's audio system plays them in the order they are on the CD.

CDs? I don't know when I last bought one. From my Amazon history, the last time I bought a physical music CD from them was in 2011. I don't recall if I bought any from other places more recently than that. I probably won't be buying many more as my Bolt doesn't even have a CD player. And, the CD player in my '13 Leaf I've almost never used. I remember using it for a bit to make sure it was working right before the car's 3 year/36K warranty expired.

I have a multi-disc CD changer for my stereo I bought at least 15 years ago that is almost never used now and was hardly used even before. IIRC, Apple stopped shipping any computers w/optical drives for awhile. And, most laptops don't have them any longer.

I couldn't care less about what order there are on a CD. In most cases, if I'd bought an album, I only actually like maybe 1/4 or less of the songs on it. Gapless playback? Seems like a minor problem and something I wouldn't care about either.

As for naming in peculiar way, that's a problem. That's why if one cares, iTunes takes care of this for you, You can make playlists for an album to play in any order you want. And, IIRC, from iPods and iPhones, you can select to play a given album from an artist (I almost never do this). No need to rename files, do goofy stuff or be at the mercy of a car stereo's UI or conventions.
SBCLeaf said:
It's not a big deal, but I often wonder why it's not supported since there's any number of open source software available for them to cut and paste into their units.
Maybe because I've never even heard of your use cases.

I suspect probably some of the more important features that automakers are interested in putting in all their head units (if not already there) is supporting both CarPlay and Android Auto. That can sometimes make a difference being customers choosing one car/brand over or another (e.g. if one car only has CarPlay but buyer uses Android and competing car supports both). And, they want other marketing/marketable bullet points (e.g. we have this and that telematics-related feature). I doubt you'd find most car buyers picking one car over another over FLAC or FLAC+CUE.

Too bad I can't post a poll about FLAC usage here as I'm not currently a paid member. For kicks, searched for FLAC on this site (https://www.mynissanleaf.com/search.php?keywords=flac&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search) and found a whopping 14 hits, so it's not a real popular discussion topic here w/this thread, prior discussion from 2016 and some from 2012 back to 2010... There would only be 9 hits if it weren't for this thread. :)
 
salyavin said:
Why not just play the FLAC files from your phone and have it connect via android auto, carplay or even just bluetooth?
For Bluetooth A2DP streaming, from what I've looked at briefly before, depending on what the source and the target device support, there might be transcoding to another format going on behind the scenes, possibly introducing lossiness.
 
cwerdna said:
After months of complaining, news come out about another $500 on top of that (https://electrek.co/2020/10/28/tesla-brings-back-radio-infotainment-retrofit/) to restore AM and FM.
Minor correction: the newer digital radio only does FM (with HD support) and Sirius/XM, but not AM.

I had the MCU upgrade done on my Model S and have lost the FM radio, but I realized that I stream music 99% of the time and almost never used the radio. The two radio stations I did listen to I stream via the built-in Tunein app.
 
In 2005 I was all excited by the FLAC support on the PhatBox I installed in my Passat, so that I could have gapless playback of my ripped CDs. Of course then I had to upgrade the 20MB harddrive to a 120MB one (at a cost of $100). Eventually I went with all MP3s simply to get more music into the system.

On a trip yesterday I was listening to Vocomotion's Dark Side of the Moon - A Cappella and surprised that the Spotify playback in my Model S did gapless playback.
 
cwerdna said:
CDs? I don't know when I last bought one.

I like my music collection stored in a way that can't be remotely wiped, modified, or edited by Apple/Amazon.

cwerdna said:
As for naming in peculiar way, that's a problem. That's why if one cares, iTunes takes care of this for you, You can make playlists for an album to play in any order you want. And, IIRC, from iPods and iPhones, you can select to play a given album from an artist (I almost never do this). No need to rename files, do goofy stuff or be at the mercy of a car stereo's UI or conventions.

iTunes is the worst software I've ever had to use in almost 40 years of using PCs. It is not allowed on any computer I use. Any encoding or tagging software can do a better job naming and organizing music files. The objection is having to futz with all that stupidity in the first place.

I do not own Apple hardware as for me it is overpriced given its limitations.

cwerdna said:
Maybe because I've never even heard of your use cases.

I think you're just used to the limitations of Apple software/hardware.
 
cwerdna said:
CDs? I don't know when I last bought one.
SBCLeaf said:
I like my music collection stored in a way that can't be remotely wiped, modified, or edited by Apple/Amazon.
Of music that I own, I still have CDs that have been ripped. The resulting .mp3 are on my PC and synced to my iPods (don't use those much any more) and iPhone 8. If any other music is in a digital file format, most of it is stored locally on my machine and not DRMed, some of it synced. I can't recall very much of anything in terms of digital music I bought is only in the cloud.
cwerdna said:
As for naming in peculiar way, that's a problem. That's why if one cares, iTunes takes care of this for you, You can make playlists for an album to play in any order you want. And, IIRC, from iPods and iPhones, you can select to play a given album from an artist (I almost never do this). No need to rename files, do goofy stuff or be at the mercy of a car stereo's UI or conventions.
SBCLeaf said:
iTunes is the worst software I've ever had to use in almost 40 years of using PCs. It is not allowed on any computer I use. Any encoding or tagging software can do a better job naming and organizing music files. The objection is having to futz with all that stupidity in the first place.

I do not own Apple hardware as for me it is overpriced given its limitations.
I will agree iTunes had devolved into a stagnant, not particularly great app w/too much stuff thrown into it. Apple finally axed it on the Mac w/a replacement, kinda. I wouldn't know as I don't use the Mac replacement.

I used to be very anti-Apple and had a similar attitude as you about iTunes. I thought "why so complicated?" Ages ago, I redeemed TiVo reward points for a click-wheel 20 gig IPod (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Classic#4th_generation) and began using iTunes. I saw the light. It was easy to rip CDs which were all tagged for me + put in proper directories for me w/o any work. The computer was the source of truth and satellite devices (e.g. iPods) would sync to them. Was easy to make/edit playlists, smart playlists, rate songs on either side and it would just sync and work! No need to worry about directories, how to organize .mp3 files on disk, naming them, etc.

Don't like a song? Easy to search for it and delete it. When I next sync, it'll be gone from my iPod. Rip a new CD? When I sync, it'll be added. Buy a song for 99 cents? Easy peasy and it'll be added. Make edits to playlist on my PC or create a new one? One next sync, it'll be synced automatically. This was at least 20x better than what I had to deal with before.

What was that song I liked that I didn't get a chance to give a 4 or 5 star rating from my iPod? Was easy to sync and look at my smart playlist to see what I listened to recently and rate it. IIRC, there was a default smart playlist of My Top Rated which dynamically updated with all songs you rated 4+ stars. I made another SPL for 3+ stars and others for stuff like My 3+ star songs not heard in the last 30 days, so I could rotate thru my music. I made SPLs like, Artist = ____ or Artist = _____ and so on so that I would always have a dynamically updated playlist of songs from those artists.

When Apple added podcast support, that got me into the world of podcasts. I could just easily subscribe to a few and sync when I hooked up my iPod. No need to do a whole bunch of work to listen to podcasts on the go.

For music, playlist and smart playlist management, it is still ok, just stagnant and the UI takes a bit of getting used to. Yes, I'm well aware it has been heavily criticized by PC and Mac users for years. I'm guessing some of it comes from people who never really learned it or got used to it.
SBCLeaf said:
I think you're just used to the limitations of Apple software/hardware.
Maybe so.

As for Apple hardware, yes, there's the "Apple tax". The laptops and "Pro" Macs are too expensive. For several years, the Mac Mini was WAY outdated and overpriced. It was unbelievable that Apple could get away with that. Their trash can Mac Pro eventually became WAY oudated and WAY overpriced.

I don't own a Mac. I do work on iOS stuff for a living now (go figure) and have had a Mac laptop from work since 2013. I also worked on Mac software for about 4 years at a different company, However, I'm a PC guy and it'd be pretty unlikely for me to switch to only a Mac.

i also intentionally carry an Android phone for work (for over 7 years) but I have no music on it whatsoever. I've never even launched Android Auto once in my Bolt. Don't care. Not my primary phone and likely will never be. I use CarPlay w/my Bolt.
 
cwerdna said:
SBCLeaf said:
iTunes is the worst software I've ever had to use in almost 40 years of using PCs. It is not allowed on any computer I use. Any encoding or tagging software can do a better job naming and organizing music files. The objection is having to futz with all that stupidity in the first place.

I do not own Apple hardware as for me it is overpriced given its limitations.
I will agree iTunes had devolved into a stagnant, not particularly great app w/too much stuff thrown into it. Apple finally axed it on the Mac w/a replacement, kinda. I wouldn't know as I don't use the Mac replacement.

I used to be very anti-Apple and had a similar attitude as you about iTunes. I thought "why so complicated?" Ages ago, I redeemed TiVo reward points for a click-wheel 20 gig IPod (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Classic#4th_generation) and began using iTunes. I saw the light. It was easy to rip CDs which were all tagged for me + put in proper directories for me w/o any work. The computer was the source of truth and satellite devices (e.g. iPods) would sync to them. Was easy to make/edit playlists, smart playlists, rate songs on either side and it would just sync and work! No need to worry about directories, how to organize .mp3 files on disk, naming them, etc.

It's not that it's complicated, it's that other than AAC it's a low-quality encoder and it tries to force you into using it to manage your music library. I don't want iTunes to manage my music. I have a filesystem for that. I know what's where and I don't need iTunes insisting on being the middle man. Every single thing iTunes does can be done more quickly, better, and more reliably by other software (like Foobar2k and qaac).
 
SBCLeaf said:
Regrettably, experimentation finds that it does not understand FLAC+CUE or embedded CUE sheets.

I was also surprised to learn the radio doesn't support HD radio. I didn't even know you could buy radios that weren't HD radio capable anymore. Kind of like buying a car with no FM radio in the 1980's. I'm pretty sure even Toyota's crackerbox Corollas come with HD radio.

I've find that CUE sheets are generally not supported widely. There are some pockets of support, but generally it tends to be incomplete and buggy. Personally I'd love better CUE support because I tend to make mix "sets" which contain multiple tracks; CUE would be ideal for metadata for this, but I have to face the fact that I'm swimming upstream when I expect it to be supported.

So far as FLAC, my 2012 LEAF did not support it, but my 2022 does!

With HD radio, it is my impression that most car manufacturers consider HD radio and satellite radio to be mutually exclusive; very few, if any, cars have both. Given the low bit-rate of both they are definitely not audiophile formats. I looked into putting up a local FM-HD2 stream, it would have been 32 kbps. My current Internet stream is 320 kbps!
 
I've never heard of Foobar2k nor qaac.
tps said:
With HD radio, it is my impression that most car manufacturers consider HD radio and satellite radio to be mutually exclusive; very few, if any, cars have both. Given the low bit-rate of both they are definitely not audiophile formats.
I've never heard of them being mutually exclusive. FWIW, the '22 Niro EV I'm leasing has HD Radio (only car I've ever leased or owned with it) and XM. I do use both but as others have said, HD Radio is nothing to write home about.

It's the base trim (EX) w/no options.
SBCLeaf said:
I was also surprised to learn the radio doesn't support HD radio. I didn't even know you could buy radios that weren't HD radio capable anymore. Kind of like buying a car with no FM radio in the 1980's. I'm pretty sure even Toyota's crackerbox Corollas come with HD radio.
As for Corolla, per https://hdradio.com/new_car_manufacturer/toyota-3/, it's available but not standard. It looks like it's available on most or all Toyotas but not standard on them.

https://hdradio.com/new_car_manufacturer/kia/ seems to indicate it's available on most/all their models but standard on none. Ditto for https://hdradio.com/new_car_manufacturer/honda-2/.

https://hdradio.com/new_car_manufacturer/chevrolet-3/ has it standard on 2 models and available on 2 others. That's it.

The chip shortage has also caused deletion of HD Radio or Sirius XM on some cars: https://www.ceoutlook.com/2021/11/17/leading-car-maker-deletes-siriusxm-hd-radio/.
 
Back
Top