Hi Res Audio Playback

txtx

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If connected through CarPlay or Android Auto, the car can play any audio the phone can. This is because when connected to CarPlay or Android Auto, audio is routed over Bluetooth, so the phone takes care of decoding whatever filetype into a bluetooth audio stream.
I have been connecting an iPhone through the front USB port to avoid the Bluetoofs.

I meant digital audio players (DAPs, an Onkyo DP-X1A as an example), not a phone or an iPod. DAPs are mostly Android-based, and I'd like to know if anyone has had direct experience with a Honda rejecting one, treating it like a USB drive, accepting whatever it plays or only through Android Auto.

As described above, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, Ogg, DSD, etc. can all play from a compatible phone because the phone does all the decoding and not the HU.
I believe the head unit must convert to analog, since the signal is all digital until it comes out of the speakers.

If when you're talking "HD-Quality" you're talking about CD-Quality lossless audio, the only lossless files the HU supports on a USB stick are WMA-Lossless. If you're looking for Hi-Res audio (24bit/96khz, etc), the car does not support this in any configuration I have tried. WMA-Lossless is limited to 44.1khz, if you try to play anything with a higher sample rate the HU plays static.
The head unit also accepts lossless WAV files through a USB drive (16-bit/44.1khz anyway).
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daPyr0x

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I have been connecting an iPhone through the front USB port to avoid the Bluetoofs.
As much as it would seemingly make sense that connecting over usb would avoid bluetooth, both carplay and android auto use bluetooth for audio. the usb is only used for video and controls data.

I meant digital audio players (DAPs, an Onkyo DP-X1A as an example), not a phone or an iPod. DAPs are mostly Android-based, and I'd like to know if anyone has had direct experience with a Honda rejecting one, treating it like a USB drive, accepting whatever it plays or only through Android Auto.
I don't have direct experience here, but I can tell you with relative certainty that connecting one of these devices to the USB port in your car would give you the equivalent of plugging a USB flash device containing the same files. It is conceivable to create a device that could transcode on the fly to WAV files that it presents to the HU, but that still wouldn't give you anything more hi-res than encoding to WMA-Lossless and putting that on a static USB flash drive for a lot less money.

There is no way to pass analog audio data over USB to the Honda HU, which is what you would need to do to take advantage of the Hi-res audio support and high-quality DAC features of the devices you describe. It only accepts digital data. Your best case with a device like these would be a HU with an analog input that you can connect to via the headphone jack or other form of line-out. I am not aware of any way to do this with the stock HU with the exception of some aftermarket amplifiers that provide their own line-in option.

I believe the head unit must convert to analog, since the signal is all digital until it comes out of the speakers.
You are correct, the HU does convert to analog. Your phone decodes compressed music (ALAC, MP3, ogg, etc) to an uncompressed state (wav, effectively) and then passes it to the bluetooth chip who recompresses it using lossy compression (possibly even back to mp3) for transmission to the reciever (car HU). The receiever then decodes back to an uncompressed state and passes on to the DAC where it becomes an analog signal for the amplifier and speakers
 
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kg4fxg

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Well, that explains why I see so many wearing ear buds. At first you could have one ear bud in your ear. Then came the hands free law in GA. Cell phone can't be buy your ear and no texting while driving. But yet I see folks with two ear buds in. Actually saw one guy wearing a pair of headphones. Certainly a simple fix to crappy car audio. Illegal I assume. Too dangerous to me as I could not hear anything outside such as emergency vehicles.

BTW, I use Shure SE846. Sound isolating and very good in ear for the audiophile. And no the car audio does not compare to it. Almost impossible to see as they tuck behind your ears such as musicians use on stage.
 
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If connected through CarPlay or Android Auto, the car can play any audio the phone can. This is because when connected to CarPlay or Android Auto, audio is routed over Bluetooth, so the phone takes care of decoding whatever filetype into a bluetooth audio stream. This, however, means that any improvement in sound you would have from playing a lossless audio file instead of an MP3 is moot because the Bluetooth audio codec supported by the HU has the phone encode the audio to a lossy format like MP3 before sending it to the car.

I have looked for some sort of technical paper from Apple confirming exactly how audio is transferred with CarPlay, but I haven’t been able to find anything conclusive. Would you mind sharing if you have a source that confirms this? If accurate, that is frustrating indeed, as it means all the time I put into converting Hi Res files to ALAC thinking I could get Hi Res off my phone was for nothing.
 

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Well, I did some more research and I found a link that proves me wrong. My previous research was Android-focused as I am not an iPhone user. All the same - see here. The presentation describes that when connected via USB, uncompressed PCM audio is sent over the USB connection. When connected wirelessly (not supported by any Hondas I'm aware of), compressed audio (AAC-LC) is sent over Wi-Fi.

All that is to say, losslessly encoded 16/44.1khz files will play losslessly via wired Carplay. I was incorrect in my previous statements, they are only accurate for Android Auto.
 


txtx

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Well, I did some more research and I found a link that proves me wrong. My previous research was Android-focused as I am not an iPhone user. All the same - see here. The presentation describes that when connected via USB, uncompressed PCM audio is sent over the USB connection. When connected wirelessly (not supported by any Hondas I'm aware of), compressed audio (AAC-LC) is sent over Wi-Fi.

All that is to say, losslessly encoded 16/44.1khz files will play losslessly via wired Carplay. I was incorrect in my previous statements, they are only accurate for Android Auto.
I found that presentation as well, and the below screenshot was the most conclusive to me.

From TechRadar 7/2018 about Android Auto...
"Audio is sent to the car’s speakers via USB for music with no reduction in sound quality, unlike with Bluetooth audio streaming. Phone calls are handled via Bluetooth hands-free."

For what they're worth, multiple AA forum posters state the same (audio over USB if you untick Media Usage in BT settings) and the audio sent is PCM 16-bit/44.1k.

Honda Civic 10th gen Hi Res Audio Playback Screen Shot 2019-02-11 at 1.05.29 AM
 
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So Android Auto don't use bluethoot for music in HU ? Just for phone call? I'm confused.
 

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Greetings Folks, I thought I’d share some useful discoveries I made regarding playback of CD quality and higher resolution files on the stock audio system. I am in a 2018 Si.

Originally I had thought I would be limited to high bitrate mp3’s to play back my music. As an audiophile, this wasn’t ideal. All my files are stored as flac and I had converted some to mp3 initially. Then I discovered that Windows Media Audio or WMA has a lossless format. This file format is supported by the headunit. Using jRiver, I was able to convert my flac files to wma lossless. They take up a bit more space than flac but are cd quality none the less. All my cd quality files will be stored on a flash drive in the center console.

I also have some higher resolution files and I spent many hours researching how to get playback on this system. This includes some DTS music files that are 24 bit 44.1k surround sound as well as a collection of DVD audio files that I have converted to 24 bit 96k 5.1 flac files. Initially I thought WMA could deal with this as theoretically the latest version of wma pro can encode up to 6 channel 24 bit 96k. However the wma encoder on JRiver can only encode in 2 channel 16 bit 44.1k. My next trial was to try and convert the files to ALAC- apple’s lossless encoder. However, despite quicktime being able to play the surround files, iTunes would refuse to import them until I downmixed to 2 channel audio. It is still 24 bit and sounds good. I was able to put them on my iPhone and they play through carplay seamlessly. For the DVD audio files, I was about to do the same process of converting to ALAC when I came across the VOX music player which is compatible with carplay. It will read any file you throw at it including the 24 bit 96k flac files. I simply used file sharing on iTunes to transfer the files to the Vox app. Now for all my high res files I no longer need to convert format. The one slight downside is that the iPhone output limits audio to 48k so it’s not the full sample rate, but still 24 bit audio and higher than cd quality. Of course this means having to store large files on my iphone, but I don’t have too many so it’s not a big deal. Hopefully this info is helpful for any audiophiles out there that are frustrated with the limited capacity for playback of high resolution music on this system.
Without a doubt the "lossless format" is the best way to go. It makes a dramatic improvement in the sound. It's like making a upgrade in equipment to the stereo.
 

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So Android Auto don't use bluethoot for music in HU ? Just for phone call? I'm confused.
yes!
android-auto sends the music signal directly via USB to the headunit.
bluetooth is only there for picking up phone calls (and sending the phone call data to the headunit).
 

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That's a very nice info!!
generally BT audio quality is problematic
 


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Has anyone successfully gotten 5.1 audio to play from usb? I can get it to play the first few seconds of the audio, then stops.
 

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If connected through CarPlay or Android Auto, the car can play any audio the phone can. This is because when connected to CarPlay or Android Auto, audio is routed over Bluetooth, so the phone takes care of decoding whatever filetype into a bluetooth audio stream. This, however, means that any improvement in sound you would have from playing a lossless audio file instead of an MP3 is moot because the Bluetooth audio codec supported by the HU has the phone encode the audio to a lossy format like MP3 before sending it to the car.



I have never seen anyone analyzing the DAC used. Chances are it would differ depending on market as there are several HU manufacturers that Honda uses even within the same model year. If you're playing bluetooth audio, this is reducing the quality of the resulting audio more than a lackluster DAC.



As described above, AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, Ogg, DSD, etc. can all play from a compatible phone because the phone does all the decoding and not the HU.

If when you're talking "HD-Quality" you're talking about CD-Quality lossless audio, the only lossless files the HU supports on a USB stick are WMA-Lossless. If you're looking for Hi-Res audio (24bit/96khz, etc), the car does not support this in any configuration I have tried. WMA-Lossless is limited to 44.1khz, if you try to play anything with a higher sample rate the HU plays static.

The easiest way I have found to play music from USB is to use MediaMonkey to automatically copy/convert files as necessary to the USB. Any of my lossless files (FLAC, ALAC) are converted to WMA-Lossless and work flawlessly.

[edit] Wanted to add, album art can cause problems if too large. I have set up MediaMonkey to automatically remove large album art from the tags when copying to USB to get around this issue. It's not perfect (I'd rather have it resized), but it keeps the HU from locking up which is more important to me.
Can you please explain more about how MediaMonkey conversion works? Is it something you install on the USB drive, along with your FLAC files, that converts FLAC to WMA on-the-fly? Or are do you have to first convert the FLAC to WMA first and save it to the USB drive?
 

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Can you please explain more about how MediaMonkey conversion works? Is it something you install on the USB drive, along with your FLAC files, that converts FLAC to WMA on-the-fly? Or are do you have to first convert the FLAC to WMA first and save it to the USB drive?
MediaMonkey is a piece of software I have installed on my PC, it is what adds and removes files to the USB for me. When adding files to the USB, it will auto-convert any file that it knows to be incompatible, such as FLAC, to a format that it knows to be compatible. My resulting USB has a mixture of MP3s and WMA-Lossless files on it after being copied from my main library which consists of MP3s and FLAC files.
 

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Hello everyone, I'm going to make a real studio in my Civic, but I'm a dedicated fan of the iPhone, here we discussed Vox Music Player. They also talk about this program. https://thetechholics.com/blog/how-to-play-hi-res-music-on-an-iphone/ Can I really listen to full FLAC through this program or is it better to take a good radio tape recorder that will support flac?
 

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That's a very nice info!!
generally BT audio quality is problematic

i did some testing and research regarding those BT quality problems.
aptX (HD) isnt needed, thats for sure.

SBC codec can do 320kbit, just like a mp3 file at 320kbit. our headunit supports that aswell, together with AAC.

i ran into a problem, that my phone uses a low quality bitrate on SBC and it sounded horrible then.
my other phone does 320kbit at SBC bluetooth codec and it sounds like from a CD. very crisp and clear.

AAC (apple codec for bluetooth) sounds the same, but it doesnt support low bitrates. it's running at 256kbit constantly. when the connection is bad, it just stops sending data and theres no audio.

on the other hand for SBC: when the connection is bad due to long distance, the bitrate gets worse and it sounds bad.

also some android phone have issues with AAC enabled (muffled sound).

SBC had a bad reputation on older phones or buggy phone software.
but at 320kbit (SBC) you're completely fine.
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