Hi Res Audio Playback

fabrizzio71

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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.
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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.

.
As an audiophile (which I admit I am not), when you play your WMA Flash Drive music through the 2018 Si sound system, do you think that you now need to upgrade the Honda sound system, or is it really an appropriate match for the WMA quality. ?

Most, if not all my music is in mp3 format (at varying bitrates), but I find that most if it plays well from the Center USB socket, far better than any Bluetooth connected music as the Honda Units Bluetooth choice of codecs seem to be limited to not include some of the newer HD codecs. (But neither does my older Samsung phone).

I find 800 folders limit on the Honda unit quite sufficient and manageable, and if I need more, its just another USB stick.. not a big deal.

But based on your advice & suggestions, I will try converting some of my Flac music to WMA (on a new Flash Drive), and see how much of a difference my non-audiofile ears can hear. :thumbsup:
 
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fabrizzio71

fabrizzio71

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Glad to be of some help. I’m not sure what other programs convert to lossless wma but I’d be interested to hear what you use (if you or others don’t have JRiver). I would assume foobar2000 and maybe some other tools can be downloaded on the web. I think Windows media player can convert to wma pro, but my understanding is the conversion only works when ripping from a physical disc. The standard wma which most people would use is a lossy compression just like mp3. The file extensions look the same, which is annoying, so the only way to tell is based on bitrate (wma lossless is usually around 400-900 kbits per second) and file size compared to standard mp3 or wma.

In terms of quality of the sound system, probably it is hard to tell between 320kbit mp3 and the wma lossless mostly due to competing noise pollution from the road. I didn’t listen back to back as I deleted my mp3’s when changing to wma lossless. My higher resolution files do sound better and I can tell the difference with those. I don’t think the standard sound system is terrible, but it’s just average in my opinion. It’s sort of what I expected from commuter car audio. My main complaint is the road noise on the Si is about 80-85db at highway speeds. I’ve found myself using my musicians earplugs when driving long distances. I can still enjoy my music and the noise polution is made less.

Would I like to upgrade the factory system? Yes, but I probably won’t in the near future. I’d be more likely to add sound deadening/isolation first. This was more an issue on principle for me. I didn’t want to be forced to knowingly downgrade the quality of my music to listen in the car. Thankfully I was able to find a way to avoid this.
 

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Glad to be of some help.

I don’t think the standard sound system is terrible, but it’s just average in my opinion. It’s sort of what I expected from commuter car audio. My main complaint is the road noise on the Si is about 80-85db at highway speeds. I’ve found myself using my musicians earplugs when driving long distances. I can still enjoy my music and the noise polution is made less.
I like the idea of Musician Earplugs, but unfortunately, as you probably already know, they are illegal in most USA states.

ie

Maryland's handbook says a person may not wear ear plugs, a headset, or earphones attached to any audio device while driving. Virginia's law states the same. D.C.'s handbook adds that earphones for cellular phones are acceptable. In all jurisdictions, however, it is OK to drive with one ear bud in your ear.​

Mind you, so is using a hand held cell phone, but I still see people clearly using them.
Yesterday, I was almost stuck by some idiot, driving towards me on their cell phone, and drifting right across the center line. I could so easily have been killed yesterday .. something to think about !! I need a LOUDER horn in the Civic !!

As far as Earplugs are concerned, if you have tinted windows, who will see them, and if you get pulled over, you obviously would remove them before you even stopped the car. ;)
 

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Just confirming, you're saying the Honda stock HU supports lossless WMA from a USB Flash drive?
 


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fabrizzio71

fabrizzio71

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Just confirming, you're saying the Honda stock HU supports lossless WMA from a USB Flash drive?
Yes, currently I am playing all my CD quality music by converting to lossless WMA on a flash drive. It plays with no issues. As far as I know, the HU is not doing anything to the files (like reconverting back to lossy) as I wouldn’t think it had the computing power to do so on the fly and playback seamlessly.
 
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fabrizzio71

fabrizzio71

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I like the idea of Musician Earplugs, but unfortunately, as you probably already know, they are illegal in most USA states.

ie

Maryland's handbook says a person may not wear ear plugs, a headset, or earphones attached to any audio device while driving. Virginia's law states the same. D.C.'s handbook adds that earphones for cellular phones are acceptable. In all jurisdictions, however, it is OK to drive with one ear bud in your ear.​

Mind you, so is using a hand held cell phone, but I still see people clearly using them.
Yesterday, I was almost stuck by some idiot, driving towards me on their cell phone, and drifting right across the center line. I could so easily have been killed yesterday .. something to think about !! I need a LOUDER horn in the Civic !!

As far as Earplugs are concerned, if you have tinted windows, who will see them, and if you get pulled over, you obviously would remove them before you even stopped the car. ;)
Thanks for that info on earplugs. Yes, for sure there are a lot of bad drivers out there. I’ve even had drivers intentinally drift over the line to try and block me from passing them in a legal passing zone. Crazy!
 

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Thanks for that info on earplugs. Yes, for sure there are a lot of bad drivers out there. I’ve even had drivers intentinally drift over the line to try and block me from passing them in a legal passing zone. Crazy!
This was on a simple road, one lane in each direction, with a solid double white line down the middle. We were both doing about 30mph, the speed limit.
As he approached me , he just drifted over the line, and was almost all the way into my lane. I swerved over as far as I could while I braked and laid on my horn. Idiot was playing on his cell phone !!! Could have been a 60mph impact !
 

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Yes, currently I am playing all my CD quality music by converting to lossless WMA on a flash drive. It plays with no issues. As far as I know, the HU is not doing anything to the files (like reconverting back to lossy) as I wouldn’t think it had the computing power to do so on the fly and playback seamlessly.
What sample rate are you using? All 44100 or can you go higher? I have some 24/96 FLAC content, would converting to WMA Lossless with the same bit depth and sample rate still work? I haven't had a chance to try in the car.
 

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I play flac through my android phone all of the time using Rocket Player
 


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What sample rate are you using? All 44100 or can you go higher? I have some 24/96 FLAC content, would converting to WMA Lossless with the same bit depth and sample rate still work? I haven't had a chance to try in the car.
All the WMA lossless conversions are 44.1k that I have. I tried converting higher bit rate but it downsampled due to the limitations of JRiver wma encoder. I haven’t looked into other options of converting high bitrate using wma. The format WMA pro is cabable of encoding 24/96 up to 6 channel but you’ll have to find software that can do it. Also, I have no idea if the head unit could play 24/96. I suspect not but I could be wrong. Using Vox player on iPhone through carplay gets me 24 bit playback albeit limited to 48k due to iphone limitation.
 

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I play flac through my android phone all of the time using Rocket Player
All audio for Android Auto is sent over bluetooth which uses a lossy compression (no apt-x here) so unfortunately you dont get the advantages of lossless when played this way. Finding a way to play lossless off of usb means the HU gets the complete lossless signal.

All the WMA lossless conversions are 44.1k that I have. I tried converting higher bit rate but it downsampled due to the limitations of JRiver wma encoder. I haven’t looked into other options of converting high bitrate using wma. The format WMA pro is cabable of encoding 24/96 up to 6 channel but you’ll have to find software that can do it. Also, I have no idea if the head unit could play 24/96. I suspect not but I could be wrong. Using Vox player on iPhone through carplay gets me 24 bit playback albeit limited to 48k due to iphone limitation.
So 24/96 breaks the HU, static noise followed by freezing the audio app completely if that usb was plugged in. Mediamonkey can do the conversions. I suspect the HUcan do 48k as it supports it in mp3 but havent tried that yet
 

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Just confirming, you're saying the Honda stock HU supports lossless WMA from a USB Flash drive?
It does, from a USB drive formatted in only FAT32 (Windows). And uncompressed lossless (untaggable and "huge") WAV files. They're not THAT big, go buy a bigger memory card.

However, through Apple CarPlay and the USB connection, the HU accepts AIFF and ALAC (Apple Lossless) and probably anything else your iPhone will play. Which is frustrating for those of us who'd rather just use a USB drive.

Anyone know what digital to analog converter the Honda head units use? Because even HD files would be subject to that DAC's quality.
 
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Would I like to upgrade the factory system? Yes, but I probably won’t in the near future. I’d be more likely to add sound deadening/isolation first. This was more an issue on principle for me. I didn’t want to be forced to knowingly downgrade the quality of my music to listen in the car. Thankfully I was able to find a way to avoid this.
Has anyone used a music player other than an iPod, iPhone or Android Phone plugged into the USB ports? The iPhone I tried played AIFF (lossless) and ALAC (Apple Lossless) just fine, while the head unit would not accept those directly form a USB drive, so I'm wondering if it would accept those from player different than those 3.

I play HD files in my car. For anyone who says road noise makes playing HD-quality music a waste, I want to point out my reasoning...

1) If I can copy HD music files (say AIFF) instead of converting and copying to different formats on different devices, it saves time and complications.
2) The player I plug into my Honda will also be played away from the car where road noise doesn't exist.
3) Road noise comes and goes, as does engine noise, while you drive, and it fluctuates in audio frequency. So during your drive, there are many holes or spaces without noise as well as spaces where the noise only affects a certain frequency range of the music (high, low, mid). The poor quality of lossy formats is obvious to me in a car in general, but in those quieter spaces, the poor quality is glaring. So my philosophy is start with great quality and let the road noise take away only what it can. Don't take it away from yourself.

As someone who spent too much time doing sound deadening on a previous car, I'll attest to the 2016 Honda Civic's very well-deadened cabin compared to others. The image is the rear door of a previous car--aluminum constraining layer. That's over ceramic coating and aluminum flashing hand-cut and screwed over access holes (still accessible) with many layers of closed-cell foam lining the inside. Cut noise about 60% overall.

Honda Civic 10th gen Hi Res Audio Playback 026_Door_Damplifier Pro Over Sludge.JPG
 

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It does, from a USB drive formatted in only FAT32 (Windows).

However, through Apple CarPlay and the USB connection, the HU accepts AIFF and ALAC (Apple Lossless) and probably anything else your iPhone will play. Which is frustrating for those of us who'd rather just use a USB drive.
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.

Anyone know what digital to analog converter the Honda head units use? Because even HD files would be subject to that DAC's quality.
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.

Has anyone used a music player other than an iPod, iPhone or Android Phone plugged into the USB ports? The iPhone I tried played AIFF (lossless) and ALAC (Apple Lossless) just fine, while the head unit would not accept those directly form a USB drive, so I'm wondering if it would accept those from player different than those 3.
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.
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