fabrizzio71
Senior Member
- First Name
- Matthew
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2018
- Threads
- 30
- Messages
- 380
- Reaction score
- 272
- Location
- United States
- Vehicle(s)
- 2018 Civic SI Coupe White Orchid Pearl
- Thread starter
- #1
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.
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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