Many of us have been asking random questions, in random threads about the Media System.
I've been researching, and wanted share both my frustration and my surprises, as well as some questions...
These apply to the Lexicon system primarily, but there is some overlap.
See below:
1) USB media (memory sticks, drives, etc.) seems to have a song file limit of 8K files (substantially lower than my older Audi's, with a 20K file limit). Not sure if this limit applies to CarPlay.
2) The CarlinkIt 3.0 for CarPlay has notable deficiencies in sound quality (unsure if this also applies to wired). I have 2500 songs in 96/24 stored on my iPhone and when played through CarLinkIt, they sound muddy with distorted vocals and bass. These EXACT same files are stored on a USB Drive and sound fantastic.
3) The USB drive is therefore my personal preference for sound quality, however, no matter what I do or tip I try, I cannot get Media System to recognize playlists on anything other than CarPlay (likely the same with AndroidAuto).
4) In my effort to determine the limits of the system, I tried compressing the Audio to 48k/16bit (cd quality). This was before I discovered the song file limitation of 8K files. The benefit of this test was that I was able to determine a dramatic difference between files in 96/24 (technically hi-def) and 48/16 (cd quality). CD quality audio still sounds fantastic, but the hi-def audio has a flatter curve and requires less equalization to get it to sound great. The point is that you can HEAR a difference because Hi-Def files are brighter and the mid's are more accurate...but all around, the Hi-Def files require much less equalization and boost, thereby giving the system more headroom.
5) If you go the USB media route, there is a notation in the manual about potential corruption of the medium may occur if left plugged in during stop/start. I've found that this "corruption" is much less likely the faster the memory. When you use a card/stick/drive that is ~<200MBs/sec, the startup time increases and thereby makes corruption more likely as the vehicle media system tries to mount the file system. It appears, that if the delay is longer than what is likely a very short timeout from the Media System, the system will destructively dismount the drive. I believe the USB spec clearly states that USB devices should be able to be inserted and removed, at will, however, it appears the Media System has an issue with the sequence in which the USB bus is powered up, versus the Media System. I assume, and this is pure speculation, the USB system may take slightly longer, on occasion, to power up and this unexpected delay causes some corruption. This why I believe faster memory will allow the bus to catch up with the Media System.
- I have run tests on memory cards with a rated 120MBs read speed and much lower write speeds (most memory cards/drives/sticks read faster than they write). These cards appear to be a general problem because the indexing of these cards occurs each time the vehicle is started or is put into ACC mode, leading me to believe the index becomes corrupted upon shutdown and must be recreated upon start, because the index itself does appear to be stored on the media itself, versus on the Media System's memory.
5) Bluetooth audio, while convenient, will never provide the quality of sound that a wired connection of any type, will provide. The Bluetooth codec in the vehicle, will support some high bitrate codecs on Android, but not on iPhone. iPhone will be limited to 320KBs with 160KBs for each stereo channel (2 channels max). While android can support a higher number of channels and higher bitrate codecs, they will never compare to the CD quality and higher, wired bitrates.
I will update this post as I learn more, through testing.
Question maybe someone has figured out:
1) The Media System manual states that it should recognize playlists, but I have tried a number of different playlist types, without luck. It has been suggested that plain text playlists, without #EXT comment lines, would work - but I have not found that to be the case. Further, I have been unable to find a playlist creator/editor that would create a playlist without this extra metadata (song length, runtime, etc.).
This is just via my first couple weeks of testing... Current conclusion for best quality: USB media, 96/24 or 48/16 file encoding - and using as high a speed card/drive/stick as you can get...
