Audio

[Ampere]

I confirmed with my Lucid sales advisor that the USB-A jack in all Lucids only charges your phone/accessories. It cannot be used for audio. That's already been discussed on this forum. This is an absurd decision on Lucid's part. Nearly every car on the road includes a USB-A jack for not only charging, but also audio (as well as Android Auto and/or Apple Car Play in most vehicles). Bluetooth is a poor replacement for a wired audio connection. (I write a newspaper column about electronics and home entertainment.) The only cost to Lucid is paying minimal royalties for the audio codecs such as MP3 or .wav. (FLAC is free.) My advisor said he has received numerous complaints about this and Lucid is aware of it. I assume this problem can be addressed by sofware update and is not inherent in the wiring of the USB-A jack. I fail to understand how the Lucid engineers overlooked this feature when it is standard on nearly every other car, including my five year old Accord. I have over 100 hours of 320 kbps or FLAC music on my phone and if I'm paying almost $3K for Lucid's premium sound system I don't want to hear it compromised by Bluetooth.

 

[MPawelek]

You are preaching to the choir. I also have hundreds of hours of my favorite music on a thumb drive and use it on every other car I own….

 

[joec]

I confirmed with my Lucid sales advisor that the USB-A jack in all Lucids only charges your phone/accessories. It cannot be used for audio. That's already been discussed on this forum. This is an absurd decision on Lucid's part. Nearly every car on the road includes a USB-A jack for not only charging, but also audio (as well as Android Auto and/or Apple Car Play in most vehicles). Bluetooth is a poor replacement for a wired audio connection. (I write a newspaper column about electronics and home entertainment.) The only cost to Lucid is paying minimal royalties for the audio codecs such as MP3 or .wav. (FLAC is free.) My advisor said he has received numerous complaints about this and Lucid is aware of it. I assume this problem can be addressed by sofware update and is not inherent in the wiring of the USB-A jack. I fail to understand how the Lucid engineers overlooked this feature when it is standard on nearly every other car, including my five year old Accord. I have over 100 hours of 320 kbps or FLAC music on my phone and if I'm paying almost $3K for Lucid's premium sound system I don't want to hear it compromised by Bluetooth.

They didn't overlook it. It was a conscious decision, reportedly. They did it for security reasons. Given the rush to get the initial cars out the door (and the obvious imperfect state of the early software) they made the decision to punt on USB audio until they could be sure to secure the ports from hacking. At least that's their story.

My guess is at some point a software update will enable this ability. They know it's high on the request list, and so far, they have been taking requests / complaints seriously.

 

[joec]

Also, once CarPlay/Android Auto comes, even if it's only wireless, it should improve audio quality considerably. Wireless CarPlay, at least, does not rely on Bluetooth. It establishes a WiFi connection and thus streams much higher quality audio. My guess is Lucid (correctly) focused on getting this out the door first, knowing it would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Higher quality audio AND improved interoperability with your phone. But I still think wired audio is needed, and I think they know that, too.

 

[Tim-in-CA]

Resurrecting and old thread … has anyone heard if USB audio (mp3, etc) is coming in v 2.0 FW?

 

[borski]

Resurrecting and old thread … has anyone heard if USB audio (mp3, etc) is coming in v 2.0 FW?

No news.

 

[Tâm]

Resurrecting and old thread … has anyone heard if USB audio (mp3, etc) is coming in v 2.0 FW?

From the info above, it sounds like all USB ports are designed for charging and not for data transfer.

If you want USB audio, someone needs to retrofit the hardware to accommodate data transfer first. Then the software next.

A software fix without hardware fix won't help.

 

[borski]

From the info above, it sounds like all USB ports are designed for charging and not for data transfer.

If you want USB audio, someone needs to retrofit the hardware to accommodate data transfer first. Then the software next.

A software fix without hardware fix won't help.

To my knowledge, the USB ports (at least the USB-A port) has data transfer capabilities (for example, if you plug in an Android device it asks if you want to enable it; it doesn't work if you do, but that it asks is indicative that it isn't just wired for power)

 

[Tâm]

To my knowledge, the USB ports (at least the USB-A port) has data transfer capabilities (for example, if you plug in an Android device it asks if you want to enable it; it doesn't work if you do, but that it asks is indicative that it isn't just wired for power)

Thanks. That's very good news. The data capable is there and it just needs Lucid to decide when to allow music flash drive in the future.

I too have been using USB music since 2012 so I miss using it very much (before that I used car CD).

Some places would have weak signals so it'll be nice to use USB music during the signal outage too.

 

[noobzilla]

What?! I just found this out today. I cant play music from my phone via USB?!

 

[borski]

What?! I just found this out today. I cant play music from my phone via USB?!

Correct. At the moment, this is not possible.

 

[noobzilla]

Correct. At the moment, this is not possible.

Play through bluetooth I hope?

 

[borski]

Play through bluetooth I hope?

Yeah that’s fine. It’s not as high quality due to the bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth, but it works fine for now.

 

[joec]

Yeah that’s fine. It’s not as high quality due to the bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth, but it works fine for now.

Once CarPlay / Android Auto are released, this will be less of an issue. The wireless versions of each don’t have any sound quality penalties vs wired connections. They use WiFi instead of Bluetooth to increase bandwidth and stream lossless.

 

[borski]

Once CarPlay / Android Auto are released, this will be less of an issue. The wireless versions of each don’t have any sound quality penalties vs wired connections. They use WiFi instead of Bluetooth to increase bandwidth and stream lossless.

They use both wifi and Bluetooth simultaneously; it would be way better than just BT, but still wouldn’t be able to play lossless audio without USB: see bottom of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183

 

[joec]

They use both wifi and Bluetooth simultaneously; it would be way better than just BT, but still wouldn’t be able to play lossless audio without USB: see bottom of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183

Interesting. Well, I can’t hear the difference with wireless CarPlay, anyway. Sounds way better than plain old Bluetooth.

But all the more reason for Lucid to open up data on those USB ports eventually.

 

[stratus]

Once CarPlay / Android Auto are released, this will be less of an issue. The wireless versions of each don’t have any sound quality penalties vs wired connections. They use WiFi instead of Bluetooth to increase bandwidth and stream lossless.

Good to know and thank you for clarifying. I was always under the impression that the wired connection is better, and yet again I learn something new from this outstanding encyclopedia of knowledge. Wooohooo

 

[stratus]

They use both wifi and Bluetooth simultaneously; it would be way better than just BT, but still wouldn’t be able to play lossless audio without USB: see bottom of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183

More great information!! Thank you

 

[stratus]

Interesting. Well, I can’t hear the difference with wireless CarPlay, anyway. Sounds way better than plain old Bluetooth.

But all the more reason for Lucid to open up data on those USB ports eventually.

What would it take for Lucid to open up the USB ports for data?

 

[joec]

What would it take for Lucid to open up the USB ports for data?

Not sure. The reason they stated for them not to support data over the port was security. They didn’t want folks hacking into the system via that port, and given they were rushing to get cars on the road, they didn’t want to deal with securing the ports at the time. Whether that means they just blocked the data transfer via software, or they physically didn’t hook them into the computer is unknown.