Most reliable mode for music listening.

[stratus]

This question has likely been addressed already, but I would really appreciate feedback from all of you knowledgeable folks concerning the easiest , most glitch free , and reliable method of listening to music in the Air
My head is spinning with all the different opinions, and long list of frustrations people are experiencing with the audio interface.
I have never used Tidal, but from what I read on these forums that may be the best way to proceed?

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Here’s my experience (sorry, this is long but I have a lot of opinions on this topic)

-I don’t have Amazon Music subscription or Apple Music subscription or Spotify subscription so your experience might be different if you use one of those. I have some music from what used to be iTunes in FLAC format downloaded onto my phone. I do have the HiFi Plus Tidal subscription because it pays artists better than Spotify and also sound the best.

-Tidal to my trained ear (I was a post production sound designer in my previous career) sounds better than the competition, I’ve heard most of them. Most pro-audio these days is recorded in 24bit/96khz, and things older than 10 years may have been 16bit/44.1khz. Almost ALL analog recordings from before then have been converted to those formats and maybe “remastered”. Rarely you’ll find Direct Stream Digital (DSD) which sounds like real life right in your face, but only if you have expensive equipment that can handle that bandwidth and speakers with studio quality frequency response (I recommend Meyer HD1s, and a few friends of mine who are still in the sound business swear by Focal SM9s). MP3 compression and some of the others are garbage compared to Tidal formats, even Tidal’s lowest quality option is audibly superior. Apple FLAC format is pretty good, but Tidal MQS sounds “fuller” to my ears than anything else and I don’t know why because FLAC is supposedly “lossless” (it’s what the L stands for). Tidal has about 90% of the music selection Spotify does but lacks podcasts/radio.

-The problem is Lucid’s LTE connection can’t seem to stream at Tidal’s top quality. So what do you do? Well I just finally just today got Bluetooth to work correctly from my phone and play on the Lucid, and when I play the same song on my phone via Tidal master quality streaming, it sounds better than if I used the native Tidal app playing the same song. And some clever users here realized if you use Alexa and say “play this song by this artist on Tidal” then it actually uses a higher bandwidth quality audio. Go figure?

-You cannot play any audio via USB at this time, but maybe once we get CarPlay that will happen.

-So my advice is do the 3 month Tidal subscription and see how you like it. There are ways to listen to music in the Lucid, it’s just clunky and requires some workarounds until we get CarPlay.

 

[Steve11ca]

Typically, I use either Bluetooth to stream Sirius XM from my phone, or Tidal from the app or by phone. In addition, I have Amazon music and will tell Alexa to play a genre (usually classic rock) I don't use Spotify or Pandora (or AM/FM) so I can't speak to formats. I have yet to have any of them play without stopping for no reason. It is infuriating. It was stop after a song in a playlist. It will pause for no reason. I've just become accustomed to it and know that I will have to do something manually to continue to listen. I am hoping for the day they add Sirius as a streaming app so I don't have to be working with my phone.

 

[Coltonw011]

I use Spotify through Bluetooth. It works fine 95% of the time. Only issues I’ve had is when leaving the car, say to go to work or shopping, and coming back, occasionally the music won’t play. Disconnecting Bluetooth from the car and on my phone, then reconnecting both has fixed it every time. Most of the time I don’t have to do that though. I honestly don’t care for tidal and the high quality audio some people seem so obsessed with. I’m just here to play music, and it works.

 

[stratus]

Here’s my experience (sorry, this is long but I have a lot of opinions on this topic)

-I don’t have Amazon Music subscription or Apple Music subscription or Spotify subscription so your experience might be different if you use one of those. I have some music from what used to be iTunes in FLAC format downloaded onto my phone. I do have the HiFi Plus Tidal subscription because it pays artists better than Spotify and also sound the best.

-Tidal to my trained ear (I was a post production sound designer in my previous career) sounds better than the competition, I’ve heard most of them. Most pro-audio these days is recorded in 24bit/96khz, and things older than 10 years may have been 16bit/44.1khz. Almost ALL analog recordings from before then have been converted to those formats and maybe “remastered”. Rarely you’ll find Direct Stream Digital (DSD) which sounds like real life right in your face, but only if you have expensive equipment that can handle that bandwidth and speakers with studio quality frequency response (I recommend Meyer HD1s, and a few friends of mine who are still in the sound business swear by Focal SM9s). MP3 compression and some of the others are garbage compared to Tidal formats, even Tidal’s lowest quality option is audibly superior. Apple FLAC format is pretty good, but Tidal MQS sounds “fuller” to my ears than anything else and I don’t know why because FLAC is supposedly “lossless” (it’s what the L stands for). Tidal has about 90% of the music selection Spotify does but lacks podcasts/radio.

-The problem is Lucid’s LTE connection can’t seem to stream at Tidal’s top quality. So what do you do? Well I just finally just today got Bluetooth to work correctly from my phone and play on the Lucid, and when I play the same song on my phone via Tidal master quality streaming, it sounds better than if I used the native Tidal app playing the same song. And some clever users here realized if you use Alexa and say “play this song by this artist on Tidal” then it actually uses a higher bandwidth quality audio. Go figure?

-You cannot play any audio via USB at this time, but maybe once we get CarPlay that will happen.

-So my advice is do the 3 month Tidal subscription and see how you like it. There are ways to listen to music in the Lucid, it’s just clunky and requires some workarounds until we get CarPlay.

Thank you for taking the time to expound on this. I really appreciate it.

 

[stratus]

Typically, I use either Bluetooth to stream Sirius XM from my phone, or Tidal from the app or by phone. In addition, I have Amazon music and will tell Alexa to play a genre (usually classic rock) I don't use Spotify or Pandora (or AM/FM) so I can't speak to formats. I have yet to have any of them play without stopping for no reason. It is infuriating. It was stop after a song in a playlist. It will pause for no reason. I've just become accustomed to it and know that I will have to do something manually to continue to listen. I am hoping for the day they add Sirius as a streaming app so I don't have to be working with my phone.

Great information. Thank you!!!

 

[stratus]

I use Spotify through Bluetooth. It works fine 95% of the time. Only issues I’ve had is when leaving the car, say to go to work or shopping, and coming back, occasionally the music won’t play. Disconnecting Bluetooth from the car and on my phone, then reconnecting both has fixed it every time. Most of the time I don’t have to do that though. I honestly don’t care for tidal and the high quality audio some people seem so obsessed with. I’m just here to play music, and it works.

Seems like you are having a bit more success with Bluetooth than others . Good to hear.

 

[hydbob]

I think the ability to stream is entirely dependent on the cell service strength of where you are located. I live in SoCal and never have any issues streaming through Spotify or Tidal (when I had it). I also listen to audiobooks via Audible through bluetooth all the time with no issue

 

[stratus]

I think the ability to stream is entirely dependent on the cell service strength of where you are located. I live in SoCal and never have any issues streaming through Spotify or Tidal (when I had it). I also listen to audiobooks via Audible through bluetooth all the time with no issue

Makes sense. In my town of Idaho Falls , cell service is great. Once you start driving into the sparsely populated areas, especially in the mountains, it is non existent.
Drove though Montana a couple days ago and I get the impression cell towers have been abducted by aliens .

 

[hydbob]

Makes sense. In my town of Idaho Falls , cell service is great. Once you start driving into the sparsely populated areas, especially in the mountains, it is non existent.
Drove though Montana a couple days ago and I get the impression cell towers have been abducted by aliens .

Yea at that point, because of no satellite radio, better have some stuff on your phone as backup

 

[Maverick]

I have used both Amazon Music and bluetooth on my phone to play music. Both have worked very well. I am curious if anyone has solved the problem around not having to restart your playlists every time you get back in the car. I get that it may be more difficult when using Bluetooth and a native app on the phone. But Amazon is built into the car. While I come to like the simplicity of Alexa (even if I still feel strange talking to myself) it's a bit strange that the car won't remember where you left off. Or at least I haven't figured out the trick yet.

 

[CLTGT]

It is a bit strange. Even the crappy RetroSound head unit in my ‘73 Mustang and the aftermarket Sony in the ‘68 start where I left off if I go into the grocery store and I was listening to a playlist.

 

[hydbob]

Mine will consistently play the song that was last playing when the car shut off, but it will always do it from the beginning and not where it stopped. I suspect it has to do with the way it streams and since it actually "shuts down" it doesn't store the specific place in the song. If I am using Bluetooth, it's different because it's picking up where my phone paused it.

 

[Maverick]

Mine will consistently play the song that was last playing when the car shut off, but it will always do it from the beginning and not where it stopped. I suspect it has to do with the way it streams and since it actually "shuts down" it doesn't store the specific place in the song. If I am using Bluetooth, it's different because it's picking up where my phone paused it.

Is that with Amazon Music or something else? Mine returns to the radio station. I wonder if I need to select Amazon music and then tell Alexa what to play. I haven't tried that yet.

 

[hydbob]

Is that with Amazon Music or something else? Mine returns to the radio station. I wonder if I need to select Amazon music and then tell Alexa what to play. I haven't tried that yet.

Sorry, that's with Spotify

 

[stratus]

I really appreciate the wealth of information that has been provided in these responses. Thanks to everyone.

 

[Bbq9]

apple music (downloaded to the phone) + bluetooth.

cell is too unreliable here.

sayng that, then my daughter grabs my phone and plays DJ, at which point we stress test the cell signal as she jumps around all sorts of new music

 

[Demosthenes]

Is that with Amazon Music or something else? Mine returns to the radio station. I wonder if I need to select Amazon music and then tell Alexa what to play. I haven't tried that yet.

I haven’t figured out how to start where it left off with Amazon music either. To avoid starting from the beginning of a playlist every time, I ask Alexa to shuffle the play list. Then it’ll start at a random song in random sequence. Not ideal, but better than always starting at the beginning.

 

[Maverick]

I haven’t figured out how to start where it left off with Amazon music either. To avoid starting from the beginning of a playlist every time, I ask Alexa to shuffle the play list. Then it’ll start at a random song in random sequence. Not ideal, but better than always starting at the beginning.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing as well. It's strange that Amazon Music is not an option on the screen. Since it sounds like music will "sort of" pick up from where you left off on Spotify (and assuming Tidal), it seems like they need to add Amazon as an option rather than a random voice-god that you ask things of while in the car.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

I did a little 3 way comparison with a track I know extremely well because I was in the studio when it was mixed in its original 24bit/96khz format (Jon Brion’s score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

Here’s what I observed:
- In Tidal, the car’s app sound quality is OK, just fine for non-critical listening.
- As some genius members of this forum discovered, if you say “Hey Alexa play”… and then say what you want it to play, it somehow unlocks a music GOD MODE and the music quality is literally indistinguishable from what was heard in the studio when the song was first recorded. I’m literally in disbelief, as this is the first time I’ve ever heard a car accurately reproduce a film score and got goosebumps. I don’t know how it does it (all films are encoded in Dolby Digital but that’s once the Printmaster is made, whereas this sounded like the pre-printmaster uncompressed audio), but it works, and it turns the audio system in this car to the best car audio I’ve ever heard. What sorcery is this?
-If you try to stream the identical track over Bluetooth, it worked for me but didn’t sound quite as good as whatever the hell this “Hey Alexa play…” golden ears mode is, but it’s better than using the car’s Tidal app.

This is all confusing to me. But if CarPlay doesn’t fix it all then I’m going to use “Hey Alexa play…” for the rest of my life and not complain that it’s an annoying workaround because the results are worth it!