listening to music in the car

Oddiofyl,

I feel for you.  I've not owned a Sienna but there is no shortage of bad car audio and tweeters do seem to bring out the worst. 

glupson,

VW is a great car, but I have not heard their sound system.   I believe you when you say it hurts.   That's the same problem had with the C7 Stingray but a great deal of that problem was ambient noise and listening too loud to overcome same.

I will look into your suggestion on  dbpoweramp.   I don't think I've used their software but memory cards are cheap so it's worth a shot. I currently have two SD cards and no where near full. In fact just a few dozen albums on each since I kept hoping for a higher capacity iPod.

My experiments with SD card was frustrating and how I learned about FLAC, MP4 and AIFF and compatibility (or lack there of)  with Car Play.  

My iPod music is on my personal computer so it would be easy to sync up all the existing music to larger iPod in a matter of minutes.   I have more music on my computer than current iPod will hold.   To me it's easier than loading SD cards.

I enjoyed your story about the Tesla salesman, it's true most people don't care that much about sound, in the car or at home. We are the minority and as you implied, we have to live with it.

albertporter,

I am by no means adept at computers beyond turning on/off and a few more very-low-user actions. I learn the dumbest way, from own experience, so I deducted a few things from your story and my experience. CarPlay has to be used via iPhone. SD card probably goes some other way and the fact that car has Carplay does not mean SD card will behave in any similar way. My iPod was bought in May 2015 and I believe it is 5th generation. My car was bought in December 2015 and, surprise, iPod cannot connect via Carplay at all. I am not sure about now, but iPod simply did not come with Carplay. That is just so you do not buy an iPod and find out it is not Carplay compatible. On the other hand, just being an USB device works great. As far as USB devices go, I did connect Solid State Drive and it worked well. I also have a SONY NW-35 (small $200ish Walkman) and it connects and plays via USB without a problem. It becomes just another SSD connected via USB. Android phones have something parallel to Carplay (Android Auto, I think) and they frequently have expansion slots for more memory. However, I got an impression that you have an iPhone and, if you ever connect it to the car for phone purposes, I wonder if you would be able to connect another Carplay/Android Auto device at the same time. I would not be surprised if the car thought you were connecting two phones as it might see them that way.

As far as functionality goes, I hope your Bose is as accomodating as VW Fender system. Whatever I connect (SD, iPod, Solid State Drive) it shows album covers and songs and all that it is supposed to. It does not matter what media it is coming from. There are some minor issues (albums with same name, at least first 20 letters or so of it become clumped as one album so you have to change metadata a little bit, think "Greatest Hits", "The Best Of", etc.), but in the end it works out like an unbelievably convenient system. The only unexpected detail that does not work with my SD card is voice control for songs. If I try voice control to pick the song from the whole SD card, it says there are too many songs. I believe I have 12000-15000 and that is what confuses it. It has no problem picking albums or artists via voice control and then picking the song from that album.

These are just a few of my observations. I would still try with SD card and FLACs. I think that dBpoweramp even has some free trial version, but do not hold me to it. You need it for the simplest operation it can do, anyway.

I have an iPod now and it works great, it's just insufficient size.

I borrowed one of those Classic iPods like you see at Ebay, some of them  have huge storage space.   Of course the old iPod like those do not use the Lightning connector so it is not recognized by my Car Play.

Plug in the newer iPod like I have and works great.  Also better sound than Sirius or FM.   Seems similar to what I get from my SD card.   I too get album art and correct song ID with all those formats, just wishing for simple way to sync my library without having to do without some of my favorites.

I drive a low mileage (69,000) 2005  Lexus LS 430 sedan. It’s equipped with a Mark Levinson sound system that has, in addition to CD capability, a nice cassette tape player. I like to record really good LP’s on my Nakamitchi tape recorder and play them in the car. The home system is all ARC tube gear and I use a great cartridge.
As good as the car sounds, the home system still kills it. Good sound and music in the car is a must for me. Oh, and in an effort to get the noise down, in an already quiet car, I recently installed a new set of Michelin Premiere tires. It’s like driving on velvet, and the tires really lowered the "noise floor."

Frank