Apple lossless audio - wired vs. wireless Carplay

[Deleted member 7736]

Since I have the Burmester sound system, I'd love to be able to listen to Apple lossless audio from my iPhone. I know that wireless carplay doesn't support lossless audio, so I need to plug the phone into the USB plug in the center console to listen to lossless. However, sometimes if I'm running a quick errand, I'll just get in the car and let the phone connect via wireless carplay for convenience. So my question is, how does the PCM handle connecting to the same iPhone wirelessly and plugged in on different occasions? It's clear that if I get in the car and don't plug the phone in, it automatically connects wirelessly. If I get in the car and plug the phone in, will the PCM connect to it via USB, or does it still connect wirelessly and the USB only provides power? Do I need to turn off wifi and Bluetooth on the phone to force a wired connection? Is there a way to decipher from the icons on the display how the phone is connected and whether or not I'm getting the benefit of lossless audio?

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[X88]

Since I have the Burmester sound system, I'd love to be able to listen to Apple lossless audio from my iPhone. I know that wireless carplay doesn't support lossless audio, so I need to plug the phone into the USB plug in the center console to listen to lossless. However, sometimes if I'm running a quick errand, I'll just get in the car and let the phone connect via wireless carplay for convenience. So my question is, how does the PCM handle connecting to the same iPhone wirelessly and plugged in on different occasions? It's clear that if I get in the car and don't plug the phone in, it automatically connects wirelessly. If I get in the car and plug the phone in, will the PCM connect to it via USB, or does it still connect wirelessly and the USB only provides power? Do I need to turn off wifi and Bluetooth on the phone to force a wired connection? Is there a way to decipher from the icons on the display how the phone is connected and whether or not I'm getting the benefit of lossless audio?

John: thanks for posting this. I too have a Burmester system, an iPhone 13 full of lossless albums, and the same questions!

 

[babaloo]

sorry for this slightly off your question- can you HEAR a differnce with the lossless ?

 

[Deleted member 7736]

WIth headphones - yes. In the car it' not clear to me yet whether or not I'm listening to lossless.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Just an idea. Put your music on an iPod touch and just leave it plugged in the car? Have it set to automatically connect to your phones hotspot if you want to stream.

 

[MTGBUK]

I’ve found if you’ve connected wirelessly then try plugging in you will still be using wireless CarPlay and it will be only charging your phone. In every other vehicle I have been in I can tell the difference between wired and wireless but at first couldn’t in the Taycan. Thought it was just poor implementation. Disappointed but didn’t think much of it. Then one day I accidentally unplugged my phone yet music continued playing. This should not happen if you are using wired CarPlay. Music should cut out as soon as you unplug your phone. If you want to hear wired CarPlay and decide whether it makes a difference to you then switch off WiFi and Bluetooth in PCM. This means only wired CarPlay is possible. Also to make sure you are using wired rather than wireless unplug your phone while music is playing. Music should cut out. A little annoying unlike other VW group vehicles it doesn’t seem to auto switch to wired CarPlay.

 

[Deleted member 7736]

What you just described is exactly why this question popped up in my head: I had the phone plugged in the other day and thought I was listening to music via the wired connection, but when I unplugged the phone, the music kept playing.

 

[submatrix]

I’ve found if you’ve connected wirelessly then try plugging in you will still be using wireless CarPlay and it will be only charging your phone. In every other vehicle I have been in I can tell the difference between wired and wireless but at first couldn’t in the Taycan. Thought it was just poor implementation. Disappointed but didn’t think much of it. Then one day I accidentally unplugged my phone yet music continued playing. This should not happen if you are using wired CarPlay. Music should cut out as soon as you unplug your phone. If you want to hear wired CarPlay and decide whether it makes a difference to you then switch off WiFi and Bluetooth in PCM. This means only wired CarPlay is possible. Also to make sure you are using wired rather than wireless unplug your phone while music is playing. Music should cut out. A little annoying unlike other VW group vehicles it doesn’t seem to auto switch to wired CarPlay.

The scenario you described may exactly be why it works this way -- to avoid Carplay interruptions if you do unplug.

Another scenario is if a passenger plugged in their iphone while your iphone was using wireless Carplay, it would suck if it took over.

 

[Deleted member 7736]

Another scenario is if a passenger plugged in their iphone while your iphone was using wireless Carplay, it would suck if it took over.

I feel like this scenario is easily avoided with some thoughtful design. Our previous AMG's all had two plugs in the center console: one that was power + connectivity and the second was just power. They were clearly marked as such. This way, my wife could plug her phone into the second port to charge without taking over Carplay. I haven't yet contorted myself to really look closely at the markings on the ports in the Taycan center console, but at a glance they don't appear to be marked differently.

 

[submatrix]

I feel like this scenario is easily avoided with some thoughtful design. Our previous AMG's all had two plugs in the center console: one that was power + connectivity and the second was just power. They were clearly marked as such. This way, my wife could plug her phone into the second port to charge without taking over Carplay. I haven't yet contorted myself to really look closely at the markings on the ports in the Taycan center console, but at a glance they don't appear to be marked differently.

Agreed, there are definitely ways to engineer around this. I wonder if the back ports can be used for wired carplay, for example.

 

[Deleted member 7736]

If you want to hear wired CarPlay and decide whether it makes a difference to you then switch off WiFi and Bluetooth in PCM.

As it turns out, this is exactly correct. To satisfy my curiosity and attempt to answer my own question, I went out to the garage to play around with settings. With wifi and BT turned on in the PCM, the car wants to default to wireless carplay, even when plugged into a USB cable. Only by turning wifi and BT off in the PCM can you be sure that you've connected via wired carplay if you've previously connected wirelessly.

So after going through the somewhat cumbersome process of trying to do a A-B comparison of wired vs. wireless carplay audio quality by toggling wifi and BT settings in the PCM, my initial impression (after a few minutes of listening to the same song both ways) is that I can't discern any difference. Mind you, this is while sitting quietly in my garage. Even if there were some minute difference it would likely be entirely lost amidst the tire and motor noise while driving. This isn't a criticism of the Burmester system. On the contrary, I thought it sounded excellent both ways. It's entirely possible that there's some downspec'ing taking place internally, such that even if the PCM is receiving a lossless format it's getting converted somewhere in the data stream to the same bitrate as the wireless audio signal.

Perhaps I'll try a more comprehensive comparison in the future, but my quick experiment didn't yield a massive difference in audio quality. I'd be curious to hear what others think.

 

[f1eng]

I'd be curious to hear what others think.

I have a stereo which cost more than the Taycan.
I have a dedicated music room with a noise floor around 25dB.
Since I retired I did carefully level matched SQ difference tests between 320kb MP4, 16/44.1, 24/96 and 24/192 sample rates using the same mix - this is the important thing since I am sure some so called high res files are a different mix and sound different purely because of this.

Anyway it turns out the laws of physics haven’t been broken there was no audible difference between 1/44.1 and the bigger files.
This is actually not a surprise since even very young humans can’t hear above 22.05kHz (the theoretical maximum of CD) so the higher sampling rates are pointless for playback.
16 bit is 96dB of dynamic range so more than most music and even in my music room if I did have music with a dynamic range of 96dB and set the volume so I could just hear the quiet bits the loud bits would be at 121db which almost no Hi-Fi can reproduce and would cause hearing damage.

So my conclusion was any time I though I heard a difference it was either expectation bias, sound level difference or a different recording mix.

On some sorts of high dynamic range classical music I can hear the difference between 320kB and 16/44.1 but the difference is very small and I am absolutely sure I wouldn’t be able to detect it in a car environment.

So, in summary, I am sure there is a marked difference between the audio systems themselves but equally sure there is no audible difference between file types in a car.
Imagination and the placebo effect are powerful though…

The reality is that “hi res” music is a marketing ploy IME.

 

[Deleted member 7736]

Thank you. After having experimented in the past with hi-res audio (Astell & Kern player) I agree that there's no discernible difference between CD-quality (16bit/44.1kHz) and higher resolution formats. My main concern was that wireless carplay was streaming over Bluetooth, which is noticeably lower than CD-quality. After doing a bit more reading on the subject, it turns out that wireless carplay uses BT to establish the initial "handshake" but uses wifi to transmit data, and music is streamed at CD quality. This would explain why I can't hear a difference in wired vs. wireless carplay (as opposed to other sources like Sirius/XM which is painfully compressed by comparison).

 

[Stoneageman]

I have a stereo which cost more than the Taycan.
I have a dedicated music room with a noise floor around 25dB.
Since I retired I did carefully level matched SQ difference tests between 320kb MP4, 16/44.1, 24/96 and 24/192 sample rates using the same mix - this is the important thing since I am sure some so called high res files are a different mix and sound different purely because of this.

Anyway it turns out the laws of physics haven’t been broken there was no audible difference between 1/44.1 and the bigger files.
This is actually not a surprise since even very young humans can’t hear above 22.05kHz (the theoretical maximum of CD) so the higher sampling rates are pointless for playback.
16 bit is 96dB of dynamic range so more than most music and even in my music room if I did have music with a dynamic range of 96dB and set the volume so I could just hear the quiet bits the loud bits would be at 121db which almost no Hi-Fi can reproduce and would cause hearing damage.

So my conclusion was any time I though I heard a difference it was either expectation bias, sound level difference or a different recording mix.

On some sorts of high dynamic range classical music I can hear the difference between 320kB and 16/44.1 but the difference is very small and I am absolutely sure I wouldn’t be able to detect it in a car environment.

So, in summary, I am sure there is a marked difference between the audio systems themselves but equally sure there is no audible difference between file types in a car.
Imagination and the placebo effect are powerful though…

The reality is that “hi res” music is a marketing ploy IME.

Completely agree. I don't have audio equipment more expensive than the Taycan but I do own headphones and systems that are more expensive than a used Camry. Lossless and AAC really has no discernable audible qualities. Also Burmester car audio is still nowhere near the quality of a decent set of large speakers or monitors.

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