Unexpected Headache with New Car System

[Haywood]

The stock radio in my wife's Acura MDX has been circling the drain for awhile and one of the things I promised her was a new head unit with Bluetooth phone integration, Bluetooth audio streaming and USB audio. The radio is rather low in the dash, rendering it useless for navigation and we both felt that a touch screen would just be distracting. I found a very nice Alpine double-DIN head unit that seemed to be absolutely perfect. I ordered it from Crutchfield along with an install kit and steering wheel interface. It was only after receiving the box that I discovered the problem buried in the small print.

All to the literature touts how wonderfully it integrates with and controls iPods and iPhones, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that it cannot directly use AAC files either burned to disc or via the USB port. WTF? Seriously, what the hell were they thinking. iTunes is the most popular music store out there, even for folks like me who don't use iOS devices, because of its huge selection. It is arguably only a close second to MP3 in terms of market penetration, yet they chose to support WMA and not AAC. Almost nobody uses WMA. That makes ZERO sense. So here I am stuck with two unpalatable choices: return the unit and buy another head unit that I do not like as well for other reasons or transcode AAC to MP3 for use in the car. I am unhappy with both options and trying to identify the lesser evil.

I downloaded a pretty good audio transcoder and picked The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn from Alison Krauss' New Favorite album as a serious torture test. I know that transcoding from one lossy format to anther is always a bad idea, but I have a ton of AAC music and I need to see how much of an issue it really is considering it is for playback in a noisy car. I tried a bunch of different settings before finding one that is not too bad. I can definitely hear the difference in a quiet room with a pair of half decent speakers. My wife and I spent quite a lot of time going back and forth between it and the original, trying to decide whether or not the difference is big enough to care about in the car. I am leaning toward the transcode rather than the replacement, but it bugs me and I'm not happy about it.

 

[Flint]

I have some really bad news... WMA is the most popular licensed compressed audio format in the world (ahead of ACC, QT, and the other formats we've all forgotten).

Also, Apple insists that AAC be rendered via the phone (or other iDevice) to ensure full DRM control AND tracking of what you listen to (they make money off that data at no expense or risk to you). Basically, Apple does not want people using AAC except the way they want it used.

I am unaware of any head unit which can read AAC files (though I am imagine some exist) and Apple licensing makes it very hard device makers to support AAC without an Apple component in the mix.

 

[Flint]

I have some really bad news... WMA is the most popular licensed compressed audio format in the world (ahead of ACC, QT, and the other formats we've all forgotten).

Also, Apple insists that AAC be rendered via the phone (or other iDevice) to ensure full DRM control AND tracking of what you listen to (they make money off that data at no expense or risk to you). Basically, Apple does not want people using AAC except the way they want it used.

I am unaware of any head unit which can read AAC files (though I am imagine some exist) and Apple licensing makes it very hard device makers to support AAC without an Apple component in the mix.

I see Pioneer claims to support AAC on CD/Rs, but not on USB, on some models, but there a ton of forum posts claiming it really doesn't and the user had to use their iPhone to play the files.

 

[Towen7]

Apple insists that AAC be rendered via the phone (or other iDevice) to ensure full DRM control AND tracking of what you listen to (they make money off that data at no expense or risk to you).

I had no idea about that!

 

[Flint]

Data about how users use data is the most value commodity on the internet. It is the source of the vast majority of Google's revenue.

 

[Towen7]

I knew that about Google. I also knew that Apple is in the information business as well. I did not know that they restricted AAC playback to that end.

Interesting.

 

[Haywood]

I have some really bad news... WMA is the most popular licensed compressed audio format in the world (ahead of ACC, QT, and the other formats we've all forgotten).

Also, Apple insists that AAC be rendered via the phone (or other iDevice) to ensure full DRM control AND tracking of what you listen to (they make money off that data at no expense or risk to you). Basically, Apple does not want people using AAC except the way they want it used.

I am unaware of any head unit which can read AAC files (though I am imagine some exist) and Apple licensing makes it very hard device makers to support AAC without an Apple component in the mix.

There is no DRM on iTunes music and there hasn't been for years. AAC is simply MPEG-4 Audio Layer. Every online music store that I have seen sells either AAC/M4a or MP3, with the exception of Microsoft.

 

[Haywood]

I have some really bad news... WMA is the most popular licensed compressed audio format in the world (ahead of ACC, QT, and the other formats we've all forgotten).

Also, Apple insists that AAC be rendered via the phone (or other iDevice) to ensure full DRM control AND tracking of what you listen to (they make money off that data at no expense or risk to you). Basically, Apple does not want people using AAC except the way they want it used.

I am unaware of any head unit which can read AAC files (though I am imagine some exist) and Apple licensing makes it very hard device makers to support AAC without an Apple component in the mix.

I see Pioneer claims to support AAC on CD/Rs, but not on USB, on some models, but there a ton of forum posts claiming it really doesn't and the user had to use their iPhone to play the files.

There are units from Kenwood, JVC and Sony that support AAC, but none of them have the clean and simple design and ergonomics of the Alpine.

 

[Haywood]

The good news is that I was able to find a transcoding configuration that is acceptable enough for car use. As I said, the piece of bluegrass I used was an extremely challenging transcode. It is vastly more demanding than anything I could have picked along the lines of the pop/rock we usually listen to in the car. I figured that if I could find a transcoding setting that I didn't completely hate with that recording, the rest would be fine.

I could always go back to my lossless archive and re-encode everything to MP3 from there, but that would take a very long time and I am not sure it is worth the effort for background music in the car. Even the transcodes sound better than Pandora, so I am thinking I can live with it for now. The only music that I am completely screwed for should I decide to bite the bullet and re-encode my base library is the stuff purchased from iTunes directly. The only good news is that most of the iTunes purchases consist of K-Pop music my wife cannot find elsewhere and honestly, that is not the kind of music that really shows off the artifacts of a lossy-lossy transcode.

 

[Yesfan70]

I would do just that, re-encode everything from your lossless archives to MP3. Yes it is time cusuming, but just do a few files here and there until you get it all done.


I hate the whole WMA vs AAC, as it seems like devices either support one or the other but not both.

 

[Haywood]

I kinda decided to do that, but it might be awhile before I have the time. The good news is the new software I found should be able to do a lot of it in an automated way.

 

[Haywood]

I found the external hard drive with my lossless music on it in a box in the garage. I probably won't have time for the project until the dust clears from our final wave of work settling into our new place, but I already have some great software picked out and I certainly have the space to work with the new NAS. It is going to be a pain and a bit time consuming, because we bought a lot of discs after I stopped doing lossless rips. I am going to have to identify the gaps and rip the discs again. I also need to figure out which music was purchased through iTunes and cannot be replaced with 320kbps MP3. After I fill all the gaps and consolidate all of the music, I am going to have to re-tag everything, because I have done a ton of tagging over the last few years that I am going to lose in the process. This is going to be a supreme pain in the ass, but I think it will be worth it to be mostly shod of AAC. My wife continues to buy quite a lot of music from iTunes, because she is a massive Korean Pop fan girl and iTunes have the best selection, so I won't be able to kill it off completely. The good news is that most K-Pop is not the type of music that really brings out the kinds of lossy to lossy transcoding errors I'm trying to avoid, so it should be good enough for use in the car.