What use is the CD/DVD Player?

[Ruffle]

Apart from playing traditional CDs (pretty much one album at a time which is naff) or DVD video disks when you're parked (not really useful), is there any other format that the CD/DVD player will accept?

I tried creating a data DVD with a load of .FLAC files on it but that didn't work.

In theory there is a DVD-A (audio) format but there's no mention in the manual of that being supported. Anyone tried it?

[Moleman]

17 minutes ago, Ruffle said:

Apart from playing traditional CDs (pretty much one album at a time which is naff) or DVD video disks when you're parked (not really useful), is there any other format that the CD/DVD player will accept?

I tried creating a data DVD with a load of .FLAC files on it but that didn't work.

In theory there is a DVD-A (audio) format but there's no mention in the manual of that being supported. Anyone tried it?

This is a post from Las Palmas, might answer your question.

In the CT I use DVD with m4a files 512kbps. More than 20 hours of music on one DVD. Music and picture of disc on the DVD but not on USB. Have a 32Gb USB with same type music and have no idea how long-time music would play, but probably enough to drive from southern Spain to Norway without hearing same tune twice.

 

Mostly cannot hear any difference between 512kbps and lossless. Only when parked in a very quiet place. ML audio is better than any standard audio in even 3 times more expensive cars.

[Las Palmas]

32Gb USB, which is biggest size that can be formatted to the stupid old FAT32 format which is the only format Lexus think we shall use can have 130 hours of music in OK quality.

Only problem with FAT32 is that it is prone to lose data and USB may disconnect when hitting a pothole.

The DVD with 20 hours of reasonably good quality (twice as good as MP3 limited to max 320kbps) is enough for most tours.

CD music discs can be extracted to DVD audio format m4a 512kbps in Foobar2000, free to use and no problems in it at all. Another super converter for music is Audacity, also free to use but if it was a paid program, I would still have it, not as easy to use as Foobar2000.

If you have a lot of lossless music on computer you can convert up to 2000 tunes in one go in dbPoweramp, that will take quite a long time even in a powerful computer and dbPoweramp is a paid program.

The DVD is the best way to listen to music in our cars if you do not want to have a lossless audio player connected with a cable to line-in in the car.

Bluetooth in the 2017 model CT is not better than MP3. Think Lexus has a problem with installing new things as latest Bluetooth can transfer CD quality audio (1411kbps).

When Lexus can install ML audio in the cars it is hard to understand the limits they imply in our using the quality Mark Levenson has helped with.

Most streamed music like Spotify is so low quality that it is hard to understand that many people use that way to get entertained.

[Ruffle]

Thanks Las Palmas.

FWIW, my LC will read ExFAT partitions on the USB but the silly silly Lexus ICE people limit the total number of folders (999) and tracks (9999). Maybe not an issue for most but my audio collection is some 3,000+ folders and 34,000+ tracks (not just music; a lot of podcasts, documentaries, plays etc) totalling some 245G[1].  Re-encoding this down to mp3 I can get it to fit on my phone but thought I could put my absolute fav albums on DVD in lossless format to give the ML a run.

So are you saying that putting m4a files on a data DVD is likely to work (xxx.flac files were not recognised)? or does it have to be DVD-A (which doesn't seem to be a common format in DVD burning software).

 

[1] - This might seem excessive but hey.... so's an LC! :-)  

[Las Palmas]

When your car can read ExFAT Lexus is moving forward. Unfortunately, ExFAT has same flaw as FAT32, losing and corrupting data. NTFS has been around since 2001 and that formatting method is so much better that losing data seems to be close to nor existing, so why Lexus will not make software able to read that as well as lossless audio files when they have ML audio is plain stupid. DVD-A seems to no longer be interesting enough to have programs converting to that, but the audio in movies is MP4 which is more or less the same as m4a and movies seldom have sound quality higher than m4a offer.  When m4a does work fine in the car we have I am sure it will also in the new LC.

Flac files are not recognised in the CT, but maybe you have more luck in a new LC.

 

[96spec]

Given the amount of knowledge here what is the most cost effective route to sourcing the music I want - legitimately - and burning to a DVD. I am still swapping CDs which I dont have many of!

[Ruffle]

I pay for Youtube Music Premium[1] and in the terms shown here:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6312991?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Cwill-my-fans-pay-to-use-youtube-music

it can be download to 'listen to offline' (it might even be legal in the UK to download for personal use without paying for Youtube Music Premium but I'm not a lawyer and won't visit you in prison if this isn't true :) ). The landing page for YouTube Music Premium also says "listen ad-free, offline" which to me reiterates that it's OK to download and store.

Of course, you can also stream YouTube Music through Android Auto/Car Play but I like to have them stored.

Anyway, being old school I like albums. Find one you want on Youtube Music, copy the URL and stick it on the end of this command:

yt-dlp -x --retries 15 --parse-metadata "playlist_index:%(track_number)s" --add-metadata --audio-format mp3 --output "%(playlist_index)02d - %(album)s - %(track)s.%(ext)s" <URL>

yt-dlp is a utility that can be downloaded for Windows, Mac & Linux from it's github page: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases

For example, to grab the album "Back in Black" do:

yt-dlp -x --retries 15 --parse-metadata "playlist_index:%(track_number)s" --add-metadata --audio-format mp3 --output "%(playlist_index)02d - %(album)s - %(track)s.%(ext)s" "https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kw8rDAlIt5yGYp_bQlG1TLeD1NdePx9lo"

This will end up with a bunch of mp3s with names in the form "tracknumber - album - trackname".mp3

Of course these are 'only' mp3s at 128kpbs, 48kHz but that's good enough for Government work.

HTH

 

[1] - Actually I get it 'for free' with my Mobile phone tarif.

 

[96spec]

Thankyou! 🙂

[Sbrlx]

On 3/3/2023 at 2:51 PM, Las Palmas said:

32Gb USB, which is biggest size that can be formatted to the stupid old FAT32 format which is the only format Lexus think we shall use can have 130 hours of music in OK quality.

No, FAT32 can support much larger than 32GB. It's also pretty reliable. If the LC doesn't write to the file system it can't corrupt it. Does anyone know if it does any writing to the media if it's only used for playback?

I use a 128Gb FAT-32 formatted USB drive in my brand new LC (only got it last month!) and have all my music ripped as WAVs. Lossless and works great.