List You favourite CarPlay apps!

Audio, Navigation, Electronic Issues and Fixes
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Trued
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Post by Trued »

I use VOX all the time for the VERY best Music Experience. Uncompressed Music and the possibility to adjust everything You like. So if You have Bose or Burmeister this is a definate MUST to have,
Another great app is NPR.
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Col Lamb
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Post by Col Lamb »

Apple maps

Thats it

I am too tight to actually pay for any Music streaming subscription.
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goron59
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Post by goron59 »

Apple Maps and Music.
Spotify when I have guests that use that.
Amazon Music for when I want something random.
Nostalgie sometimes.
Audiobooks.

I looked at VOX but the quality of music via the CarPlay interface is not that great (still better than via Bluetooth maybe?) so all my FLAC/ALAC is on SD and played via the PCM directly.
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happy days
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Post by happy days »

Absolutely none. I was genuinely interested in this given I'm never far from the phone, but CarPlay is a huge disappointment. Most of the apps available are for American Sports channels or radio stations - erm, I have a radio tuner in the car already!
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Trued
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Post by Trued »

Col Lamb wrote: Sat May 27, 2017 11:17 am Apple maps

Thats it

I am too tight to actually pay for any Music streaming subscription.
VOX is free, You listen to Your own downloaded from PC(Mac Music.
- 2017 Porsche Macan
- 2004 SAAB 9-3 AERO CV
- 1978 SAAB 99 TURBO 3D Rally,RAC '78 S. Blomqvist
- 1977 SAAB 99 TURBO 3D
- 1977 SAAB 99 TURBO 4D Pre-Prod.
- 1966 SAAB 96 MonteCarlo V4 Rally
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goron59
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Post by goron59 »

Trued wrote: Tue May 30, 2017 1:30 pm
Col Lamb wrote: Sat May 27, 2017 11:17 am Apple maps

Thats it

I am too tight to actually pay for any Music streaming subscription.
VOX is free, You listen to Your own downloaded from PC(Mac Music.
The best bits of VOX are not free however.

Yes, you can play content from your iTunes lib, but the CarPlay music app does that too.
There's spotify hookup, but there's not much point as Spotify has CarPlay support and VOX won't improve the quality there.
Abitrary content can be put on SD and therefore won't be resampled by the CarPlay interface.

So the best bit, as far as I can tell, is Loop Music Cloud support, but that's quite pricey. $16/month PAYG down to $8 on 2 year sub.
Probably worth it if you have a lot of FLAC.. and if you pay for a lot of FLAC, you can probably afford the montly fee anyway :)

So for free, you can use it as a facade over existing services... the real value is in Loop.
Used to have 2016 Macan Turbo PHCKCL70
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Col Lamb
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Post by Col Lamb »

I am not into streaming on the move so I have a few questions that could help the old timer understand what language you are speaking.

VOX why would I want this media player?

Loop music cloud, what is it and why would I want it?
Col
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goron59
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Post by goron59 »

Col Lamb wrote: Tue May 30, 2017 3:48 pm I am not into streaming on the move so I have a few questions that could help the old timer understand what language you are speaking.

VOX why would I want this media player?

Loop music cloud, what is it and why would I want it?
Disclosure: I tried and rejected VOX as it doesn't add any value to my setup.

So Loop is a cloudy solution where you keep all your FLAC in the cloud - if you didn't FLAC/ALAC, you wouldn't bother.
You (Col) don't do cloudy/subscription stuff, so what would you gain?

See https://vox.rocks/loop-music-cloud-storage

Well, you can transfer FLAC music to the app via file transfer/AirDrop.
Convenient? I would argue not as it's easier to transfer stuff to an SD card and just plug it in to the car. On the other hand, if you use VOX at home, at least all the tracks are in the same place, so maybe it is useful.

Assuming you did do this, you can then play your lovely FLAC songs via CarPlay. There some doubt whether this will be transferred in all its lossless, high-resolution, multi-channel glory., I did some digging before and found it was little better than 320mbps MP3.

My conclusion is that unless you Loop or generally keep your stuff in VOX, there's little point in using it.

YMMV
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Col Lamb
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Post by Col Lamb »

Cheers

I have my FLAC music in the Macan on the Jukebox and in a FLAC only SD card.

PC at home hard wired into HiFi.

Also have an Airport so can stream off iPad or iPhone directly into HiFi.

Rather than subscribe to Music streaming I download the radio programmes I am interested in off the Beeb (Sixties, Seventies, Swing, Folk and the excellent Paul Jones's RnB) and put them on an SD card and then there is more than enough to listen to whilst on the move.

Anyone with Amazon Prime gets free Music streaming which are easily recorded as albums or playlists rather than fiddle about streaming off the Amazon App in the car.
Col
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goron59
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Post by goron59 »

I did some digging recently regarding the quality of audio you might get out of an app like VOX via CarPlay.

The developer says that as far as he's concerned, the audio out is no different to a Lightning connected audio device, and that is up to 24bit/96khz according to Apple specs.

Whether the PCM will take that as-is, is still unknown, but at least it stands a better chance of going HD and unmolested than Bluetooth A2DP protocol.

VOX can play FLAC as well as ALAC (from file system or iTunes - no need for subscription), so I may actually consider using it...need to do some listening tests at the weekend. That, after all, is what counts.

(I'd previously rejected VOX as I had been told on Apple Discussion forums that the audio was downsampled and compressed)
Used to have 2016 Macan Turbo PHCKCL70
Previously a 2014 Macan Turbo.
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