Hi all,

I have a USB stick plugged in to the center console.
If I play FLAC files (not sure it's supported) it works but music breaks up every 10 seconds.

Anyone using FLAC files?

Greetings

 

I do with no issues.

 

I had the same problem 192KHz Flac files. Down converting them to 48KHz solved the problem for me.

 

Cool...didn't know the E class could play this type of file. I might have to get this car just for that. Is it only on the 2018 model?

 

My '18 E300 (US) does NOT recognize flac files. My whole collection is flac. I'm converting it to mp3 320.

 

so only the '17 models play flac?

 

It depends on the specific entertainment system. There at least 3 different ones that I'm familiar with. Non-US models may have even more.

 

Do you mean base stereo, Burmester, and Burmester 3D? I would assume both Burmester should play flac.

 

My Burmester does not play flac. If anyone can play flac on the non-3D Burmester unit, what are the flac settings for the sampling frequency and the number of bits per sample.

 

Surely the ability or lack of to play FLAC files is dependent on the infotainment system and firmware rather than the sound system.

In other words it will depend on the MY of your car and whether you have the basic infotainment, Audio 20, or COMAND online, rather than whether you have the base audio system, Burmester, or Burmester 3D...

I've got an S213 coming in March and if it doesn't play FLAC files via USB or Bluetooth, then I'll be more than a little disappointed.

My spec is UK MY18 with Burmester (not 3D) and COMAND online.

If worst comes to worst, is there a way to connect a phone or FLAC player via aux / stereo cable and play music that way?

 

not necessarily related to FLAC files but has anyone had difficulties with album art? I have all mp3 files on the stick and some are generating album art and others not

 

I went through the album art debug process. Album art does not work if the image is a file in the album. It must be tagged in the mp3 itself.

 

 

Can’t play FLAC files in my 2017 E300 P3. . There is an iPhone app you can download called FLAC player, and transfer them to your iPhone, and it will play them, although I’m not sure at what resolution. I’m anxious to see if my inbound S560 with 3D stereo will play them. Doubtful.

Apparently we we will be able to stream Tidal soon in our Mercedes.

 

Does anyone know if MB has a list of supported file types? It would be a simple matter to just convert unsupported file types to the best version that is supported. These days you can do batch conversions pretty easily. It takes a while, but could be done overnight with a program like JRiver.

 

DOH!
Should have done a Google search first:
http://www.glaowners.com/forum/elect...icks-long.html
Supported file types are in there.

 

I find the album art needs to be 500x500 dpi or less to show.

 

If you are using iTunes, I recommend M3Unify by Doug. https://dougscripts.com/apps/m3unifyapp.php

 

Each mp3 must be embedded with the album art jpg. I do this by searching Google Images using Artist - album name, find and download an image 400x400 pixels or larger. If it is larger, you can use the free app Fastone image Resizer (does multiple files and saves a lot of time) to resize it to 400x400 - max. Either dimension can be smaller than 400 pixels Can't be any larger than 400x400, based on my experience. Store jpg in folder with files. You can then use the free spp MP3tag to embed the mp3/FLAC with the jpg. You can do multiple files from the same album at once.

 

I've been using both ALAC (Apple Lossless) and FLAC files successfully in my 2019 E450 (Burmester 3D) and my wife's 2018 E 430 Wagon (Burmester Surround Sound).
The cover art is working exceptionally well. The Command systems are identical -- the actual Burmester stereo model itself is not relevant as someone already pointed out.

Audio sound quality is exceptionally good on both the 3D and Surround Systems -- the 3D system is significantly richer and stronger in the bass. Both systems benefit from lossless audio quality for sure IMHO.

I'm guessing about 95% of my music is ALAC 24 bit 96kHz, 3% various other formats and about 2% of my music is FLAC files (generally 44.1 kHz and 16 bit downloads from artist websites).

I have a test USB stick that I've used in recent years to check compatibility of various cars (BMW, Porsche, Mercedes) to different formats since I insisted on buying a car that had a great range of music format support. The E class cars (> 2018 MY) passed with flying colors on ALAC and FLAC up to 192kHz (maybe it even supports 384k, but I have not tested that).

No cars that I tested can play DSD files --- either natively or on-the-fly conversion to PCM -- hopefully in the future Mercedes will support this since some audiophile sites offer DSD downloads and it would be cool to check them out on the Burmester 3D.

One thing I did notice about FLAC files that I downloaded from band websites, sometimes the meta-data (artist, track #) can have some junk in one of the fields (like characters where there should be numbers). I specifically noticed this with the total # of tracks for some albums I downloaded -- i.e., it should display track 5 of 10 but the info was stored as track 5 of some random characters like "lskdflsjoiejfwoen..." . I fixed that using a meta data editor called Meta that I use on my Mac. I'm not certain if these issues cause a problem with the Mercedes but I had some odd meta data behavior with these FLAC files on my E450 and this seemed to have fixed it.

Good luck!

 

FLAC files play perfectly - no skips, jitters, etc. They play randomly from a set of about 4,000 tracks.

 

I just finished doing a test, I had a lot of issues with FLAC and had to convert them to a low bit rate to get them to play with no stuttering. I also noticed that FLAC files sound very "dead" to me in the car, but sound great at home.

I converted a bunch of songs from a reference gold SRV CD to FLAC and to MP3 320K, then listened to them for about a week. Same songs, ripped from the same CD. Without a doubt the Burmeister plays MP3 320's WAY better than FLACs. The MP3's sound as you'd expect, but the FLACS are dull and lifeless like someone normalized the dynamic range.

At this point I just don't think the software in the car has been optimized to play FLAC.

 

Maybe you could try to convert to ALAC (Apple Lossless) and compare as well? I mention giving this a try because I would venture to guess that the development team has been further along with ALAC than with FLAC since they need to support ALAC as part of the Apple world.

I've been finding ALAC a little more robust in terms of the meta-data situation although the sound quality of both FLAC and ALAC have both been exceptional in my car. Theoretically, they should be the same, both of them are just forms of "zipping" the file to make it smaller without losing any of the original PCM data. In my experience so far, ALAC and FLAC sound exactly the same (as they should) and both sound awesome -- mp3's sound great too but just a notch more plodding / muddy in the bass and little less open sounding (duller). I have a MY19 E450 with Burmester 3D.

 

You might want to try converting some FLAC files to ALAC and see if those work. I mention giving this a try because I would venture to guess that the Mercedes development team has been further along with ALAC than with FLAC since they need to support ALAC as part of the Apple world.

Theoretically, FLAC and ALAC sound the same -- both are just "zipping" the data file to make it smaller without losing any of the original PCM (CD) data.

 

I don't have any Apple products other than their stock, I'm an Android guy. As you mention, I can't see how there would be a big difference between FLAC and ALAC, but I would expect there to be a big difference between my regular Burmester and your 3D version.