Compare the Audio Quality of Apple Music in Your Tesla to Spotify and Tidal

Tesla’s new holiday update may include Apple Music, but don’t expect the lossless audio quality that Apple Music subscribers enjoy yet. As of late, Tesla proprietor and programming engineer Dan Burkland played out certain tests on the sound quality that Tesla’s in-vehicle real-time features Flowing, Spotify, and presently Apple Music stream in the vehicle.

Burkland previously put TIDAL through its paces on a different version of the Tesla software; however, due to Tesla’s ever-evolving software and the release of the holiday update, he decided to conduct the tests once more.

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Setup and Songs Used to Test

Using a DHCP reservation and connecting his Model Y to the WiFi network in his house, he was able to assign the vehicle a specific IP address. He then added ntopng to his OPNsense firewall to keep track of the vehicle’s traffic statistics. He tested nine songs, including “Purple Rain” by Prince, “Foreplay” by Boston, and “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin, after removing the host stats for the Model Y.

Burkland’s tests revealed that TIDAL continues to provide the best listening experience. TIDAL’s average bitrate was 1165 kbps. This isn’t all that surprising because TIDAL has always advocated for the best audio streaming experience.

Surprisingly, Spotify’s audio quality placed second behind Apple Music. According to Burkland’s tests, Apple Music streaming averaged 118 kbps, while Spotify streaming averaged 157 kbps.

Burkland went on to say that he thinks Apple Music is restricting the bitrate of the in-car app, but he hopes this will be fixed in a future Tesla software update. In terms of high-fidelity streaming via the in-car app, Tesla will compete with Tidal if it can enable lossless streaming for Apple Music.

Other Tesla Owners Are Running Similar Tests

Similar tests were carried out with slightly different configurations by Reddit user u/OverlyOptimisticNerd. Hotspot Monitor Data Usage from Apple’s App Store, a 2019 Model 3 running version 2022.44.25.1, and an iPhone 14 served as their mobile hotspots.

They said that a lot of data came in at the beginning of the tests and then slowly trickled through. During their tests, they saw the same pattern in all songs. Apple Music’s 64 kbps HE-AAC codec appears to be compatible with the low data rate.

According to u/OverlyOptimisticNerd, “It appears to buffer most or even all of the song, then pauses between tracks to do it again.” On average, I saw about 2MB per track, with 1.7MB in the initial burst and 0.3MB throughout the track. Because the majority of these songs were slightly longer than three minutes, this conforms to the HE-AAC standard.

Even though Apple Music had the lowest average bitrate of the three services that were tested, this does not necessarily mean that it had the lowest quality. The use of a variable bitrate and the efficiency of the codec are two examples of factors that influence audio quality.

Since Apple Music’s HE-ACC codec is designed for low-bandwidth applications, it can perform better than an ACC-encoded file when using less bandwidth. Apple Music in your Tesla should sound very similar to Spotify’s streaming music, but not as good as TIDAL’s.

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