# Is flac support new?



## Sonicendeavor (May 20, 2013)

Just for the heck of it I put a flac encoded song on a flash drive along with my wma lossless 5.1 and various mp3's and was surprised that the flac encoded song played with no problems.
I tried ALAC but no luck - it is still not supported.
Did BMW quietly add support for flac, or did I miss the announcement?
2014 535i LCI - iDrive 4.2. HK Premium audio


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## pierreye (Aug 31, 2013)

I believe NBT supported FLAC. It also work on 2013 528i Pre LCI fitted with NBT.


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## mlai (Jun 2, 2010)

BTW guys, what extension are you using for the car to recognize the flac files? I copied a whole bunch of flac files with .flac as extensions and the car will not recognize them:dunno:

Many thanks!


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## Sonicendeavor (May 20, 2013)

^^ Mine have the .flac extension. What car are you trying this with?
Do you know the resolution, sample rate and compression level of your files?
I've tested many different resolutions and sample rates and haven't found any that wouldn't play. I haven't tested various compression levels but its unlikely BMW doesn't support all levels.


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## mlai (Jun 2, 2010)

Sonicendeavor said:


> ^^ Mine have the .flac extension. What car are you trying this with?
> Do you know the resolution, sample rate and compression level of your files?
> I've tested many different resolutions and sample rates and haven't found any that wouldn't play. I haven't tested various compression levels but its unlikely BMW doesn't support all levels.


I am testing with an F06 that has no navigation (yeah only US has Nav standard).

Does not matter on whether 96/24, 48/24, 44/16. The FLAC will not show up. WMA Lossless 44/16 plays fine and seems to be the highest quality that can play thru digitally via idrive on mine.....


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## Sonicendeavor (May 20, 2013)

mlai said:


> I am testing with an F06 that has no navigation (yeah only US has Nav standard).
> 
> Does not matter on whether 96/24, 48/24, 44/16. The FLAC will not show up. WMA Lossless 44/16 plays fine and seems to be the highest quality that can play thru digitally via idrive on mine.....


Yeah, mine plays all those including flac encoded dts 5.1. 
I'm not familiar with the F06. Did it have NBT in 2013?
You might want to ask in the coding forum to see if there's a way to enable flac on yours.
I know there's a parameter in HU_NBT that allows enabling of different codecs like: 
HU_NBT => ENT_CODEC_OGG = aktiv
Which as an example enables the OGG Vorbis codec, but those guys in the coding forum could give you specifics about your hardware/software and if there's an option to enable the flac codec.
Best of luck.


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## mlai (Jun 2, 2010)

Thanks, Sonicendeaver. I am familiar with the coding board, but there does not seem to be option to rnable flac. And the non nav F06 has HU_CHAMP instead of nbt. maybe there is the difference:bawling:


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## GhostWorks (Oct 7, 2010)

Interesting , I'd like to know what my CIC BMW F07 2011 can handle ...

Getting a audio upgrade and be nice to find out what the highest codec quality I can play through either front USB or into the HDD system 


Sent from BimmerApp mobile app


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## Sonicendeavor (May 20, 2013)

^^ With so many variations of hardware and software, it's usually the simplest to create a several tracks with different resolutions and sample rates on a thumbdrive and see which ones play.
Just for reference, I've tested *flac* from a USB drive in my 2014 535i at both 16 and 24 bit resolutions up to a 192k sample rate including flac encoded dts 5.1 surround and all played fine. The tracks copy to the hard drive without any re-encoding and play without issues as well.


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## GhostWorks (Oct 7, 2010)

I believe the new NBT ( Next Big Thing ) introduced in 2012/13 is Flac capable , however the older CIC system is only MP3 , WMA, and WAV , unknown if capable of 96khz /24bit or even 196khz / 24bit 

Looks like genuine master audio CD without copying to internal drive ( just playback ) might be the best source , 


Sent from BimmerApp mobile app


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## Sonicendeavor (May 20, 2013)

^^Or alternatively rip the CD's to WAV on a flash drive and if desired copy it to the hard drive but unfortunately the hard drive allocation for music makes this impractical for more than a few CD's. I don't think the Gracenote lookup works for WAV either.
This is more about not having to convert our music to another format to play in the car than sound quality since numerous blind listening tests show that even experienced audio engineers can't consistently pick a CD track vs. a high bitrate MP3 even on a high end audio system much less a car system. The last extremely well thought out test of this nature with self-professed audiophiles showed that more than 50% thought the 320k MP3 sounded better and 20% couldn't hear a difference. In my own blind ABX testing if I isolate a short segment of a well recorded acoustic guitar track in a quiet room, I can hear the difference between FLAC and MP3 100% of the time, but extend that test to include an entire song and I'm right around 50%, which is essentially guessing .


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## GhostWorks (Oct 7, 2010)

What are the DAC chips in both the CIC vs NBT 

This is the other comparison on the hardware 

Intel processor 1.3Ghz vs Renesas 600Mhz
1GB RAM (vs 512Mb)
8GB flash (vs 512Mb)
Nvidia graphics (vs Fujitsu)
200GB hard drive (vs 80Gb)


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## GhostWorks (Oct 7, 2010)

I believe the combox is now built into the NBT in the dash and not a separate item like with CIC


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## piredon (Aug 12, 2013)

My iPod died this past week. It was an older 160 GB model that I had filled with ALAC (apple lossless) files. I'd been using it pretty much daily since 2009, and it lived in the terribly unstable environment that is a car interior, so it wasn't particularly surprising that it died. Didn't really feel like buying another, and I remembered seeing this thread. So I loaded some FLAC files onto a USB drive to test it out. Worked like a charm. 

I grabbed a 128GB (which is really 115 GB) usb flash drive for about 60 bucks and loaded her up. So far so good. The 96Hz/24 bit files worked as well, which is a large plus as ALAC files at that sampling rate will not play on the iPod.

This might be important to many people, but it's a fairly large upgrade in my book on the part of BMW. Much appreciated. And thanks to Sonicendeavor for pointing it out!


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## justin42 (May 16, 2011)

This is very cool, going to try it tonight, didn't know FLAC was supported now.


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## justin42 (May 16, 2011)

Tried this over the weekend in my F33 and it worked! Thank you! This saves me a ton of time, as my entire music collection is already in FLAC. I was planning to buy an ipod for the car and convert stuff to Apple Lossless, but now I'll just throw my music on a 64gb USB stick and be done with it. Thank you again.


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## Sonicendeavor (May 20, 2013)

^^ No problem. Glad it worked out.
I saw an F33 for the first time at an auto show this past weekend - beautiful car!


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## justin42 (May 16, 2011)

Sonicendeavor said:


> ^^ No problem. Glad it worked out.
> I saw an F33 for the first time at an auto show this past weekend - beautiful car!


I am very happy with the F33, loving the looks and how it drives. When I picked it up my fiancee said it was "more of a guy's car" and not as "little" as our E93!


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## Damon44 (Oct 28, 2014)

justin42 said:


> Tried this over the weekend in my F33 and it worked! Thank you! This saves me a ton of time, as my entire music collection is already in FLAC. I was planning to buy an ipod for the car and convert stuff to Apple Lossless, but now I'll just throw my music on a 64gb USB stick and be done with it. Thank you again.


I am going to try it as well when my 435i comes in next week. Part of my collection was CD at 1411 I think and a bunch of downloads from allflac.com at 800-1400kps.
They are going on a flash drive once I move them over.
I erred and put them in wma rather than wav which I am doing now.
Not as technologically savvy as I used to be.
I learn so much on here.


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## justin42 (May 16, 2011)

I am using a 128 gig flash drive and playing FLAC files off it with no issues at all. Love that this is an option now!


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