Flac on Car Stereo Head Units? Options

[wantlosslesscara...]

I have a kenwood excelon 996 and I am able to play FLAC files that are on my Samsung Galaxy S3 over blue tooth to the kenwood unit through the car stereo speakers.

What I want is a head unit that will read flac files right off the USB thumb drive right into the head unit.

I have seen some threads through google searching where people have been trying to do this since 2005. The last thread I saw on google, some one had tried this back in 2009.

Does anyone have any information on FLAC support on any current car audio products other than the "psudeo" way I am doing it now?

[slks]

Not sure if there's any players like this. I've always just took a cable from my audio player of choice to the line-in on the head unit, and I've been 100% satisfied with that. I suppose your Bluetooth thing works similarly.

The only benefit I can see of doing it all through the head unit is if you've got one of those units that integrates with playback controls on the steering wheel. Otherwise, why not let the head unit follow its original function of receiver+amplifier, and handle anything else (like FLAC decoding) through a dedicated device?

As well-known as FLAC is among digital audio enthusiasts, it's nearly unknown in the realm of car audio. That makes FLAC playback a special requirement that you'll need to make special arrangements for.

This post has been edited by slks: Dec 27 2012, 04:23