I don’t think any car can ever have the acoustic qualities needed to tell the difference between FLAC 192/24 and a decent MP3. Assuming that’s possible at all, but that’s a different discussion.

I don’t think I’d care to go through the trouble of replacing the headunit (which already supports Android Auto) to optimize for codec selection. If anything I’d replace the speakers.

But I don’t use the car so much on local movement (german city, plenty of other options) and on the highway I think the noise is bit too loud to be worth it. I’ll probably just wait until the current ones age enough to annoy me, then buy a nicer set.

I use, depending on mood or circumstances, a SD cars with a dozen GB of MP3, or use Finamp on my phone via Android Auto.

My collection is still made exclusively of MP3, mainly because it’s a large-ish collection of pretty high quality files (mostly LAME V0) with all the tags just right (Picard+beet and a ton of work).

I curated this over the years, it sounds more than good enough on my hardware, and I don’t feel like throwing the whole thing away because something a little fancier came along, especially if in this day and age it still means taking a loss in terms of compatibility.

Both with the car, and with my Yahama network receiver/amplifier. The car is relatively new (2020) the amplifier is a little more seasoned, but it can direct play mp3, while I’d have to transcode opus.

Someone shoot me the day I change HiFi hardware over codecs.

With this being said, I’m not sure I’d transcode Opus into MP3 on purpose.

Only if you think I’m here to screw you over.

It was a new car. A Skoda Fabia. Ordered in January, delivered in May after the first lockdown. The autoradio supports AAC, MP3, FLAC, WMA and vorbis.

And I do use the SD slot, with a dozen GB of MP3. Anything fancier does not make much sense in a car.

OPUS files can be played by practically any modern device

The radio of my car (bought in 2020) begs to differ.