Had my 2020 370z for 2 months. First impressions.
 

Hi Everybody,

I posted photos and introduced myself in the new forum member thread. This is my 3rd Z car. I've had two 1979 280zx's and now a 2020 sport touring 370Z with only 6k miles when I bought it in April. I got a great deal on it and was so happy to have a new Z in my garage. I absolutely love it. It's much faster than I expected; I guess I was used to the old 280zx which isn't that fast anymore. When I drove it home from the dealer, a BMW wouldn't move over to let me on the interstate. I mashed the accelerator and flew in front of him. I smiled and knew then I was going to be happy. I love that the touring sport has both performance and comfort upgrades. It's more comfortable than I expected after reading reviews. Also love the highway gas mileage, I got 27 on a trip and the 280zx would only get 19.

I only have two issues, neither a big deal. One is that it's a bit noisy on the highway when going fast; I have to turn the stereo up pretty loud then. I think the Bose sound system is supposed to have some noise cancelling built in, but I don't see any evidence of that. The other issue is also about the stereo. I was stunned to find that it doesn't play flac files, either on CDs or on a USB stick. I had wanted to load up a 32gb USB stick with tons of albums I ripped myself into flac format since it is lossless and the same as having the physical CD on hand. That was my plan for my main music source. But my stereo doesn't handle the flac format. That strikes me as crazy for a 2020 premium vehicle. I got a portable flac player, but that isn't as convenient since I have to change albums on the player and I don't like doing that while driving.

These are minor quibbles. I couldn't be happier. What as great car. My friends are jealous when they see it. Looking forward to hanging out here with fellow 370z owners.

I can't specifically address the flac files, but I found that if I had more than about 3,000 music files on a thumb drive that it took almost my whole drive to work (30 minutes) to parse the files every time I started the car. I ended up cutting back to around 2500 files, & it only took a couple of minutes to start playing.
When I upgraded my Verizon phone plan to the level 2 unlimited plan, it came with Apple Music (not to be confused with iTunes). Now I just Bluetooth connect and listen to my playlist.
Unlike Pandora or the others, I play songs I choose, when I want. If I want to listen to a particular album, I just que it up and push play. (I just went from "Poor Man's Son" to Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, lol. Sometimes the juxtaposition is ...odd, lol)
The playback will tend to stutter or stop if I get in an area with low signal strength.


Kirk B.

The road noise is a little worse with the sport tires. If you really want to cut down some of it, you could consider a softer compound tire down the road. Of course handling would be slightly effected.

The stereo has always been a huge pain point for me. I have an 09 touring and still have the OEM Bose. In this vehicle the Bose is pretty crappy, no matter what year Z you have. I've installed a few little add ons to make it a little more user friendly, but it still stinks. Every now and again I consider replacing it, but always find some sort of performance mod i would rather spend the cash on.

Do you plan to do any mods?

Welcome to the forum. :tup:

Enjoy the ride. :driving:

I do the same, but with Amazon Music.

You could take a look at using Media Monkey to convert your flac files to mp3 and save them to another USB stick. With the road noise from the Z you won't be able to tell the difference. I did this years ago for use in an mp3 player. IIRC Media Monkey leaves the original flac files intact and simply makes another copy in mp3 format.

Enjoy your Z!

Not yet, but I plan to scour the forum and see what people suggest. I'm pretty happy with the stock setup for now, but that will probably change after I learn more.

Congratulations! Nice color. It is an easy platform to mod to fit anyone's taste. I remember my first mod. It was a $75 replica of a lip. Looks hasn't changed much since '09 but is still appealing. It is slow out of the box and takes $$$ to make it go fast. Nissan should have put in the VR30DDTT on it in '16. Stereo wise, I don't think there's and easy mod to let it play flac but if you have Bose, I'd go with an Audio Control LOC and go from there. Lots of guys put large boxes and over power it but it's overkill.

Welcome to the forum :tiphat:

You have to understand the entertainment technology in the 370Z has not been updated. Ever.** So you're dealing with 2008 hardware and proprietary programming.

To be honest, you don't need lossless files. Having lossless audio with the sound stage of a moving car is pointless. Even more so on the stock bLose stereo.

If you really care, you should plan to upgrade the entire stereo anyway. Lots of information on the forum here and guys that are knowledgeable about lots of different options you have. How far you go is up to you.


** that's not technically true, there was a small update after the first year models

I'll start with the bad news:

If you bought this car for the entertainment options, i'm sorry, you bought the wrong car.
It's an 11 year old sports car that has had minimal upgrades during its life span.

Ditto with road noise. It's a dated sports car, if you want a quiet ride . . . you want a different car. Just facts here.

The good news:

It's an 11 year old platform so there's known solutions to nearly everything. The solutions might not be easy or cheap or particularly palatable . . . but they're out there.

Parts are still being made for the car. Not to Subaru/GTR/Mustang/BMW levels . . . but you can find basically anything. Again, the price point might not be fun, but stuff is there. Mostly.

You have one of the last RWD, manual transmission sports cars out there, so congratulations! It doesn't need a transmission swap or an engine swap or hacking off (or welding on) a roof to be fun


Here's your to-do list:
- Read this forum
- When you have questions, search, and read more!
- Look at pictures
- Find stuff you like
- Copy how that person did it (by reading, asking questions, and then breaking out your credit card)

stuff you must do before anything else:
- Buy a Zspeed heavy duty slave cylinder plus a lightweight flywheel/clutch combo and install it before your OEM one shatters and leaves you stranded
- stillen Gen 3's
- 34 row oil cooler from Z1/Fast Intentions

And then decide how far you want to go after that

As others have already mentioned - the radio on the Z is pretty bad. The good news is, if you have the regular HU and not the navigation; then you can easily do a double din radio that offers things such as Apple CarPlay or Android CarPlay - regardless the aftermarket is the way to go. Now if you have your navigation built in - (this is my case with my current Z); then the best thing to do is stream your music from your phone and keep it charging - while it doesn’t compare to having an aftermarket HU - I feel it helps and I use the phone holder that utilizes disc so its out of the way and allows for me to charge it through the center console.

As for the road noise - oh yeah, these cars have a lot of it - i believe a lot of members have looked to DynaMat the trunk and some of the other areas of the car to lessen the road noise but I hear it adds some weight to the car. Regardless - sounds like you are enjoying the car and yeah, they are great and balanced cars. :)

The standard RE050A tyres are awful for road noise. Many people have commented that the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 is a fantastic tyre AND has much less road noise. They will be my next tyre.

The other thing you can do for road noise is Dynamat the rear trunk area.

2018+ Z retuned the noise cancelling, it now does almost nothing. I test drove a 2017 Z that cancelled the bass frequencies very well but NC doesn't work with treble, and the remaining road noise was tinny and weird. On my 2018 I turned off the ANC, ASE and then fitted a quiet aftermarket exhaust (HKS Hi-Power, brilliant, ZERO drone, comes to life when you floor it). Perfection.

For the audio, just stream music from your phone. I use Musicloud app which supports FLAC (I also use headphones, FLAC is wasted in the car over Bluetooth though). Or use a USB flash drive in the centre console with a bunch of MP3s on it. Just bulk convert your FLAC to MP3 using ffmpeg command line tool.

:iagree::iagree: Very Well Said!! :tup:

Thanks for these great ideas
 

and for the warm welcome. I appreciate the ideas about how to listen to music and ways to upgrade the car. I certainly didn't get it because I love the entertainment system, although I do love to listen to loud tunes while I drive too fast. I got it because I'm a Z guy, after all this is my third one!

Regarding the flac issue, it hadn't occurred to me that this was a non-issue because a moving vehicle with road noise isn't really a place where you need the best quality. It's obvious once you guys pointed that out, but it was a revelation to me. I think I will convert my flac files to 256 kbps mp3s and not worry about it any more, and also stream from my phone.

Love the upgrade suggestions, I'll research them. It's going to be fun, I really do love this car.

I gave up on the radio. Between FI LTH's, tires, everything SPL, and hearing aids. I can't hear chit. :tup: