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Music out via Bluetooth sounds really bad

F

French

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 13, 2011
198
0
I've noticed that playing music via bluetooth on my car stereo sounds TERRIBLE. It doesn't matter if it's Slacker Radio from cache or stream, or if it's my own music. It has distortion/background interference or something. I don't notice it with listening to podcasts but of course they aren't as high a quality as I would expect the music to be.

It's so bad it's actually not fun to listen to. I'm not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, but I certainly never expected an APPLE iPhone to sound this awful.

Anyone have any suggestions/ideas? I've used a Droid X to bluetooth stream to the stereo and that sounds just fine. Is apple really inferior than motorola droid x at streaming music?
 
It doesn't sound that bad on my cars system via bluetooth, in fact its actually pretty good... maybe there is something wrong?
 
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Well thats interesting. I just leased a car with Ford Sync and music plays flawlessly and sounds great off of my iPhone 4 via Bluetooth. However, podcasts (tried 6 of them) had a ver annoying hiccuping noise every 5 second. Haha.

I still used it to listen to podcasts during my 4 hour drive though. I prefer podcasts for longer drives than music.


Anyways, it's weird we have opposite experiences. Maybe it's because the way we are connecting our iPhones?
 
Works fine for me albeit a slight loss in quality (wired, ftw).

There's probably something interfering with your connection if you're having problems with Bluetooth. Often, stereos in cars have relatively weak Bluetooth antennas, so there could be something overpowering your phone.
 
I use my ipad to listen to my music or podcast via bluetooth in my lincoln with lincoln sync and the sound is great... No pop up or any noise... Something must be wrong in ur setup... Like someone else said it's maybe some interference...


Sent from my iPhone 4 using Tapatalk
 
Matthew9559 said:
Well thats interesting. I just leased a car with Ford Sync and music plays flawlessly and sounds great off of my iPhone 4 via Bluetooth. However, podcasts (tried 6 of them) had a ver annoying hiccuping noise every 5 second. Haha.

I still used it to listen to podcasts during my 4 hour drive though. I prefer podcasts for longer drives than music.


Anyways, it's weird we have opposite experiences. Maybe it's because the way we are connecting our iPhones?
Click to expand...

That's odd, we rented a car this weekend with Ford Sync as well. My wife's paleo podcasts played just fine (so did regular music). The biggest issue I had was figuring out the voice commands to change tracks, etc.
 
I decided to try a couple of things to trouble shoot. I deleted the pairing, plus an unused other pairing, and then re-paired it. I also bumped the volume down on the device a little bit and this does seem to have helped. It's still not where it should be, however. The songs I'm listening to are at 196 or higher. There should be zero "interference". But I think I can live with it. I'm just really surprised that an iPhone...apple...the maker of the iPod, would sound inferior to a Droid X. I actually got the bluetooth stereo so I wouldn't have to constantly be plugging and unplugging my phone so I guess I live with it our go to auxilary input.
 
By interference we mean maybe it's interfering with another device... All my music are 320 kbps and I have no problem with the sound at all...
A2DP will never match the 3.5mm we have on our devices... Sad but true... If you have a 3.5 mm input in your car you should use that instead... Plus you will save on battery...


Sent from my iPhone 4 using Tapatalk
 
big samm said:
By interference we mean maybe it's interfering with another device... All my music are 320 kbps and I have no problem with the sound at all...
A2DP will never match the 3.5mm we have on our devices... Sad but true... If you have a 3.5 mm input in your car you should use that instead... Plus you will save on battery...


Sent from my iPhone 4 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Oh, I knew you meant interfering with another device...but it was also a good word to use for the "disruption" I'm experiencing. Almost like a feedback, but constant and grainy, for lack of a better description.

I know A2DP will never be as good...and I wasn't expecting perfection...far from it as I have stock speakers. But I did expect it to sound better than it does. But re-pairing did seem to make it a bit better. Mine streams music AND has hands free phone which is why I would rather not go with the 3.5mm.
 
I have a 2008 ford f150 with a kenwood dnx5120. The audio played over blutooth from my iPhone 4 sounds pretty good, but every few minutes I get a skip. It doesn't happen when I'm talking on the phone, only when I'm listening to music (pandora, iheartradio, or iPod). It's a prerrtty annoying problem. I havree tried unpairing and deleting the profile, but that is pretty much the extent of my efforts. Anyone have any ideas?
 
big samm said:
By interference we mean maybe it's interfering with another device... All my music are 320 kbps and I have no problem with the sound at all...
A2DP will never match the 3.5mm we have on our devices... Sad but true... If you have a 3.5 mm input in your car you should use that instead... Plus you will save on battery...


Sent from my iPhone 4 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Short of bypassing the DA converter in the phone and using the one in the head unit, that's probably the best way to get "quality" audio out of the iPhone.
 
I've experienced a similar issue for over a year now, but I've been way too busy to even bother sorting it out. I just stop using bluetooth in certain situations where I can directly connect to the speaker using a jack or USB.

It wasn't a pervasive issue, it was more with select tracks like Odesza. I thought for a time it was just the encoding of the audio that was getting seriously distorted (blown speaker sounding, severely blown...) so I looked up some stuff online to see if anyone else was having the issue and I wasn't making any connections with my issue until someone mentioned turning off the EQ.

Well, my EQ wasn't turned on, so that couldn't have been it. However, the sound check was turned on. I switched that off, played the song that always sounded the WORST, and HELL YESSSS!!! Back to playing beautifully!!!

So hopefully that helps others out there that have been trying to enjoy their music via bluetooth on little speakers to their cars!
 
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