Author Topic: Car bluetooth  (Read 4454 times)

Offline richidoo

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Car bluetooth
« on: June 01, 2016, 12:56:57 PM »
Can an iPhone 5  send uncompressed wav file to car stereo via bluetooth?

My wife got a X3 with the Harmon Kardon upgrade. So far she has only played heavily compressed music sources from tuner, like sat radio, local FM radio and Pandora bluetoothed from her phone. The FM classical station sounds very good, it is dynamically compressed but not lossy file compression. Compressed stream tracks sound loud and clear but not very refined, by my snobby standards.  :roll:

It has a CD slot for the ultimate test, but that's not practical for everyday use. Streaming from her iPhone would be ideal.

Thanks!

Offline Scott F.

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Re: Car bluetooth
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2016, 04:51:41 AM »
Hey  Rich,

Yes, there are a bunch of choices for streaming via Bluetooth in your car. The issue is most of them do it via the FM reciever. I've got two different ones we use in our 66 TBird (we wanted to keep the original radio). One streams Bluetooth only. The other plays mp3s on an SD card. Both plug into the cigarette lighter for power.

I've tried both in my wife's Jag which has an OK sounding stereo. Neither sounded great but they weren't completely obnoxious. Nice thing is, they are cheap. Amazon has a huge selection and most of them are in the 25 to 30 dollar range.

For the TBird, they work perfectly, mostly because we enjoy the vintage sound of an early transistor radio over a full range dash speaker. Nostalgic and kinda cool at the same time.

Good luck!
My brain hurts.....

Offline richidoo

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Re: Car bluetooth
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2016, 10:05:05 AM »
Thanks Scott. I checked out some of the Bluetooth receivers. It's like an adapter that receives the blutooth from the phone, then converts it into analog aux output or whatever. Cool idea for us vintage types. ;)  I still use cassette adapter in my '00 minivan.  :duh

I also learned that bluetooth is definitely a compressed data pipe, so playing uncompressed wav through bluetooth is impossible.

I also found this app, called AptX, which makes a better sounding music connection over bluetooth, if both ends are running the app. BMW system doesn't run it.

So I think the only ways to play uncompressed music are via Aux or CD.

Offline Carlman

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Re: Car bluetooth
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2016, 05:03:28 AM »
I've found there is no way to hear uncompressed music on any new car stereo. Everything goes through the same processor, including FM.
The answer for me is to find an aftermarket system that doesn't do it as badly. It's not easy. It'd be near impossible on the X3 due to the integration of controls, functions, and hardware.
I had Sol take apart my OEM head unit to see what he could do. It was a little better but didn't cure the digititus for me.
C
I really enjoy listening to music.