[Weird Fishes]

I have used the same iPhone 5 for the past year. And I usually stream my music from the iPhone using the Karma's Bluetooth. But beginning a few weeks ago, the audio volume when streaming music over Bluetooth has diminished so much that it is basically pointless to try to use it. You have to turn the volume waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy up just to barely hear any sound. I'm going to have Lormax look at it in a few days, but I wondered if anyone here had experienced a similar problem?

 

[Fabulist]

I have used the same iPhone 5 for the past year. And I usually stream my music from the iPhone using the Karma's Bluetooth. But beginning a few weeks ago, the audio volume when streaming music over Bluetooth has diminished so much that it is basically pointless to try to use it. You have to turn the volume waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy up just to barely hear any sound. I'm going to have Lormax look at it in a few days, but I wondered if anyone here had experienced a similar problem?

I have used my new Iphone 5s via BT and it behaves pretty much the same as my old 4s used to under the same circumstances. I am not sure if there are any settings in IOS7 that would cause this, but just to be on the safe side, you may want to make sure you don't have the volume limiter or some such thing was somehow set on your iphone recently.

 

[Weird Fishes]

@Fabulist...I have not yet upgraded to iOS 7 because I *loathe* the look of it. Basically nothing about my phone changed except that suddenly the volume via Bluetooth isn't what it used to be. :-(

 

[radrsuh]

Not necessarily the same problem, but I noticed with the Bluetooth and iPhone 4S that if music app is open on the phone, the touch screen and steering wheel controls cannot control the music except for volume. If music app is off on the phone, then the touch screen and steering wheel controls are re-engaged. I am running the newest software.

 

[Weird Fishes]

Aside from satellite radio, the whole thing seems f*cked.

When I stream via Bluetooth, I get no sound at all unless I turn the volume up to 25 or more. Even then the music sounds like it is coming from the car behind me rather than from my own audio system.

When I hook the iPhone up to the USB cable, the volume seems normal. Unfortunately, at that point, it is plagued by occasional blips in audio quality ranging from half-second drop outs of sound to skipping within the track to distortions similar to how it would sound if you put your finger on a turntable and slowed it down slightly.

I have not tried the Auxiliary Input, but I suppose that is next.

I'm a bit of a music nut, and I was looking forward to being able to listen to my own music files (my BMW is too old to support the technology). Obviously, I could have bigger problems, but this is a real disappointment.

 

[Fabulist]

Aside from satellite radio, the whole thing seems f*cked.

When I stream via Bluetooth, I get no sound at all unless I turn the volume up to 25 or more. Even then the music sounds like it is coming from the car behind me rather than from my own audio system.

When I hook the iPhone up to the USB cable, the volume seems normal. Unfortunately, at that point, it is plagued by occasional blips in audio quality ranging from half-second drop outs of sound to skipping within the track to distortions similar to how it would sound if you put your finger on a turntable and slowed it down slightly.

I have not tried the Auxiliary Input, but I suppose that is next.

I'm a bit of a music nut, and I was looking forward to being able to listen to my own music files (my BMW is too old to support the technology). Obviously, I could have bigger problems, but this is a real disappointment.

Before going to the AUX port, try using a USB stick with your music on it, rather than plugging in an I-Thingy. That gives you most of the functionality, including Album covers, but no playlist.

 

[LonePalmBJ]

BT streaming from my wife's Nokia 920 running Windows Phone 8 runs flawlessly, sounds great and has no lag or skip. BT streaming from my Galaxy S3 running Android 4.1.2 is essentially unusable because it drops the BT connection randomly every few minutes. For my phone, which is my primary source for tunes, internet radio and audiobooks, I use the AUX jack. I've never had any issues with AUX. I generally max the volume coming out of the phone and use the steering wheel controls to manage speaker volume. It's plenty loud and then some. The drawback to AUX is that you don't get any of the other goodies - no artwork, no track info, no start/stop/skip from the steering wheel, etc.

I'm hopeful that the 4.3 release of Android, which allegedly includes a rewrite of the BT stack, will allow me to get back to BlueTooth and give up the wires.

Brent

 

[Weird Fishes]

Thanks for the tips, Fab and Brent!