Diamond Bluetooth-->Car - Question:Can you stream audio in addition to phone calls?

[RobbW]

Hi all -

This is probably a newb question, but has been on my mind recently.

I use my 335i's built in BT to link to my Diamond for phone calls and it works flawlessly. However, I would be in a "perfect world" if there was a way to also send streaming audio via BT to my car speakers.

Imagine being able to listen to your favorite internet radio stations (I use Kinoma Play, in concert with VTuner.com's WWW to fill in anyKinoma blanks and it works great), and playing back streams, podcasts, MP3's, etc. while driving, but also having the benefit of being able to listen to it in high fidelity, vs. the phone's internal speaker.

If this doesn't work, I'm presuming I can use the headphone jack dongle to connect to my Aux In, but a wireless solution, if possible, would be the ultimate.

Is this even possible? If not, is a workaround possible? (i.e. If the car is only capable of "hands free" BT (not sure if this is even true), can a hack be utilized that filters streaming audio to hands free?)

Thanks,

RobbW

[Amel]

You definitely can use the USB to listen to your streaming music, not sure about BT

[dj_mysha]

I was posting about this earlier today. Since I have yet to figure out how to quote from another thread, I guess it's copy & paste time!

Check out the Parrot MK6000. It's a bluetooth handsfree kit with stereo audio streaming.

http://www.parrot.com/usa/products/b.../parrot-mk6000

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=x6fLKlnZZog

I haven't tried it yet, but have been looking at it for a long time. It's $149.00 USD plus installation, so much more expensive than the Radioshack/soldering method, but certainly a very elegant solution.

My understanding is that once you've paired it with your phone and synced your contacts, all you have to do is turn your bluetooth on when you get in your car and start your audio. I'm thinking Orb is going to be my weapon of choice, or you can go with streaming radio or local audio files (.mp4 and .aac are supported). The music then streams to your car stereo via bluetooth and will pause when you get an incoming call. The caller's voice is then routed through your car stereo speakers and your voice is picked up by the microphone included in the kit. Finish the call, the music starts again. Pretty slick. It also looks like you can also skip from track to track and adjust the volume with the MK6000's controls.

The only worry I have is that I will be using the the data radio and the bluetooth radio at the same time, with the voice radio thrown in there while on calls, so I imagine battery drain will be fairly massive. This will probably mean that my Diamond will have to be plugged into the charger at all times. Not really a big deal. That and the heat may very well transform said Diamond into a pool of molten plastic. Maybe that will finally convince Telus that they have a heat issue with this phone!

As I said before, I don't own this device nor have I ever used it, just sharing my research. Has anyone else had any first-hand experience with the kit that they could share?

[snovvman]

Originally Posted by RobbW

Hi all -

This is probably a newb question, but has been on my mind recently.

I use my 335i's built in BT to link to my Diamond for phone calls and it works flawlessly. However, I would be in a "perfect world" if there was a way to also send streaming audio via BT to my car speakers.

Imagine being able to listen to your favorite internet radio stations (I use Kinoma Play, in concert with VTuner.com's WWW to fill in anyKinoma blanks and it works great), and playing back streams, podcasts, MP3's, etc. while driving, but also having the benefit of being able to listen to it in high fidelity, vs. the phone's internal speaker.

If this doesn't work, I'm presuming I can use the headphone jack dongle to connect to my Aux In, but a wireless solution, if possible, would be the ultimate.

Is this even possible? If not, is a workaround possible? (i.e. If the car is only capable of "hands free" BT (not sure if this is even true), can a hack be utilized that filters streaming audio to hands free?)

Thanks,

RobbW

As you implied, BMW's BT is hands-free only, not A2DP. There have been discussions in BMW forums about finding an OE A2DP solution, but it doesn't look good. I've used a third-party software to stream to my 750iL with a Palm Centro, but the result is mixed. The bottom line is, you wouldn't want to stream through hands-free anyhow because the bandwidth is simply not there.

My solution is connecting a BT A2DP device into the car's OE aux, hardwire power so it is always "charging" so there is no need to keep turning it on. Three possible options:

http://www.plantronics.com/north_america/en_US/products/mobile/bluetooth-headsets/pulsar260

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Bluetooth-Stereo-S705-SoundPilot/dp/B000NK9HKQ

http://www.jabra.com/Sites/Jabra/NA-US/Headsets/Pages/JabraBT3030.aspx


I bought all three and found that the Plantronics unit was best in terms of pairing reliability and sound quality.

Note that the Motorola is a Class 1 device.

I have another one hanging off of my home stereo so I can stream whenever I want. Keep in mind though, if you are a true audiophile, the (lack of) quality of A2DP may hurt your ears if you wish to do any critical listening.

For me, feeding Martin Logan, VTL, and Carver with A2DP is sort of like sipping Louis XIII out of a plastic cup.

YMMV

[CruiSin]

If you're really looking at getting constant audio, check out:

http://www.davidmays.com/BTAudio/index.html

I originally purchased so that I could have constant audio prompts from the garmin software on my phone to my bluetooth headset. It routes all audio to whatever bluetooth connection is active. There's a free version, but the pay for license isn't that expensive and it makes it truly hands free (will trade off the audio to the phone call, then back again when it's done).

[RobbW]

Sorry to let this thread stagnate but I had been out of town at a conference for the better part of the week. First off, thank you all for your suggestions! CruSin, yours would obviously have been the most elegant in that no additional hardware is required, but it appears that the David Mays software fix is somewhat of a hack that "technically" solves the problem but from a quality standpoint, only sends a mono stream? Perhps you could confirm that for me?

As much as I'm not expecting to get 192kbps streams from my phone while travelling, I'm kind of like Snovvman in that I'm not above paying to maximize the audio potential of what I'm working with.

To that point, thank you VERY much for those suggestions Snovvman...like yourself, I'm also feeding an upgraded (Focal) system that I cherish. On my TD, I utilize Kinoma Play on my phone (in concert with some manually added stations that I pulled from vtuner.com to fill in the internet radio blanks that Kinoma didn't come preembedded with (for instance - I LOVE 89.9 TSF Jazz in Paris) and I have this dream of being able to get it to stream "reasonably cleanly" while driving.

Anyway, I'm really close to jumping on your Plantronics recommendation but I was looking at the Amazon reviews for it and people seemed to be fairly critical of it's playback capability, saying the audio tended to be a bit choppy. However, there weren't enough quality reviews for me to be convinced, and obviously, (as I think we're kindred spirits in this regard), your review carries more weight to me than theirs. In any event, I think your hardware solution (BT to OE Aux) makes the most sense but before I pull the trigger, I'm going to do a bit more research to see what the teeming online masses believe to be the latest and greatest A2DP BT solution, and I'll report back here with my findings to see what you all think. If there's no obvious consensus, I'll give the Plantronics Pulsar a try.

In any event, thank you both for your suggestions!! =)

RobbW

[Suture]

I am able to stream MP3s via Bluetooth to my Audi, no problems. Even the Sprint GPS will transmit audio via BT to my head unit.

[David Mays]

Hi. I'm the guy who wrote the BTAudio program mentioned in this thread.

First, I'm glad to hear someone was able to make use of it, and thanks very much for purchasing a registered copy!

Robb, you are correct that my program only activates a mono audio stream. This is because it is making use of the hands free profile (HFP) which is what your car's entertainment system is no doubt using to communicate with the phone.

As suggested before, A2DP is the only way to get reasonable audio quality over BT, but if the BT peer device (in this case your car) does not support that, you are stuck with the low quality (~8khz I believe) monaural sound supported by HFP.

It's also an unfortunate reality that many Windows Mobile devices lack sufficient processor power to provide a good A2DP stream without stuttering. Some devices reach upwards of 30% processor utilization during A2DP streaming.

So, while the convenience of BT is nice, you would be much better served by a solution that uses a hard-wire connection for the audio coming out of your device, if you want decent sound quality.

A final consideration is that of battery life. A2DP streaming uses by some accounts, an order of magnitude more energy than HFP audio. That is, even if you can find a very good A2DP solution, more than likely you will still need to plug the phone into the car for power, or else run the battery down rather quickly.

If you have experimented with any of the other suggested A2DP solutions though, I'd be interested to hear about them.

[boomhower]

Here is another option, the Motorola T505. Basically it takes the bluetooth link to get both the voice calls and music(A2DP) from your phone and then uses an FM transmitter to send it to your car stereo. I just got mine in the mail yesterday. It is sitting at the house charging now so I am hoping to be able to try it out sometime today. The portability really played into my decision big time, I can use in my car on my way to work, in the office, and in my work vehicle. Plus the $63 price tag was pretty attractive as well.

[briggs]

jabra.com/Sites/Jabra/NA-US/Headsets/Pages/JabraSP700.aspx

I use this jabra bluetooth fm transmitter speakerphone. it plays my music in stereo and when i get a call it goes through my car soeakers after pausing the music and verbally telling me the phone number of the incoming call. when the calk is done tge music starts right back up on its own.