Audio question (I know another one!)

[Clan]

Originally Posted by jeffmasson

If you want to use your phone on the usb you need to set your phone's usb to the correct mode. You should have a few different modes one is pc/sync mode and is normally defult setting you need to change it to media player or file storage mode and the car will just thinks it's a normal usb stick.

exactly! so why do people mess about connecting phones with trailing wires , connecting and disconnecting all the time when they can just fit a USB stick with their favourite songs on and leave it in there ?

[mikester]

Originally Posted by Clan

exactly! so why do people mess about connecting phones with trailing wires , connecting and disconnecting all the time when they can just fit a USB stick with their favourite songs on and leave it in there ?

Cos not all people invest into the iTunes program thus don't have a library of content but instead stream through program's like spotify. I've been a paid member of spotify for years and as such can't use a USB stick

[WilliamVolvo]

We also had a GROM Audio unit (GROM-MST3-VOLSO) installed by a Volvo Dealer and had the same issues with using ANY phones via USB.

My background as a touch-screen control system programmer came in very handy as we're often integrating USB/Android devices. Reading the manual as well as various posts on the manufacturer's website soon revealed a raft of info on how the USB phones have to be set up and we made sue that we adhered to ALL of them while testing.

On all the phones tested, we made sure that:

• The number of music directories were low (3 directories in total)
• Number of songs were low (between 10 and 20 songs per phone)
• Directory depth = 3 levels only (/storage/sdcard0/Music ). We also tried by placing the files in the root directories, but no success
• All the songs were encoded into Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MP3 files, directly from the CDs
• The music files do not have Digital Rights Management (DRM) embedded, so ANY device should play them
• Various Windows Media Audio bit-rates, sample rates and versions (v9.x and v10.x) were tested, including the most commonly used variants:

• Windows Media Audio 9, 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo, CBR
• Windows Media Audio 9, 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo, CBR
• MP3 Audio, 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo, CBR
• MP3 Audio, 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo, CBR
  

SD Memory Cards on all devices are formatted as FAT32 and range from Class 2 to Class 10. All SD card storage capacities are within the limits permitted by each device (ranging from 8 GB to 32 GB)

We also installed and used AALinQ (Version 0.9.6.1), which is the App recommended by GROM on all the Android devices. (The App was also able to read -and played all the files directly on the phones/tablets without any issues ... just not through the car stereo).

To make sure we covered a variety of Operating Systems and devices, the following phones and tablets were tested via USB:

• HTC HD 2 (Converted to Android Kit Kat v 2.4.4)
• HTC HD Mini (Windows Mobile 6)
• HTC HD 7 (Windows Mobile 7)
• HTC One (Android v4.1.2)
• HTC One X (Android v4.4.1)
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (Android v4.4.2)
• Samsung Galaxy S (Android v2.3.3)
• Google (Asus) Nexus 7 Tablet (Android v4.4.2)
• Sumvision Cyclone Voyager (Android v4.4.3)
• The Volvo technician also used his own phone (Brand not known to us, with the same results)

The iPod/iPhone interface works very well (including steering wheel controls) and I have now resorted to leaving an old iPod Touch hidden in the car permanently. I knew that man-drawer with all the old devices would come in handy some day!

By the way, the units do not support iPod Classics (very disappointing!), so you'll be limited by the storage capacity of your iPod touch / iPhone.

After writing to the manufacturers (with no replies received until prompted repeatedly) and asking the Volvo dealership to look into the USB issues, we eventually ran out of time/patience and soon realized we were far more informed about the GROM device than the Volvo dealers who installed the system.

In my personal opinion, the USB port is not usable from an Android Phone or Tablet, although it does seem to work with a USB stick. Perhaps the manufacturer and Volvo dealerships should make this clear on their website?

I took the car to a Volvo dealer to save time as I did not want to get involved with cabling at the time, but ended up spending several days with testing and debugging.

I hope that helps somebody to manage their expectations of the GROM Audio interfaces. They are not all they're claiming to be.

My next trial is going to be installing the Bluetooth add-on (GROM-BTD), which does stream music and handles voice, but since my car already has hands-free blue-tooth installed, this may need to wait until I have a spare weekend with nothing better to do!

If anybody has already done this, I'd love to hear from you.