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Help No sound thru car stereo using aux in

halesowenmum

halesowenmum

Newbie
Hi.

I'm really hoping someone can help with this.

I've got a Mini Convertible and when the stereo died I replaced it with one that has an aux in thinking I'd be able to utilise it for playing tunes from a device. I'm not an iPhone or iPod owner so ideally I'd like to use my HTC One.

So I got myself a nice cable to go from the headphone jack on the phone to the aux in. Turned Blinkbox music app on and - nothing.

Now it appeared there were two good signs. 1. That the phone recognised them as 'headphones' as the relevant icon appeared at the top of the phone screen and 2. If I'm not mistaken the stereo seemed to be processing music because the graphic equalise type bars were visible and going up and down as though sound was going through the stereo.

Just there was absolutely no sound coming out the car's speakers.

Do I need to do something to the phone, get an app, put the music on an SD card, what's not working??

Also, is it likely/impossible that I could (if I can get it working) both listen to music and have my GPS on at the same time?
 
It is plug and play.
Need to narrow down the problem...
Try another 3.5mm cable or use headphones in your phone.
Try another phone or mp3 player and plug into your car stereo.
Try another stereo or something with an aux input.
 
I'm going to struggle trying a different phone as my kids are away for two weeks. I've used headphones in my phone and they work fine. I did have an mp3 player at one point and that did work through the aux of the car stereo. I don't have another cable but I will see if I've any other devices with an aux in so I can see if the phone creates a musical output elsewhere. Will report back once I've given that a go.
 
Yes, this should be a process of elimination. I'm betting on the cable being bad if you've used other devices with the new stereo in the past and your headphones worked on your phone. Let us know. Curious...

-Sipdude
 
Yeah check phones volume....also the stereo doesn't have Bluetooth? If so then use that. AUX audio quality sucks
 
actually, they are almost the same. USB is actually the best since it can deliver 5.1 sound.

imo, USB > AUX > Bluetooth

The long explanation:
Facts about Bluetooth:
Bluetooth audio protocol is lossy, meaning that some of the data is lost. However, it is digital, meaning that the audio reproduction in the headset is bit-exact the same data that was transmitted.
The data is encoded to a digital format that is compressed in a way that loses some of the source data (but hopefully not enough that you can perceive it); but the data stream is much more resilient to interruption, due to buffering, which means that you are unlikely to notice even if some other electromagnetic frequency transmission interferes with your bluetooth (temporarily).
See A2DP at Wikipedia for more information about Bluetooth audio. To put it simply, there are more than one supported audio codec, and they have varying pros and cons in terms of bandwidth consumed, energy consumed, compatibility across devices, and quality. Some of the newer codecs such as apt-X produce what many consider to be superior audio quality, but device support is limited compared to the older codecs, or SBC which is required by the A2DP standard.

Facts about analog audio:
Analog audio over a standard 3.5mm headphone jack (technically called a "TRS" connector) can be very high quality if the audio playback device has a good DAC. An amplifier (separate or built-in) can make the signal sound even better.
A "good pair of cans" (good headphones) can sound amazing with this dated analog mode of transmitting audio down a cable. If you are using a very high quality DAC on the source audio device, chances are it's better than the DAC that has to be in the bluetooth headphones to convert the bluetooth digital data to analog, because the in-headphones DAC is limited by battery power and size constraints -- but a sound card in a computer is much less constrained. Even sound chips in smartphones are great these days.
All analog audio is subject to interference with the audio cable. Most audio cables are not shielded from external electromagnetic interference, and certain models of computers (especially Core 2 Duo era CPUs with on-board graphics) have been known to spew electromagnetic frequencies that are picked up as a "grinding" or "buzzing" noise on the analog headphone wire, if it is near enough to the computer. Some LCDs can do the same. Depending on your situation, this interference can be even worse than the loss of audio quality of bluetooth's lossy encoding.
The answer is that it heavily depends on your situation, and exactly how sensitive your headphones are, and exactly how good the Digital-Analog Converter (DAC) in the bluetooth headset is, and which codecs the bluetooth headset supports, and........ (many other things). If you're using the headphones in a way that a wire would get near certain models of LCD or computers, the analog signal quality may be terrible due to interference. If you're using the bluetooth in a way that it's in a heavily saturated 2.4 GHz environment (e.g. lots of WiFi signals, microwaves, cordless phones around), it may drop out due to heavy interference and crosstalk. Also you have to be able to live with the quality loss of lossy encoding for one of the bluetooth A2DP codecs, if you go that route. You probably can't detect it if you listen to lossy audio vs. lossless, but some people like to fake themselves out and say that they can tell.
Source
 
SipDude said:
Yes, this should be a process of elimination. I'm betting on the cable being bad if you've used other devices with the new stereo in the past and your headphones worked on your phone. Let us know. Curious...

-Sipdude
Click to expand...
Ok so just plugged the cable in to the phone and then into my daughters old vs player/radio and the tunes came out loud and clear from blink box music. So the cable is good. Any ideas?? Any settings that I should change on the phone?? Update: just tried it in the car again and hey presto its working totally fine! And the sound is totally great as well. Happy days.
 
halesowenmum said:
Also, is it likely/impossible that I could (if I can get it working) both listen to music and have my GPS on at the same time?
Click to expand...

Yes, you can. I do it all the time. It's nice to have them from the same source as the music will fade to the background while directions are given. :)

mruno said:
actually, they are almost the same. USB is actually the best since it can deliver 5.1 sound.

imo, USB > AUX > Bluetooth
Click to expand...

The fact that Boomsound doesn't work over Bluetooth is a killer for me. This phone sounds great in my truck compared to the Samsung GS4 that I had before because of Boomsound.
 
Well when I use my G2 in with my Dual HD Car stereo,I have to set the stereo to Aux.
Make sure your car stereo is set to Aux. when you plug you device in to it.
 
Nevis said:
Yes, you can. I do it all the time. It's nice to have them from the same source as the music will fade to the background while directions are given. :)

You may have just made my day! Will test this out on my next journey and see if it works for me as well!
Click to expand...
 
just tried mine through car aux and worked ok... but volume very low... need a pre amp i think
 
I think the volume issue is what foxed me to start with! I had put it to Aux, I had plugged it in right, all was working, and I had turned the volume up - just not enough I think as I have to really ramp it up to be able to hear it. However, I can still get it up to a decent enough volume so luckily for me it seems to be ok, all told, with the level of noise coming out. Sorry to hear it's not so good for you but would be interested to hear what pre-amp you end up with, whether it works ok or not, if you do go down that route.
 
dan55 said:
just tried mine through car aux and worked ok... but volume very low... need a pre amp i think
Click to expand...

That's interesting, because I had that problem with the GS4, but my M8 is outstanding. Stupid question : Do you have the volume all the way up on the phone?
 
yes i had the same issue at first with the volume - assumed it wasnt working :D

...no volume isnt maxed on phone ......and to add to the confusion, im using a sony sbh bluetooth adapter - it was only the first test - will make sure the phone volume is turned up enough when i try again

cheers
 
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