Has anyone had any experience with I-phone kits for cars?
I have a 2006 VW Golf from just before I-phone docks became standard, so had a kit fitted by the (VW) dealer when I bought it.
I thought the sound was a bit odd, and have realised that it sounds as though one channel has the polarity reversed. Centre sounds are a bit muted, and left or right only sounds are too loud.
I had the dealer look at it, and made a couple of example tracks with panning, and split channel harmony vocals to show the fault. They could hear exactly what the problem is, but since the kit is a plug in unit, it isn't what I thought, that they had reversed a positive and negative in one channel. It might just be manufactured that way though, as apparently Apple are very reticent about giving out technical details on their equipment.
If the fault can not be found, I will go back to the CD changer. Less convenient, but obviously having a reasonable quality of music reproduction is important to me (otherwise I wouldn't be on the Naim forum). There is not the option to have both I-phone and CD player, as they use the same connection.
I just wondered if anyone else has had similar problems, or even has a solution.
Perhaps we should see if Naim would like to expand into the car market, design a lovely sounding music system to fit into a small safe acoustically rewarding space, then add some wheels and an engine.
Posted on: 15 June 2011 by Gavin B
Jamie
No help, but a bit of sympathy. It's amazing how little dealers seem to know or understand about phone/entertainment options, even when they're official fitted options. You seem to get conflicting information from different sources and even different dealerships.
Good luck in your quest for a solution.
Gavin
Posted on: 15 June 2011 by fixedwheel
Although I have a TomTom iPhone kit in mine, I don't use it as a music source (but I think it's only a matter of time.)
In the car, I prefer MiniDisc, far more ease of handling for the head unit, and with a changer I can have 32 hours of audiobooks in the boot.
Current head unit doesn't have a front aux-in for the 3.5mm output from the TomTom cradle.
Not much help,
John
Posted on: 16 June 2011 by PJT
I'm going through this now, and for the same price as an horrible parot add-on, replaced the whole head unit.
Or I could have, instean I took this as an opportunity to upgrade to the latest Alpine CDA 117 head unit and bluetooth unit with iPod USB.
Now just gotta find the same that fits in with the MMI in the Audi...
Cheers
Pete
Posted on: 17 June 2011 by JamieL_v2
Pete, when you get it fitted, run afew test tracks through it to check the channels are set up correctly.
Mine sounded OK, until I realised that anything central in the mix was being muted. Now all I can hear is muffled and echoey sound.
For the last six months I had more important things to deal with, our first baby, but now I am sorting out things I got this checked out. I have probably had it too long to get a refund if they can not find the problem.
Posted on: 09 July 2011 by JamieL_v2
Good news. My dealer put a mechanic on the car who likes to solve problems. I played him a couple of sample tracks I had edited down to 30 seconds in stereo and mono (Sun Kil Moon - Lucky Man, where the centre lead vocal swaps to split channel harmony, plus Rush - Freewill, the guitar solo, for those interested).
There are three different looms of wire, he swapped each, and the third one was the problem. Possibly a bare wire in the loom shorting out.
Anyway I now have I-pod in glorious stereo, and music that does not lurch in volume as it pans, plus all the centre mixed music does not sound muted and echoey.
I also discovered that the CD player still works, the I-pod is just plugged into the auto-changer slot, so that is good too.
So a good result all in all, and covered by the part warranty. For once I can say good things about my local VW dealer, after a poor month last month. I hope they will keep it up.
