USB Charging Interferes With Bluetooth Music?!?

Has anyone encountered the issue where while bluetooth streaming music, you plug your phone into the USB port to charge it, and it cuts off the music? I can see on the head unit's display that the music has been paused, so then I press play on my phone, can see the track time continuing (on my phone), and the word "paused" disappears from the head unit's display. But no sound will come through the speakers. BUT - if I unplug the phone from the USB charging cable, and press play again, voila - the music comes back! This is driving me crazy. It's useless to not be able to charge your phone and play music via bluetooth at the same time!!

Side note - I was able to beat this issue by plugging my usb cable into a cigarette lighter USB adapter... but I can't use the USB plug in the dash without having the above mentioned issue.

 

Your giving your phone 2 outputs for the music to go through, so it gets confused on which one it should use. Get what I'm sayin'?

 

That would make sense if it was the AUX input I was talking about... but I'm just referring to the USB jack. Which is only capable of providing power for charging the phone, and not capable of transmitting audio signals.

 

Change phone to charge only.

 

Wait wait, so you CANT play music through your USB connection? Even with the Bluetooth turned off on your phone? My iPhone is able to do that but I don't know what kind of phone you have or if you have the tech package

 

The USB jack is linked to the Head Unit (Stereo). That way you can upload software updates or play MP3s off a USB drive.

So, as mentioned above the phone can't figure out whether to play by Bluetooth or USB.

 

You can't use USB to transmit audio... You can use the AUX input (3.5mm) jack to do that, but not the USB port.....

 

Yeah but your phone may not realize that. There IS a data connection between the USB and the Head Unit. So there is some connectivity happening even if you can't use it.

 

Turn off your Bluetooth on your phone, it might work! The cord does more than just charging, I promise

 

Ah, had not thought of the concept of playing MP3s from a flash drive... That makes sense. But... I'm assuming music on an iPhone etc. would not be playable through the USB jack since it is not likely in MP3 format (AAC, etc. most likely). So does this mean there is no solution to being able to stream bluetooth audio and charge your phone via the dashboard USB plug at the same time?

 

I will have to try it... Completely did not think that could be a possibility, but I will check it out. Thanks for the tip.

 

I've seen folks here on TW that have installed USB charging ports in their dash that are NOT connected to the Head Unit. Last time I plugged my phone into the USB it wouldn't actually charge...

 

That's incorrect. When you plug in your iPhone, the HU should recognize it as an audio source. For example, mine comes up with ___'s iPhone as an audio source ALONGSIDE Bluetooth. Mine does the same thing you're describing when I'm Bluetoothing audio and then plug it into the USB to charge. Playback stops and either I hit play (to continue playing over Bluetooth) or I switch to ____'s iPhone in the source menu (to play through USB).

After plugging your phone into the USB port, I would try:
1. Open the audio app you're using on your phone (Music, Pandora, etc) and select the AirPlay icon (looks like a rectangle with a triangle pointing up at the bottom) and make sure it's going to to your truck and not the phone.
2. Go to your audio sources and select either USB or ___'s iPhone.

Of course you have a 2012 and I have a 2014, which I know are different, but I'm assuming they're not WILDLY different. If you have one, try plugging a plain old iPod into the USB jack. It should let you play music off of it without Bluetooth.

 

So what I've found is that I can plug in the phone via the USB port and then tap AUX on the head unit once to make it change from "searching for" a BT device input to the USB input. And you are correct, it does automatically play music through the USB input! Would definitely have never assumed that would work! My previous Taco was a 2008 so it didn't have all these cool features, ha... I'm going to do some additional "combination" investigating when I get a chance, but at least now the original issue is solved. Thanks for all the help, guys!

 

Glad you got it working!

 

Woo!
@Kyitty that may be a cord problem, mine quit unexpectedly on me after a year and a half of never leaving my vehicle

 

When you plug an iPhone into a USB port, it goes into iPod mode and can interfere with the bluetooth for phone calls. If you are just using it to charge your phone then I suggest using the 12v port instead. That USB port doesn't put out much power as it was designed as an iPod connection. The 12v port will charge your phone faster. As others have mentioned, it would be better to use a Windows formatted usb thumb drive or get a dedicated iPod. You should have more control over your music using the radio with usb than with bluetooth.

 

Mine takes phone calls over BT as normal when it's plugged in to the USB as an iPod.

 

Yea, this is one of the "combinations" I was going to test this weekend. I would assume that should be perfectly possible, but the original issue I was having made it seem like I could have an issue with that as well. I'll post my findings for the different scenarios once I have them.

 

Hollywood459,

When you play music on your phone using “Bluetooth” and connect the “USB” connector at the same time, the USB takes precedence hence you will not be able to hear music via the Bluetooth “source” selection on your head unit but you will hear in on the USB/Ipod headunit source. By the way, music via the USB cable sounds very much better than via Bluetooth. Godspeed.