[Android Apps and Games] alonwa:
Problem on new car media system

Hi,

I’m a long-time (and satisfied) user of the BubbleUPnP android app. Thanks for all the work spent on it! I run a minimserver and BubbleUPnP server on a Synology NAS (DS1813+) and stream from them to the BubbleUPnP android app when on the go. One of the places I use it is in the car (Skoda Octavia) over Bluetooth. It works fine and shows metadata info on the car media system (though not cover art or track lists - is it supposed to?).

My wife and I bought a new car (Seat Ibiza), mainly used by my wife. She listens to music a lot, using the Tidal app. Now here’s the problem. In the Ibiza, when a new track starts (actually 1-2 second after it starts), the system volume mutes. Track play continues (as is evidenced by the progress bar both on the app and on the car media screen), but no sound is heard. If we increase the volume, sometimes it stays this way and sometimes it mutes immediately again, but anyway once a new track starts, it mutes again. Actually if we keep the track playing muted, once a new track starts, it will unmute for a short while and then mute again.

I tested the extent of the problem. This happens both on Tidal and on the BubbleUPnP app (regardless of whether I listen to music from my home server or from Tidal). This happens on both our phones (Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, both on android 8.0.0). I also tested it on my daughter’s phone (Samsung Galaxy S5, android 6.0.1) and with an iPad (iOS 11), both with the Tidal app, and on these devices the problem does not happen (I also noticed another difference with my daughter’s Samsung, which is that the media control screen shows additional “Mix” and “Repeat” buttons, which are not there when I use the Nexus phones). All our phones work fine on our Skoda media system. So, there’s something wrong in the mix of the phone and the Ibiza media system that fails.

I tried various settings and found out that if I disable “Remote Control Client” in the BubbleUPnP settings (under Control), this does not happen. When I do that, I also don’t see metadata info, which is a pity. Another thing I tried is to change the “Bluetooth AVRCP Version” (available versions are 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6) and also to toggle “Disable absolute volume” (under Developer options), but these settings had no effect and the problem persists. Bringing the car to the service center didn’t help, but while there, I was able to test it on another Ibiza and reproduced the problem, so I learned that the problem is not specific to my particular system.

Currently the only two options I see that work are to use a wired AUX connection instead of Bluetooth or to use BubbleUPnP with the “Remote Control Client” option disabled, but none of these solutions is very desirable, because I really like seeing metadata on the car screen. Also, I believe my wife would prefer to continue using the Tidal app, which she’s used to (and has additional features, such as offline playback).

Any idea what’s going on? Any way to figure out what’s going on (perhaps do some logging)? Any way to just disable the car’s media system ability to mute without hurting other AVRCP functionality? Any idea why this is happening only on some phones and not on others? Any way in the BubbleUPnP app to allow metadata but disable muting ability? Any other suggestions?

I’ve done all the diagnosis I could think of (sorry for the very long post…), but if there are more suggestions for fixes or workarounds which I could test to make it work or any other information that I can provide, I’ll be happy to hear.

Thanks,

Alon