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iPhone 4S with JVC KW-R500, multiple issues

iPhone 4S with JVC KW-R500, multiple issues

Going to preface this by saying I don't know if this is a Spotify issue, an Apple issue, or a JVC issue, but I'm starting here.

 

I have a JVC KW-R500 deck with direct USB connectivity for my iPhone 4S. The deck supports streaming from devices.

 

Symptoms:

#1 - Deck freezes upon connecting with Spotify enabled (unable to pause, skip, or use other functions on the deck, but can on the phone)

#2 - Consistent blinking "READING" message when device is connected, Spotify stops playing and sits paused indefinitely

#3 - To resolve #2, I can switch to a small playlist on the phone, then switch back to the larger playlist, however #1 occurs at that point

#4 - If I connect while playing the small playlist, oftentimes #1 and #2 do not occur and I can skip using the buttons on the deck just fine, however then switching to a larger playlist produces the same conditions as #3

#5 - If during #3 or #4 I hit skip on the deck, the deck freezes and just shows the track number indefinitely. It also does not show the proper track number. It may decide (sometimes after minutes) to actually skip at a random point in whatever song it's currently on after this occurs.

 

Note: these do not occur when connected and using Pandora, however the deck has a pseudo-native integration with that app. It treats Spotify the same as it does the iPhone "Music" native app.

 

Troubleshooting Steps:

-Repeatedly disconnect, hit play on phone, reconnect (no result)

-Attempted to switch from Head Mode to Ipod Mode to Aux Mode on deck (no result)

-#3 and #4 (above) are the only ways that I can get Spotify to consistently play, and even then all skipping of songs must be done on the phone (while driving!) to avoid #5 so it is unreliable at best

 

Not sure what else I can try for this, but I was hoping someone else had run into it. Very weird.

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14 Replies

HI. I believe that Spotify does not support streaming through a USB connection and, as far as I'm aware, no one has managed to do so successfully. It may be worth making a request in the ideas forum regarding this.

That's strange because it does work fine (when it works). Even when I can't use the deck to skip tracks, the audio still comes through fine. 

 

I'm going to try troubleshooting with playlists of different sizes, online and offline, to see if that has any effect since it consistently works using a playlist of 23 tracks but on the larger ones it seems to fail.

very interesting indeed.

Okay, the size of the playlist does seem to be a factor.

 

For testing, I had playlists of 25, 50, 75, 99, and 100 tracks (just to see if it was a 3-digit issue). I also made offline versions of these, but testing did not indicate this contributed in either direction.

 

On the 25, I encountered no issues. Deck picked up audio as soon as connection was made, skipped tracked indefinitely with no problem, track name and proper number displays on the deck. This was kind of the control group since I already know this works without issue. Unfortunately, having only 25 songs to a playlist is incredibly boring!!

 

On the 50, deck picked up audio (no indefinite pausing/reading), however I was only able to skip 5-6 tracks before it stopped working. The audio didn't stop, but the "incorrect" track number froze on the deck and it did not skip. Pandora only allows a certain number of skips per hour, so I wonder if it's somehow related to that (since the deck is "optimized" for pandora). Then again they could be completely unrelated and I'm just drawing parallels.

 

The 75 playlist played upon connection, however I was only able to skip once or not at all before the issues began.

 

This makes me wonder whether Spotify is sending too much data to the deck due to the larger playlist or something weird like that. I doubt it's something that can be fixed at all, honestly, because it's probably specific to either just the KW-R500 or to JVC or (like you said) to USB connected devices. But since there are no firmware upgrades to the KW-R500 and I'm not going to buy a new deck anytime soon, Spotify seems to be the only party capable of finding a fix if one exists.

I also have JVC deck and Spotify confuses the hell out of it constantly. No other music app does, not pandora, turntable, iHeartRadio, piki or any other. I have to resort to using bluetooth, which just doesn't sound nearly as good. I get same "reading" "no file found" and switching from ipod to usb mode stuff... very frustrating.

I can add two more streaming/local players to the list of apps that don't misbehave when plugged into my JVC via usb:

 

Amazon Cloud Player and Google Play.

 

I'm pretty sure the fault lies with the Spotify app not the deck.

 

Can you please escalate this? One of the places I enjoy using Spotify the most is while driving, but I haven't been able to without hassle for literally months.  Would you like me to post a video of the misbehavior? I've deleted the app and reinstalled, I've upgraded the firmware on my car deck as well as completely reset it, and these troubles persist. Google just announced "All Access" - very similar to Spotify. If I can't have a functional mobile app from Spotify, I may be forced to look elsewhere. I'd really rather not.

Please fix this.

I suggest you submit an online contact form and someone at Spotify can look into it for you. If you get an automated reply, make sure to reply to it directly (even if it's from a no reply) and it will be sent to the Spotify staff.


@markstaben wrote:

I can add two more streaming/local players to the list of apps that don't misbehave when plugged into my JVC via usb:

 

Amazon Cloud Player and Google Play.

 

I'm pretty sure the fault lies with the Spotify app not the deck.

 

Can you please escalate this? One of the places I enjoy using Spotify the most is while driving, but I haven't been able to without hassle for literally months.  Would you like me to post a video of the misbehavior? I've deleted the app and reinstalled, I've upgraded the firmware on my car deck as well as completely reset it, and these troubles persist. Google just announced "All Access" - very similar to Spotify. If I can't have a functional mobile app from Spotify, I may be forced to look elsewhere. I'd really rather not.

Please fix this.




Honestly, I'm not sure I even care anymore. I just discovered the Tunigo app. Far superior and more polished experience and it plays perfectly with the JVC deck. Provides access to all my Spotify playlists as well.

 

I'm having trouble understanding why Spotify would continue to develop both apps. I hope it's the one they built themselves that gets the axe!

Downloaded Tunigo, I'll give it a shot today and let you know how it turns out. Thanks for the reco.

Okay, testing done.

 

While Tunigo does allow large playlists to play and be controlled by the deck, it also comes with some significant shortfalls.

- Yes it accesses your Spotify playlists, but it has no idea that those playlists are already Offline and therefore wants to download them again. Or I can stream them (which, if you know what being on Sprint in Denver is like, you would not advise). So the whole "access to spotify playlists" is misleading.

- It has absolutely no idea how to shuffle, which I would think native to any sort of music-playing application (and pretty vital to driving music). Tried enabling shuffle on the deck itself to no avail, so I'm stuck playing songs in the order they're in on the playlist.

- The app does not stop playing music if it's connected when I turn off the vehicle ignition. I just find this odd that I have to manually turn the music off (all other music apps on my iPhone seem to know when to turn themselves off).

 

Long story short, it solves one problem but presents a few others, however like you said it shows the problem is software-related. Would really be nice if someone at Spotify could look into this, but I'd imagine there aren't that many affected users and they have larger bugs to fry.

-yeah, since I find Spotify to be unuseable in the car, I've turned off local copies there, and enabled them on Tunigo. I don't plan on using the Spotify iOS app again unless it's fixed. Plus, it understands my 'folders of playlists' which Spotify doesn't. Big plus.

 

-It does  do shuffle, but that one is a little obscure: start a list, hit the album cover thumbnail in the lower left corner to bring up the lager image, tap it again, the cover flips and you get a bunch of options, one of which is shuffle.

 

-yep. It doesn't auto-stop. mildly annoying but not a deal breaker for me.

 

All in all Tunigo is providing a FAR better mobile listening experience for me. Your mileage may vary.

This helps. I thought I looked everywhere for a shuffle but clearly I didn't ... kind of unintuitive ... but yeah I will just have to re-download all my offline lists if that's the case. Thanks for responding & clarifying!

Resurrecting this topic because iOS7 is now clobbering Tunigo.

 

When I connect the phone (still a 4S) to the deck (still KWR500), about 80% of the time the iPhone's Music app will just decide it wants to play instead. Before the iOS upgrade, this only happened when Tunigo crashed (which happened but it wasn't all the time). Now Tunigo is not crashing, it's being overridden and I can't find any setting on the phone to tell it to stop doing this.

 

On the plus side, the deck is now displaying a track number and track name. Before it only displayed the name of the track that was playing when I hooked up the phone.

 

I'm going to try going back to the Spotify app and see if that performs any better. If not, I guess I'm going to talk to some Apple people and see what I can figure out.

 

Anyone else having similar issues?

So far it seems like the Spotify app is playing better with iOS7. Still have the issue where skipping a song on a large playlist will make the deck display freeze, but it does go to the next track, and the Music app is not trying to take over. Whatever works I guess.

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