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Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by dmwierz
Hey, my first forum post. So far I'm enjoying using Waze, and it's even dissuaded me from buying a new Garmin Nuvi…but I digress.

My questions concern how sounds get routed from my iPhone 4 through my car's dock connector and AD2P Bluetooth headset (Plantronics M50). Right now, either everything gets sent to the dock connector, or everything gets sent to the BT headset.

What I would like to happen is to be able to send the Waze navigation prompts and phone calls to my BT headset and have my iPhone 4 audio sent through the dock connection into my car's stereo. Can this be done, and if so, how?

I listen to a lot of Audible.com books on my 45 mile one-way commute every day, so the above scenario would be great, however if it's not possible, is there a way to have the Waze prompts pause the Audible.com player during announcements, then have Audible start up after the announcement?

Going through Settings-Sound presents me with a Volume slider first - is this the volume for the Waze prompts, independent of the destination? The second selection, "Navigation guidance" is self-explanatory. The third and fourth are a bit cryptic: "Play sound to phone speaker" and "Prefer Bluetooth". Does this mean if I select "Play sound to phone speaker" to "On" that the sound will be sent to the phone's speaker only, or that the iPhone's speaker will be active in addition to the dock and/or headset? And what the heck does "Prefer Bluetooth" mean? Preferred by whom, or by what? What is the meaning of "On" and "Off" in this case? Does "Preferred - On" mean that, given multiple output streams, Bluetooth will be chosen if it's present? I'm confused.
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by abernaert
"Play sound to phone speaker" and "Prefer Bluetooth" cause a lot of confusion.
Why not rename these options?
Or remove them if they don't seem to do anything (prefer bluetooth)?
Or add some text to explain the options?

"Play sound to phone speaker" sounds to me like that if this is turned of Waze sound not send any sound to phone speaker. Bur clearly that's not what it does.

What I find very strange is that Waze overrides the silent switch (on iPhone at least).
In my opinion this is very much unwanted behavior.
Silent should be silent.
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by abernaert
You're right, most music/video apps also play to the speaker if the iPhone is on silent.
I hardly ever use my iPhone for music and/or video so I had to test is with the apps I have. :)
Because of the poor battery life of the iPhone I bought an iPod for music.

I don't use any docks or Bluetooth devices so I guess these options are irrelevant to me.
But still these options are not self explanatory and could use some explaining in the Waze app itself.

But my questions on the sound level of Waze are answered.
If I use an music app and turn up the sound before starting Waze, or adjust the volume when Waze is giving directions gets Waze to the volume level I want.
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
The sound section definitely needs some more tweaks and options to make it useful. I have not been able to figure out how to give voice commands via headset. I was told by a Waze client dev that using "prefer bluetooth" would allow this to work, but it doesn't. I am pretty sure this option is not yet available to the app. It doesn't open the right BT connection. It it did, I could give commands via my car built-in mic as well.

There need to be options like:

Turn instructions: phone speaker, bluetooth headset, bluetooth streaming
Voice commands: phone microphone, phone line-in, bluetooth headset
Volume controls for:
- Phone speaker
- Bluetooth headset
- Bluetooth streaming
Streaming audio control for turn instructions: pause playback or reduce audio
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
WeeeZer14 wrote:Does anyone know if the iOS API gives an app that level of control across different outputs all at the same time?
I do not believe that any app can output over multiple connections simultaneously, it can only be one. I wasn't trying to give the impression one could choose multiple simultaneous outputs.
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
dmwierz wrote:
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:
WeeeZer14 wrote:Does anyone know if the iOS API gives an app that level of control across different outputs all at the same time?
I do not believe that any app can output over multiple connections simultaneously, it can only be one. I wasn't trying to give the impression one could choose multiple simultaneous outputs.
Not sure if we'd wandered off topic, but I wasn't trying to output to multiple connections from one app - I was hoping to have several apps outputting to separate connections: Waze to the BT headset; Audible.com to the dock connector; iPhone output to the BT headset...
I think there are a lot of sub-topics here. My take, given testing with the audio options so far, is that iOS restricts output to one subsystem at a time, for all apps. This is why, when you have the Music app sending a stream to the car stereo over BT, and Waze is set to Not output audio to the speaker, that it is able to just duck the audio, but it doesn't stop the audio stream. They are, essentially, mixed together.

However, with the "send sound to speaker" option selected in Waze, the audio stream from any app is stopped during the announcement, which suggests to me that iOS is the culprit here and can only handle one discrete audio output at a time. I don't know this for a fact as I'm not a developer, but it sounds (pun intended!) reasonable to me.
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
dmwierz wrote:Alan, thanks for the clarification, but in providing it, you've confused me. The way I've read it in other threads, this is how things work:
Prefer Bluetooth on: Music fades out. Music pauses. Instruction plays through audio connection. Music resumes. Music fades in.

Prefer Bluetooth off: Music fades out but continues to play. Instruction plays over music through audio connection. Music fades in.

These scenarios assume that music is playing through a USB audio connection and that a Bluetooth handsfree device is connected.
is this not correct?
In my testing, prefer BT made no difference at all. My testing was as follows:
  • Always output to phone speaker ON: <audio> fades out. <audio> pauses. Instruction plays through speaker. <audio> resumes. <audio> fades in.
  • Always output to phone speaker OFF: <audio> ducks (doesn't 100% fade out). Instruction plays over <audio> through <audio connection: headphone jack or BT>. <audio> fades in.
I may need to see if prefer BT makes any difference. I do not have a dock connector to test with.

I have also noted that most apps have the selector next to their volume control to choose where that app outputs its audio. It would be interesting to increase the scope of the tests to cover what happens when the streaming/Music app is outputting over speaker/headset.
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
Okay, I did a lot of testing on the way home today. Now, I do not know if these features are operating as expected, but this is how I find it works:
  1. In general, I could not find any effect of the "prefer bluetooth" option
  2. Most all streaming/audio apps have a selector to choose the output method, such is iPhone, bluetooth devices, etc.
  3. When there is another app outputting audio, Waze will default to using the same output method
  4. iOS appears to restrict all audio to one output at a time; all apps must use the same output method
  5. More than one app can output sound at a time
  6. When the "always output to speaker" option is turned ON, any sound from Waze will fade out and stop any other playing/streaming audio, regardless of what output method the other app is using
  7. When the "always output to speaker" option is turned ON, Waze does not play any audio when in the background
  8. When the "always output to speaker" option is turned OFF, Waze will partially fade out any other playing/streaming audio
  9. When the "always output to speaker" option is turned OFF, Waze does play any audio when in the background
  10. If the other audio app does not put the "playing" triangle in the top status bar of the iOS device, it will not restart the audio when the "always output to speaker" option is turned ON. This is because this app doesn't use the proper method for playing audio. If the other app is programmed properly and puts that triangle up there, Waze will be able to restart the audio stream.
In my quick testing, well-known apps like Music, iHeartRadio and Pandora, do work correctly and Waze is able to restart them if the "always output to speaker" option is turned ON. Other specific radio-station apps I tested did NOT work properly due to their poor programming.

Now that I know how the options work, I find that Waze behaves pretty well most of the time. However, when turn announcements are just a bit too close together, Waze will do one or two things;
  1. Stop the other audio stream completely, even if it is a properly programmed app, and continue to give turn instructions
  2. Stop playing the other app, and stop giving turn instructions
  3. The other app continues playing, but Waze stops giving turn instructions
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
Another finding. This is not repeatable, however, so I don't know what the deal is. Using the "always prefer bluetooth" option turned ON, I was able to get ALL sounds from Waze to bluetooth INCLUDING being able to give voice commands. This was working paired with my car, so using the mic built in to my car, I was able to send Waze commands in a noisy environment just fine. The car thinks it's actually a phone call due to the type of connection.

I cannot get it to do this reliably. :(

But Waze really does need to be revamped in order to allow users the most flexibility in terms of exactly how they want the audio to work.
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Re: Bluetooth headset, dock connector, iPhone, Music

Post by dmwierz
Alan, thanks. That sorta what I figured - one of those things where you go "Man, would it be useful if I could do this!", then you think "I wonder how/if I could do this?"

Anyone else have any thoughts on the topic?
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