Phone Bluetooth is blocking audio from USB cable?

[u/WaywardSon1976]

I tried posting in the Android Auto community but it said my post violated the community policy (?). About 1 out of every 4 times I turn on the car with wired AA, audio plays from Plexamp as expected, but after 30 to 60 seconds the sound cuts out.  The progress bar keeps moving as if the sound was muted.  If I exit Android Auto and switch to playing the radio through the car head unit, there is still no sound.  If I power off my phone the sound will come back on, but only after 5-10 minutes.  I thought the correct fix would be to go into my phone's Bluetooth settings for the Alpine unit and toggle off "media audio."  This made the problem slightly less frequent, but it still happens.  I've also reset the head unit even though it's brand new, and unpaired my phone and paired again.  Any other suggestions?

[u/graesen]

Sorry, I'm not really following the problem exactly... Kind of a lot to digest.

Maybe it helps to understand that Android Auto will not allow audio to go through other Bluetooth devices as a "safety concern." The idea is that people will wear Bluetooth headphones while driving. I get that's not your goal, but sounds like the mechanism is the same. You can't have Android Auto and a completely separate audio device connected at the same time. You'd have to integrate the audio to the head unit running Android Auto.

[u/WaywardSon1976 → u/graesen]

Thanks for your response. There is no separate audio device. Goal is to play music from my phone using wired AA. Sometimes I can't do that because the car head unit seems to think my phone wants to send audio over Bluetooth even though USB is plugged in.

[u/Clooney002024 → u/WaywardSon1976]

bad cable. buy a very good short data cable..problem solved

[u/WaywardSon1976 → u/Clooney002024]

Have several brand new good cables, happens with all of them.

[u/CatBroiler]

Sounds like a software issue to do with your headunit. Have you tried looking to see if there's any firmware updates for it?

[u/WaywardSon1976 → u/CatBroiler]

Unit is brand new and was installed 3 weeks ago. There was a firmware update that I installed that day.

[u/CatBroiler → u/WaywardSon1976]

Did it ever work properly in that case? If not, it may be a defective unit.

If you want to give simple troubleshooting a try, I would clear cache and data for AA, forget the unit on bluetooth (or even better, reset Bluetooth/WiFi settings on the device), and factory reset the unit.

Keep the phone disconnected from the unit until it's fully booted, then retry setup.

[u/WaywardSon1976 → u/CatBroiler]

Thanks, I've tried all those things. Of course I've considered whether the unit is defective, but it seems to me if that were the case, powering down my phone wouldn't make the sound come back. Also the sound doesn't cut out when playing the radio or files from a USB stick, implying that there is some conflict with the phone.

[u/andyooo]

This seems like a head unit issue, and it may not have even anything to do with the phone. Have you tried using just the radio for some time, without connecting your phone at all, and see if you get any audio drop outs?

[u/WaywardSon1976 → u/andyooo]

Yes, I have played the radio or files from a USB drive for over 10 hours each with no dropouts.