Bluetooth mute on pause (Mk7 Golf)

[caeci11ius]

Does anyone know if I can prevent the stereo muting the audio when Bluetooth is paused? This means it is useless for playing sounds not sourced from a media player (for example Google Maps voice guidance) unless I'm playing music simultaneously. As soon as I unmute a2dp profile audio, the stereo issues a play instruction to the phone. This is really reducing the functionality of the Bluetooth unit, so I'm hoping there's a way around it...

[Ryan_R]

Download and have a play with the A2DP Volume app on the play store, might be what you need. Let's you setup default Bluetooth volume, text to speech, and audio stream

[caeci11ius]

It's the car stereo that's muting though. If you hit pause on the screen, you will also see the mute icon appear at the top of the display :-S...

[Ryan_R]

This means it is useless for playing sounds not sourced from a media player

One of the features of A2DP Audio is you can choose what 'audio stream' the TTS goes via - i.e. you could try setting it as Music (other options are Voice Call and Alarm iirc). Main reason I use it for is reading out SMS messages through the car speakers.

I typically listen to bluetooth music most of the time and it doesn't pause when I hear email alerts or voice guidance. It does however pause when I receive an SMS as I've set that to the 'Voice call' stream, which means I can 'hang up' and stop it reading out the message if I have passengers.


I'm not 100% sure on what you're trying to achieve when I read the first post though - so maybe if you post from that angle I'll work it out (i.e. "I want to listen to FM radio and also be able to hear Google Maps voice guidance via the car speakers at the same time without the radio muting when instructions are spoken").

You say you want to prevent the stereo (head unit) from muting the audio (what audio? bluetooth music? FM radio? other input?) when bluetooth is paused (how is it paused? a phone alert? you press the microphone button on the steering wheel?).

[caeci11ius]

Ah, if I can set tts to use the handsfree protocol instead of a2dp that might do the trick. I basically just want to be able to have voice directions play when no music is playing. The problem is that the car head unit mutes the car volume when media playback is paused, so even though the phone may send audio through from other (non-media) apps such as Google maps, you can't hear it. If you press play the car volume unmutes, music plays and you can also hear any other audio that goes through including Google maps voice guidance...

[Ryan_R]

Right... gotcha. Just quickly checked in my car and it unpauses the music every time there's a navigation announcement.

Easiest workaround that I can think of is to just create blank MP3 file that's >an hour long which you can play when wanting to navigate in silence.

[caeci11ius]

Can I ask what firmware version yours has?

Edit: Actually doesn't matter. Just went and had a bit of a muck around in the car and it seems to be working now. I do seem to get some odd results if I hit the mute/pause/not voice control button during an audio direction,but otherwise it's behaving as expected. I think it was most likely an issue with the settings in the phone itself as I haven't changed anything with the car. Android 4.4/Nexus 5 here...

[Ryan_R]

Android 4.1.2
RNS510 fw 51xx something