• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Connecting Desire to Car Stereo (JVC KD R821)

SCFC_Messiah

Newbie
Jun 26, 2010
17
0
Hi guys

Today I bought a JVC KD R821 head unit for my car

I've been able to pair my HTC Desire to the unit, so that I'm able to wirelessly make and receive telephone calls through the head unit, as well as stream the music from my phone via Bluetooth. However, streaming music via Bluetooth doesn't give the greatest of sound quality (it sounds ok, but not nearly as clear as CD quality or a hardwired connection)

So.... I've now connected my phone to the unit via USB lead and to be fair, once it connects, the sound quality is superb and I'm able to scroll through my various albums and artists to select the song I want

However, I'm having one slight problem. When I first connect the Desire to the head unit via USB, the head unit displays 'Reading' whilst the unit scans the Desire for music files. The problem with this is it takes approximately 40 seconds to finish reading the Desire, before I'm able to start listening to the music. 40 seconds doesn't seem long, but it is when you're waiting for it! It does this every time - for example; if I switch off the engine, then turn it back on, the head unit once again needs to 'read' the Desire before playing the music

I suspect it takes so long because of the amount of music I have stored on the phone (I have around 11GB of music), but I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do to speed this process up?

Thanks
 
It's probably down to the capabilities of your head unit.

I am basing this on the fact that my Netbook takes 30 seconds to scan my external HD before giving me the auto play option on Windows XP; whereas the scan and auto play are almost instantaneous on my much more powerful laptop running W7. My PS3 and Onkyo stereo also take a while to index the files on a 16GB USB drive. I think you will be stuck with it.

Can I suggest adding the same amount of music to a basic USB flash drive and seeing if the indexing speed is the same. This will allow you to point the finger at the "weak link".

I guess is also depends on the USB standard used by the head unit - lower standard number = lower data rate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SCFC_Messiah
Upvote 0
Thanks for your reply

I've just found a way around it and I'm pleased with the outcome

Rather than plugging the Desire into the head unit each time, I dug out an old MicroSD USB card reader and plugged that into the head unit instead. The reader is so small you can barely see it. Now I've found myself three 4GB MicroSDs, and split my music into 3 groups and put them on the cards. Due to the smaller capacity on the MicroSD cards, it only takes around 10 - 15 seconds for the head unit to read all the music, which is much more reasonable. I'll just have to switch MicroSD cards whenever I fancy a change, but that's no big deal!
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones