Anyone wanting to stream music from their phone to non-CIC via bluetooth? No prob

[TheBreeze]

For my BMW brethren without CIC nav ..

My favorite way to listen to tunes is Pandora, problem was that since I didn't have CIC nav, there was no way for me to listen to Pandora without having unsightly wires dangling off my phone. (I do have the 6FL option.) I finally got sick of the inconvenience and started doing some research for a good bluetooth solution.

I picked up a gadget from Amazon - the Kinivo BTC450. It's a handy little bluetooth receiver that plugs in to the AUX port and lighter port and allows you to stream music from your phone. (It also support hands-free phone access, but I'm not using it for that). I hooked it up the the 6FL ports and tucked the the receiver into the little ipod pouch .. very tidy. I paired it with my Samsung S4, tweaked the bluetooth connection to use the audio profile, but not the phone profile, and viola I was able to stream Pandora without wires, and my phone still worked perfectly for calls. A couple of interesting points ..

1. Since I have premium package, I have hands-free calling built in to the car and preferred to keep that set up. By disabling the phone profile from the BTC450, I was able to pair the phone to both the car (for phone) and BTC450 (for streaming audio) simultaneously. Music streaming starts/stops just as you would expect when using/hanging up the phone.

2. The unit supports the aptX codec, so audio quality is actually very good. For Pandora useage, I doubt there's any loss in quality over hard wiring. If your playing content stored on the phone, I would expect hard-wire would still provide better sounds at high bitrates. At any rate, I found the audio quality to be pretty good and definitely worth the trade-off. I also have a USB flash drive connected to the 6FL USB port with music on it, so it's my preferred way to listen to my own content with the best possible fidelity.

3. The unit has no battery and runs off the lighter port. There's an integrated USB charger port as well, so you can charge your phone from the BTC's power plug. When you turn on the car it automatically pairs with your phone and you're good to, and likewise, when you turn off the car, it unpairs.

4. Since it's still an AUX interface device, only the steering volume buttons do anything. Guess you can't everything. My phone is mounted via a nifty CD-slot mount, so it's not that big of a deal for me to change stations/songs using the phone screen.

Anyway, I've been using it for about a month, and it's been pretty solid. It *very* rarely glitches and generally works pretty seamlessly. The best part? Less than $40 ..

[five_timer]

There have been some previous threads about this, but it's good to hear about owners using this solution. I stream SiriusXM via a Blackberry brand stereo bluetooth receiver from my HTC phone. The Blackberry unit's no longer available, but I recently got a Go Groove from Amazon for another application, which works the same way.

My phone dock is to the left of the instrument cluster, and because the windshield's not that far away there, the phone's very convenient to use. I launch a car dock app that turns wifi off, bluetooth on, and automatically pairs with the receiver. Then I launch the SXM app, and if the radio's set to Aux, I'm all set.

One thing I found was that the media volume on my phone should not be more than half-way up, to avoid distortion. Then I use the radio volume to adjust the loudness. Works really well.