IOS 14 CarPlay Audio Issue (crackling sounds)

While it might make sense there are no excuses. I changed to iPhone 12 Pro Max forking out over 1k - it’s worth it in most areas but a huge let down when getting into the car. Crackling and no depth to the sound despite equaliser adjustments etc.

If I get the phone to forget the car, do a hard reset and re connect its a whole other story - lovely enriching crackle free sound - but why should I have to do this when the Pixel 2 I changed from was soooooooooooooo much better in sound quality - I used to look forward to my regular longer journeys.

what’s worse is my kids think there is nothing wrong with it. Apple is dumbing our younger post vinyl and cd generation with **** music quality. And charging for it!

Its a software thing apple and it’s your responsibility - not car manufacturers etc. It’s embarrassing. Sort it out!

But that doesn't mean it's Apple's issue to solve.

Time to pull out this example again:

Say you have a calculator that when you add 2 + 3, you get the answer of 5, but when you add 3 + 2, you get the answer of 6.

If the software previously only added 2 + 3, but now adds 3 + 2 and gets the wrong answer, it's not Apple's responsibility to make sure they always only add 2 + 3.

When systems are designed, protocols always have fields that will be used in the future and developers are told to ignore those fields, or perhaps to respect them but not use them for any purpose.

Very often, developers don't and make assumptions that bits unused now will remain unused in the future, and this breaks things when a future update starts using those formerly unused bits and the third party software was using them to denote something else.

So, while this obviously could be an Apple issue, the fact that it used to work and no longer does does not mean Apple got anything wrong.

Certainly the iOS division of Apple is comprised of hundreds if not thousands of employees, many of whom have CarPlay in their personal vehicles; do you honestly think if it were as broken as you believe it to be, it would go unnoticed?

Instead there are multiple other factors involved, from interference, cellular signal strength and so on that come into play.

Well I have had this problem for the longest time also and it was driving me crazy the clipping, distortion, crackling that was constantly happening everytime I hooked up via a lightning connector and Apple car play in my car.

Well it would appear that this may now be resolved by switching the following setting in Settings>Music>Cellular Streaming. As soon as I changed this from High Quality setting over to High Efficiency setting the issue seems to no longer be present. Go figure after years of this frustration and searching for an answer.

**UPDATE: iOS 14.6**

Hey all, was experiencing these issues as well no matter what I did. Check update for 14.6. After installing, in the Music settings I have options for Lossless Audio under Audio Quality section. Has only been a day or two but haven’t had any crackles so far.

Lol to the guy throughout this thread continuously telling people it’s their car not Apple. Looks like it in fact was iOS as the latest update addresses the issue and adds options for Audio Quality to the Music settings. Enjoy CarPlay again guys and gals!

Isn’t that up to the other apps to make that option available? I only use Apple Music really so wouldn’t know if Spotify, Amazon, etc. have that setting in the General settings of the phone or within the app itself.

It sounds like my issue is slightly different to others in this thread, butI think it must be related nonetheless.

I purchased my car (2016 Peugeot 208) last September, and since then I’ve noticed that any kind of audio played through Apple CarPlay via the USB connection (it doesn’t support wireless CarPlay), skips / stutters every 2-3 minutes. Playing audio through the radio and Bluetooth is absolutely fine, so this made me realise that it must be a CarPlay problem.

I initially decided to ignore it but a few months ago I’d had enough and decided to take the car to a Peugeot dealership to see if there was anything that could be done. They updated the car’s infotainment system software to its latest version and claimed that this had fixed the issue. 2 minutes after testing in my car, I could clearly tell that the problem was still there.

This prompted me to think that the problem could be to do with the actual USB port in my car, as I had already tested the issue with multiple different phones and cables. I therefore took my car back to the dealership and got them to replace the USB port. Again they claimed that this had fixed the issue, but it was clear as soon as I had been driving for about 2 minutes that the problem wasn’t fixed.

Finally I took my car to a different dealership to see if there was anything they could do, however after testing themselves while I was away, they said that they couldn’t notice any problems and that it must be an issue with Apple. Unsurprisingly about 2 minutes after driving my car afterwards, I could notice the problem was still there.

I’ve spent too much time, money and energy getting Peugeot dealers to look into this, and it’s clear that it isn’t in their interest to try and fix it. I have since tried all the steps mentioned recently in this thread (changing phone’s Apple Music settings to High Efficiency Audio, changing EQ settings, turning off Sound Check etc.) but this hasn’t fixed anything. The problem isn’t with Apple Music as the problem still persists when listening to podcasts, talking on the phone, when Siri is reading things out etc.

I honestly don’t think it’s a problem with the car, and the issues others have been facing have been similar to mine. I think it must be something to do with my phone’s IOS, as I haven’t been able to test my car with any IOS older than last September (when I bought the car).

If anyone has any advice or suggestions to help, that would be much appreciated. I spend around 5 hours a week in my car and as an avid music fan, this problem drives me insane. Hopefully Apple address this soon.

@angusjoseph: this is exactly my issue as well! I have an Apple technical support case running since Nov 20, based on the issues starting with iOS14.0. Sharing GB of data but no roadmap visible. I suggest you also create a case.

I just got home from a week spent in a rental 2021 Jeep Compass, and used wired CarPlay that entire time with zero issues whatsoever.

Just a data point that seems to point to an automaker CarPlay issue (if it was CarPlay, it would have been broken on the Jeep with UConnect, too.)

Very interesting. I've gone back to the theory that it could be a problem with the infotainment system in my Peugeot 208 - with every car I've been in recently I tried using my phone with CarPlay, and they all worked perfectly. I've finally convinced the dealership to order me a whole new infotainment system after a lot of back and forth, and it arrives at the beginning of July when they'll install it. I'll post an update here once it's been installed and see what happens.

I had all the mentioned issues as well and until 14.6 no cure... with the help of the music settings like mentioned above the issue was gone - BUT 14.7 has reintroduced the same issue again... the setting was not altered by the upgrade - did anyone experience the same? Really not a good job what Apple has done with 14.x and Carplay....

I cannot see a difference with 14.7. and still have this issue from 14.0 onwards, with and without the above music settings and independent if LTE or WiFi as well as independent if music is streamed or on my iPhone. But I fully underline the statement of @oph001: Really not a good job what Apple has done with 14.x and Carplay....

It worked perfectly in my rental car without changing any settings, so I still believe this is a head end issue with various manufacturers’ head end systems.

We know owners of Peugeots as well as Kia and Hyundais have had issues, not sure who else.

It is for sure not an issue on any device. I have two cars and I have the crackling issue just on one device, the other works like expected. The affected media center is an original SEAT (VW) device, which worked with iOS 13.x perfectly fine. The issue was introduced with the upgrade to iOS 14.x on my iPhone 8. In the other car I have a SONY after market device, which works fine and was not affected by the upgrade. It is something that might be possible to correct with a firmware upgrade on the SEAT Media center (hardware-version 695; Software-version 8590), but the SEAT dealer is clearly not up to the task and he could not even say if there could be a new firmware available... SEAT web support is no help either. But Apple did change something on the Carplay API with the move to iOS 14.x which causes troubles on some devices which worked well before. The SEAT device supports also Android Auto working all the time without sound problems.

All of the reasons you cite for why it's not the head end are not valid for analysis or debugging.

I've used this example many, many times, but here it is again:

If you have a calculator that adds 2 + 3 as 5, but 3 + 2 as 6, it's not your responsibility to make sure you always add 2 + 3.

That's what is happening with iOS 14 and these head ends, and quite frankly is likely to recur when iOS 15 is released as new capabilities are used that the head ends didn't implement properly when released.

Apple didn't change the API, it was documented and if properly implemented by the head end maker it would have no issue working with iOS 14.

Were it the API, the many head ends that do work properly with iOS 14 would not.

Here’s something odd I came across. While like you I was able to eliminate the issue with the correct combination of new settings, the skipping came back with 14.7. I have begun to just accept it as is, since no one wants to address the issue on a large scale, and it’s up to users to do trial and error replacing everything only to have the issue still remain.

Now, back to the “odd” issue I’ve noticed. If I leave my house in airplane mode while playing downloaded music, about 3-5 minutes into my drive CarPlay completely crashes…I have no idea what causes this or if it is at all related to the skipping issue. Maybe the lack of internet connection causes CarPlay to crash as the navigation applications are constantly trying to update location information?