CarPlay voice audio quality when connected via USB is poor vs. Bluetooth on Pioneer AVH-4200NEX

I was using an official Apple cable from my iPhone. I changed it to a shorter (50cm) MiFi certified cable and this seems to have fixed the issue. The audio quality is now even better than the Pioneer Bluetooth. I'm not sure how long this will last but I'm glad it worked! Even though the official cable was almost new it might have been worn off enough so that the newer one worked better. Or a shorter cable allows for better communication between the devices...

hope this helps! (The cable I got is the delayCON and I got it from Amazon)

Adding to the list of disappointed customers. Just installed a Pioneer SPH-DA120 AppRadio 4 and the audio quality over the lightning cable with Carplay is horrendous, even with my rather elaborate sound system (external 5-channel amp, 8" sub, aftermarket components). I feel bad because I first blamed the installer, figuring he must have screwed something up or pinched a cable or something. Connected to BT and the sound was superb.

I could give up the carplay and connect via BT but problem is, the head unit I got doesn't have its own stand-alone GPS. I didn't think this would have been a problem because I figured I'd use carplay for GPS...what another royal screw up by Apple for this to be an issue.

Hello Servie,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

I understand that when you use the USB cable for your iPhone in your car with CarPlay the audio is poor. I know how important it is for you to hear your calls clearly. In a situation like this I recommend the steps in the following article to help resolve the issue.

Set up CarPlay to use with your iPhone

Specifically the Get Help section:

Get help

If CarPlay doesn't work like you expect, here’s what you can check. After each step, try using CarPlay again.

1. Make sure that Siri is turned on.
2. Restart your iPhone and your car. Depending on your car, you might see the CarPlay Home screen when you turn it on. If you don't, look for the CarPlay logo on your car’s display.
3. If possible, connect your iPhone to a different USB port in your car.
4. Try a different Lightning to USB cable. Make sure the cable is certified.
5. Update to the latest version of iOS.
6. Check your car’s manual for help. You might need to install firmware updates for your stereo.

Cheers

I have a 2016 Honda Accord with CarPlay and have the exact same problem. Everything including music sounds great, but audio quality on phone calls is terrible compared to Bluetooth. I had thought it was a problem with my unit on my car, but it looks like it is an Apple issue. Hopefully it will improve with ios 10. it makes CarPlay unusable to me, which I otherwise like.

I Have the very same problem here. I got a brand new Pioneer AVIC F88 DAB especially for the Carplay capability. Unfortunately the call quality is so poor I had to disable Carplay and I'm now quite frustrated. I hope Apple can fix this glitch or tell us how to fix it.

Recently installed Kenwood DDX6702S in vehicle. I am having quite a different experience with carplay. The audio quality via usb cable is poor. I get much better quality and clarity via bluetooth connection. Using usb lightning cable that came with phone and shorter cable from Anker. Neither have worked well as far as music quality. Apple Carplay works fine as far as making calls, receiving and replying to text msgs, etc. Seems odd that a bluetooth connection would out perform a direct cable connection for music data transfer. Any input?

Thanks for the input. I have bought a few cables now, all certified, with shortest length being a 1 foot cord. Unfortunately none of them have helped. Hopefully it will improve for me with iOS 10 and perhaps with getting the newest iPhone coming out next month (I'm currently using iPhone Plus S). Frustrating. Whenever I am going to place a call I now just disconnect my lightning cord and use Bluetooth, then plug it in when I am done with the call. Bluetooth call quality is vastly superior.

I have a 2016 Honda Accord and have this same problem as well. I had it with my iPhone 6s running IOS 9, and unfortunately this problem still exists with my new iPhone 7 running IOS 10. The sound quality for music and Siri is great, but phone call quality is still terrible with iPhone 7 and IOS 10. It's very tinny and under-sampled sounding as previously described.

Along with another problem I have where calling contacts with a pause and extension number included don't connect to the extension, I've been forced to having to disconnect the Lighting cable, wait for the phone to connect to the car's Bluetooth, then make the call on Bluetooth. Then the sound quality is excellent and the phone dials and connects to extensions properly.

Hopefully Apple will address these issues soon. Disconnecting the phone to use Bluetooth to make phone calls defeats the whole purpose of having CarPlay in the first place.

I took advantage of my 90 days of iPhone 7 support and logged cases with Apple for this call sound quality issue, as well as my phone extensions issue. They passed me to a Sr. Advisor who is now passing these issues up to Apple Engineering. The advisor is going to get back to me in a few days to let me know what they find or advise.

I'm also having the same issues as everyone in this thread but more importantly (for me) the quality of music via CarPlay is sub par compared to bluetooth. CarPlay seems to emphasise the highs and mid highs whereas bluetooth sounds rich and balanced with plenty of bass. I almost took my car back because I thought the speaker system was faulty. It comes with a small subwoofer stock and CarPlay never seemed to utilise it. Bluetooth on the other hand sounds amazing.

I was testing an iPhone 6 with the charging USB cable that comes with it in a 2017 Cadillac CTS V, and played audio and video files (only audio part played) from my iPhone using the VLC player app, and it sounded good but not great in the Bose system. I also noticed that it continued to play through Bluetooth when I disconnected the cable. Although it sounded about the same through the Bluetooth, I assumed the quality would be better through the cable and I didn't listen carefully. It seems also that it needs to be connected through the cable first in order to play the VLC app through Bluetooth, which I believe still worked when I disconnected the cable, but I could not access the VLC app after I turned the audio and/or car off and on again without connecting the cable first. An odd glitch occurred; I don't recall if it was while using Carplay or simply playing iTunes stored on my iPhone through Bluetooth, but when I received a phone call, the music continued to play during the phone call, although the other party calling could not hear it.

Did you ever get your phone call issues resolved? I just purchased a 2017 honda accord and my phone calls work great through Bluetooth, my music through carplay is good, but my phone calls are horrible. I am constantly having to disconnect my phone to talk which is unacceptable. I have called apple support, but didn't get a good answer. I have also purchase several certified apple cords, but this didn't help either. By the way, my iphone is a 5; I had considered upgrading, but then I saw a post where someone with the 7 was also having issues. Such a great idea, too bad that it doesn't seem to be working properly.

No solution. I haven't called Apple or mentioned/called Honda given how unlikely either company will take responsibility for the fix. I'm hoping the next iOS update will address since everything worked well on 2016 Honda Accord with the 9.x iOS. It is really unfortunate that such a great feature like CarPlay isn't better supported.

I've just discovered the same problem here. Got a nice Alpine ILX007e unit and tried my first voice call. Sounded tinny/poor bitrate - pretty pathetic! Music/maps/siri/everything else is perfectly fine, yet voice quality coming through the speakers is quite frankly terrible and robotic sounding. Had a bit of a read on the net but couldn't find anything of any relevance at all apart from this thread. What's going on!? I find it hard to believe that USB2 can do what, 480Mbit/s of data and there's mention that the USB can't handle the voice calls. Hope Apple can investigate and fix this for the other aspects of CarPlay are great and yet a trivial thing such as voice calls is extremely terrible.