Brilliant response time. It always amazes me how quick you lot are with help.
Cheers Andrew, I don't know how i missed your original thread but thank you for helping out.
With the additional bluetooth module how good is it at audio streaming?
Hi,
I'm afraid that I have only done limited testing of the audio streaming. Yes it does work and I didn't have any reliability problems.
I bought my X CarLink primarily for the phone hands free calling and as the MP3 capability as an added bonus. I have the BOSE sound system and the 6 CD changer and even now I would probably say that I still listen to the CDs more than the MP3s.
What installing this has done is made be go back and re-encode my CDs to MP3s using the highest bit rate. My MP3s previously were encoded to enable to get the most of the largest memory card I could get for my phone at the time - 512MB! I typically only listen to MP3s when traveling by train although storage and capabilities have moved on since then.
At the moment I only have the lower bit rate files to test streaming with on my phone so the quality comparison isn't fair. The high bit rate files have all gone onto the SD card in the X CarLink although I think the real CDs still sound better, but have yet to do a proper side by side comparison.
The problem with Bluetooth streaming is that the base audio encoding types were designed for simplicity of implementation rather than sound quality. This was is to allow headsets to use relatively simple electronics and so be small and cheap. Even the optional standard codecs are still lossy compression so applying that on-top of an already lossy MP3 will further reduce the sound quality. Bluetooth does allow propriety codecs like aptX to be implemented "hifi" audio streaming including lossless modes but this requires specific support at each end. My phone does implement aptX but I suspect that my X CarLink doesn't although I haven't been able to find any documentation on which codecs it does support.
My view is that if I was going to use streaming extensively, I would probably want to plug my phone in to charge at the same time and doing so negates the whole point of the wireless connection. If I am going to plug it in I might as well use that same connection to transfer the data as well without any loss of quality.
The wireless streaming control in the previously mentioned X CarLink models is limited to a "start" and "pause" control. Starting playback will launch the music app if necessary and resume from where it left off and pause allows you to interrupt playback but you can't change tracks etc. when playing wirelessly. You do get control over track selection and playlists with the wired connection.
If streaming is your thing, there is a recently introduced new X CarLink model which only does streaming playback. This one does provide track selection etc. over wireless but there is no direct plug in control option, although you can plug in your device to charge it if you want!
http://www.xcarlink.co.uk/product.php?productid=301&cat=4&page=1
regards
Andrew