Does anyone have issues with the sound quality on their bluetooth microphone? A lot of people tell me that the sound quality is very poor when I'm handsfree using the vehicle's bluetooth system.

Not sure if I should take it in or if that's just the way it is. Yes, windows are closed and it's at lowspeed or high speed, either way, sounds bad. I knew it was bad when my contact list recordings came back sounding like nails on a chalkboard.

And no, it's not my voice..

 

This is just how it is from what I hear. I guess I project my voice pretty well when using bluetooth because no one tells me the quality is poor but I have heard other users post about this.

 

My brother use to tell me all the time he could barely understand me when on handsfree, but as soon as i transfered to my iphone then he could hear me perfectly clear.

I soon after took the front microphone out to disable Active Noise Cancellation so my car audio install was not bothered by the feature.

So I don't use the microphone anymore

 

Great. Such a small yet important detail to spare quality on. I'll bring it up next time I'm in for service and see what they say anyways.

Thanks.

 

Yeah I also have had a lot of complains about really terrible call quality to the point were people seem to only understand every other word. And this is with me practically shouting. Pretty disappointing in a brand new luxury car...

I also will ask the dealer. Doubt they'll say/do anything useful but worth a shot.

 

yeah. the sound quality stinks on the bluetooth. my wife wants me to get another bluetooth for the car. got spoiled with a very good built-in bluetooth on the volvo.

 

Agreed, I feel like I have to shout to the mic to be heard. Many people have said it is very noticeable when I'm on the road driving because of all the ambient noise too. Wish there was some noise cancellation!

 

then you need to trade it in for a 2014 model

 

People have this complaint in all makes and models of cars. Is there a replacement microphone that can be used?

 

So it seems that this problem isn't isolated to ILX's. Here's a thread of 2012 Civic owners who have had similar issues and said that their dealers replaced the microphone and their problems went away:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22240052#22240052

Next time I go to the dealer, I'm going to ask them to look at it.

 

Same here. My girlfriend says she can barely hear me when I call her from the car.

 

I suppose some of this depends on what you consider "normal". I don't expect the Bluetooth system to be as loud or clear as if I was holding the phone next to my mouth. It is the nature of anything that uses an automatic gain control to balance out the sound levels.

Shoot some video with an on camera microphone of a subject 10 feet away. The automatic gain control on the camera will boost the volume in order to hear the person 10 feet away. When doing so it's also going to pick up additional ambient noise. I believe the same thing is happening with the Bluetooth hands-free system. Because we are so far from the microphone the system needs to "listen" harder and thus picks up more noise in the car.

This is not to say that there might not be solvable problems if the microphones are indeed defective. But diagnosing this type of issue over the Internet is pretty tough. Mostly because how much "noise" is acceptable could vary from person to person. I can say that I expect to have to speak louder than normal when using the hands-free system. I do not find this unusual in anyway.

 

Well interestingly the microphone really shouldn't be that far away (1 foot max) as I believe it is right near the sun roof opener (according to the OEM parts site). And I've tried shouting and the people on the other line say it doesn't help.

I wonder if the problem not the volume of my/our voice but the frequency. I believe the hands free system high pass filters the signal pretty heavily to cut out the low frequency car noises. Since my voice is pretty low (baritone range), I wonder if the filter is filtering my voice a bit too. This might explain why some people perhaps with higher pitched voices don't have any problems and others do (lower pitched voices). Just a theory...

 

on our volvo, the bluetooth is crystal clear. you can hear the person perfectly and it connects instantaneously. i find the ilx one very slow to connect. the one feature i do miss dearly is the ability to access the phone book when moving.

in the volvo i can get to the address book via the steering buttons and dial numbers via the number keypads.

 

I'm not a fan of talking and driving so I don't use it much, but the few times I did, I can hear the person very well and they never complained of not hearing me well, so I figure it's good enough