Odd Android Auto Behaviors

[Ranman57]

So I got a MA1 the other day so have been using AA more than I used to. I have two odd things happening that occur either wirelessly or plugged in.

One is sometimes after a voice announcement from Maps the music comes back but only on the left speaker that played the announcement but the other speakers go dead. I have to reboot AA to get everything working again.

Another is that when I get an incoming call the music player - in this case Poweramp - doesn't pause during the call.

Both features work fine when it's just a regular BT connection though the voice comes from the standard nav system. so it's a bit different.

Car is a 2020 but I don't know which firmware it's running offhand. It's whatever it came with as I have not done any updates.

Has anyone else seen this?

 

[SBMongoos]

Just curious. Google allows many of their apps to be updated even if a beta. Are you part of getting the AA beta updates? This could be the issue. I was for Google Messages and opted back out as I was having flakey issues. So far with AA beta updates I'm not really seeing issues but I have in the past.

 

[Ranman57]

Nope, just the standard latest update from Google.

What I haven't tried, since it just occurred to me, is running the stock music app and seeing if that makes a difference. I'll also try a different app besides Poweramp.

But the left speaker thing has to be a Mazda issue. That is some poor implementation there. Every other car I've used a GPS in has the announcements come from either all the speakers or at least lowered the volume on all of them instead of just one side. I think they fixed that in my wife's 2021 CX-30.

Come to think of it I'll try AA in her car later and see how it acts since her system is more recent and quite different from mine in some ways.

 

[Ranman57]

Just a quick update. I tried AIMP and it works fine so it must be a Poweramp thing. It's supposed to be AA compatible but maybe not so much.

 

[sm1ke]

I use Poweramp as well (great music app), and it doesn't look like there are any specific settings for Android Auto, but there is the Audio Focus setting that you can try playing around with.

Open Settings in Poweramp
Open Headset/Bluetooth menu
Open Audio Focus
Make sure Resume After Call is enabled

There's also a section in the Audio Focus menu that mentions that on Android 8 and up, Poweramp can be "unloaded" by the system when it is paused. You can enable the Always Keep Notification option to prevent Poweramp from being "unloaded". I have my app configured that way and I have no issues with calls (but I'm also not using AA).

 

[Ranman57]

I went through all that to no avail. What it would do is not pause when I received a call but would try and resume play at the end of the call which would then toggle it to pause.

It works fine when on straight BT, just not on AA. The AIMP has no issues so I assume it has to do with the AA implantation they added to the latest rev of Poweramp. I like Poweramp too but all I need it to do is reconnect and start playing again, I just have a 8000 song playlist running on random that I leave on all the time so I rarely use any of the advanced features.

What's really confusing me now is that the MA1 is refusing to connect to the car at all for AA. I was plugging it in and out while trying to figger out whether it was an AA or MA1 thing causing the issue and now it's no bueno all around. But the AA still works when plugged in. When I moved it to the wife's CX-30 it works fine. I fought with it for a while and started getting a headache and gave up for now.

 

[7eregrine]

I know you probably paid for your music app, but check out Rocket Player. Seriously kicks everything else's butt. If you do try it, let me know.
Rocket Player was the first to use Smart Playlists which are a really cool way to make 'on the fly' play lists.