Let me start by saying that this information is the epitome of first-world problems. I have a "new" 2016 Mini Cooper (R60) Countryman with the John Cooper Works (JCW) trim. It's a thing of style and beauty...everything my 2010 Subaru Outback was not. The Mini is loaded with luxury items frequently found in parent company BMWs: heated leatherette seats, double moon/sun roof, auto-sensing wipers, and real controls for sport driving with buttons to tighten the suspension, and to turn off traction control.
It also has a premium sound system: Harman Kardon, attached to a mostly outdated head unit which allows for bluetooth telephony but not for audio transmission from a smart device. OK. This isn't a huge issue. Anyone who knows me knows that I value audio quality over convenience. And, even in my wife's 2016 Nissan Rogue, there is a sharp drop-off (including volume) between broadcasting music via bluetooth and using a USB MFi (Made for iPhone/iPad) lightning cable that plugs directly into the car. So, I should be able to just do that in the Mini, right? Wrong. While the Mini Cooper (and many BMWs) offer a USB port, when you plug in a lightning cable, your phone merely charges. For steering wheel controls to work as well as audio transmission, you need to use a BMW Y Cable. And, when you buy a Mini, what you get is one of these:
Right, for a 2016 vehicle, Mini Cooper (and some BMWs I'm assuming) hand you an adapter that plugs into the AUX port and USB port in the car simultaneously, as well as your discontinued-as-of-2014-and-the-iPhone 4s 30-pin dock connector (for those playing the home-game, lightning became the standard for Apple in September of 2012 with the launch of iPhone 5). The small piece of paper in the ziplocked Y Cable baggie advises you to spend your own money on a 30-pin to lightning adapter in order to use the car stereo with "newer" phones. What to do?
To listen to your iPhone in the car, there really are only three choices: 1) suck it up, purchase the adapter, take off your phone case, plug it in and rest the phone between the seats under the arm-rest, making using the phone for anything other than audio (read: maps) impossible; 2) buy a non MFi lightning extension so that you can reach either a CD mount or suction-cup mount iPhone holder on or near the dashboard, however, now you've got feet of cable that you need to contend with regardless of the vehicle's transmission (manual/automatic); or 3) do an eBay special and find a 30-pin bluetooth adapter for the end of the dreaded Y Cable so that you can wirelessly transmit an inferior sounding feed to the superior stereo while also losing steering wheel controls.
For the moment, I've gone with 3. The car is a manual transmission which makes extra wires that cross from the back of the stick-shift to the front of the dashboard cumbersome. It's perfect for streaming news where audio quality is somewhat less important than when listening to music. My hope is that I can discover/jury-rig a middle ground compromise by snaking said wire under carpet or trim to keep everything tidy. Until then, thank god Trump is president because there's no shortage of news to distract me from how crappy it sounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment