7.1.2 and Bluetooth Music Skipping/Cracking

[Jay Eff]

For those who had bluetooth "skipping, crackling" during music playback in a car -- I have the same problem -- I would appreciate learning from you about whether the update has fixed this issue for you. As of the morning of 05 April (East Coast US), I am waiting for the update to my Pixel (US, purchased from Google in January, on VZW network).

My situation: my car can connect to my Pixel for phone function only. In order to play music via bluetooth, I have a music-only dongle that connects via BT to the Pixel and via the AUX jack in the car. Thus, in order to have both phone and music car functionality, the Pixel is connected to two BT receivers (car head unit and dongle) when I'm driving. This is the only setup possible for phone+music in this particular car and the setup worked perfectly and seamlessly with my Droid Turbo. However, with my Pixel, I get the music skipping.

Thank you for your replies.

 

[Jay Eff]

OTA arrived this morning when I checked at 0600 (Eastern Standard, US). I'll check the BT issue that I described, but would still appreciate any input from those who've had the issue, too. Thanks, All !

 

[jkroto]

OTA arrived this morning when I checked at 0600 (Eastern Standard, US). I'll check the BT issue that I described, but would still appreciate any input from those who've had the issue, too. Thanks, All !

Got the 7.1.2 update on my VZW Pixel this AM. Still skipping and choppy as crap on my BT headphones...

 

[Nubwy]

Got the 7.1.2 update on my VZW Pixel this AM. Still skipping and choppy as crap on my BT headphones...

I get the skipping and choppy sometimes too. I've also got an issue with dropped calls, I get 3-4 per day with various people. My S8+ is on preorder. This phone is going in the drawer.

 

[billykac]

bt is still crap on 7.1.2.

 

[Rocketsaucev2]

No problems with my Bluetooth cracking

 

[hannsoft]

For those who had bluetooth "skipping, crackling" during music playback in a car -- I have the same problem -- I would appreciate learning from you about whether the update has fixed this issue for you. As of the morning of 05 April (East Coast US), I am waiting for the update to my Pixel (US, purchased from Google in January, on VZW network).

My situation: my car can connect to my Pixel for phone function only. In order to play music via bluetooth, I have a music-only dongle that connects via BT to the Pixel and via the AUX jack in the car. Thus, in order to have both phone and music car functionality, the Pixel is connected to two BT receivers (car head unit and dongle) when I'm driving. This is the only setup possible for phone+music in this particular car and the setup worked perfectly and seamlessly with my Droid Turbo. However, with my Pixel, I get the music skipping.

Thank you for your replies.

Jay, we could be twins. I have the EXACT same situation. 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I also had a Droid Turbo that worked flawlessly in it. BT to the car's dash radio for phone only - it has no built-in music function for BT. I send music to a BT dongle in the AUX jack. Exact same thing.

In 7.1.2 the music skipping/jumping/breaking up problem is NOT fixed. The only solution, as it was with 7.1.1, is to disable the BT connection to the car. If I do that then the music connection to the dongle is perfect.

However, I think I MIGHT have a work around. Tonight I went to the BT settings for the car ("Uconnect") and turned off "Contact sharing" rather than turning off that connection altogether. The music skipping stabilized. It's WAY too soon to say this is a way around the problem, but it's promising. I'll do a lot more testing tomorrow and report back here. It's not a Good Thing that we'd have to do this to get it to work, but it certainly would be an acceptable solution for me. I think the Pixel has too many other great things going for it than to trash it because of BT, and if this gets me around the issue then I'm good until they fix it for real. Who really "needs" to do "contact sharing" with the car radio anyway? Not me.

Again, it's early in the theory and I may just come back tomorrow and tell you it doesn't work after all. More testing needed. But my fingers are crossed for now.

 

[hannsoft]

Trash that theory. Contact sharing has no effect. I had to unpair the car to have BT music. And even that is less smooth than it was.

 

[electriclarryland]

I have had to set my bluetooth connections up the same way in my car (2011 BMW), having the car BT set for phone and my added BT adapter set for media in my Pixel XL BT settings. So far
it has worked perfectly, with the added bonus of utilizing the phone and receiver's APTx codec, which is not available on the car BT media. It worked great that way on my old HTC 10 as well. However the only way to get the car BT to work for phone only
is by disabling contact & SMS sharing. Otherwise it will go into a loop and finally turn itself off.

 

[Chrome23]

For those who had bluetooth "skipping, crackling" during music playback in a car -- I have the same problem -- I would appreciate learning from you about whether the update has fixed this issue for you. As of the morning of 05 April (East Coast US), I am waiting for the update to my Pixel (US, purchased from Google in January, on VZW network).

My situation: my car can connect to my Pixel for phone function only. In order to play music via bluetooth, I have a music-only dongle that connects via BT to the Pixel and via the AUX jack in the car. Thus, in order to have both phone and music car functionality, the Pixel is connected to two BT receivers (car head unit and dongle) when I'm driving. This is the only setup possible for phone+music in this particular car and the setup worked perfectly and seamlessly with my Droid Turbo. However, with my Pixel, I get the music skipping.

Thank you for your replies.

EXACT SAME PROBLEM!!!! I have been anxiously waiting for the 7.1.2 update on my Pixel due to having this problem on 7.1.1 and hearing how they plan to fix all the BT bugs for 7.1.2. Updated to 7.1.2 yesterday, and still having the same skipping problem.

Only mitigation I find is disconnecting the phone from the car when trying to stream music through the car.

 

[Jay Eff]

Thank you for the replies. The issue has not resolved for me, either. I bought a new BT dongle (BT v4.0), thinking that the upgrade might help -- it didn't.

The only thing that resolves it completely is disconnecting the BT from the car's head unit, but, then I lose phone functionality.

I have noticed that when the skipping starts, if I press the power button and wake up the phone, the skipping stops. I am convinced that there is some background process that the Pixel is performing and it is interfering with BT music streaming.

FYI...I restarted the phone is Safe Mode and used Play Music to play mp3 music files stored in memory -- skipping persisted. I've played with the different check boxes (eg, Contact Sharing, etc) in the BT settings -- skipping persisted. I run a "lean machine" in terms of apps...Just a few apps over Pixel stock and no task managing.

Google Support wants me to perform a FDR. I'm hesitant, not wanting to take the hours to rebuild.

Has anyone done a FDR and had success?

 

[billykac]

I did a reset last Fall, just so I can cover that base.
No, it didn't do anything.
Don't waste your time.

The Pixel has terminal BT issues that Google can't seem to resolve.

It's painful to look back at my phones from years ago, that cost much less than the Pixel, that never had such basic issues.

As I've said before, it's kinda like buying a Porsche, finding out that the windows are malfunctioning - they don't go up/down - and then finding out that Porsche can't seem to figure out how to make windows go up/down. Possibly worse, finding out that Porsche just doesn't consider it a priority to resolve.

 

[davnul]

Wow, this is a big miss for me - iPhone 6 was flawless on BT music - I upgraded to Pixel and music experience is less than optimal - too bad I traded iPhone 6 back to Verizon...I have an hour or more commute one way 5 days a week - and the audio system in my Soul is quite good - except for the Pixel...This is really bad PR stacked against iPhone.

 

[radgatt]

It seems that no matter what phone Google comes out with, Nexus or Pixel, there is always some issue with Bluetooth. I can't think of a phone Google has come out with that didn't have any Bluetooth issue. Other OEMs don't seem to have this problem. Why can't Google get this right?

 

[Carterman32]

I have the same issue with 7.1.2. I called Project Fi, and they said this specific problem was resolved on most pixels with 7.1.2, however, they are aware it has not been resolved on all. When I said that makes it sound like a hardware problem, the agent said it could be... BUT, the fix would not work correctly unless the phone was factory reset. So, after having already updated, I did exactly that. Testing it now. And will post results. If it doesn't fix it, then my pixel is going back. I had a Nexus 6p with a BT issue once it hit Nougat. Every time I used BT on my car stereo, the sound was scratchy with tons of interference. Google just can't get this right.

 

[billykac]

Report back on this.

I am not doing YAR (yet another reset) that is supposedly going to fix this BT issue.

I'd prefer if Google told me that if I run 10 miles today, then BT would be fixed. Two key points if they did this:

- Running 10 miles is better for me than sitting and setting up my Pixel, again
- Running 10 miles is probably just as relevant as resetting my Pixel for fixing this problem

 

[Jay Eff]

Thank you (in advance) for posting your experiences through testing.

 

[guitarjamman]

Question, anyone notice if it happens streaming music (Pandora) vs playing stored music on the phone?

I noticed yesterday that the skipping is really obvious playing songs I loaded, and when I listen to Pandora, I hardly notice it.

 

[Jay Eff]

In my situation, it happens while streaming music:

- stored on board as mp3
- stored on board by Spotify
- via Pandora, Play, and Spotify through their services over VZW network
- via Play in Safe Mode

I have not found a way to stop the interference.

 

[vVick3d]

It seems that no matter what phone Google comes out with, Nexus or Pixel, there is always some issue with Bluetooth. I can't think of a phone Google has come out with that didn't have any Bluetooth issue. Other OEMs don't seem to have this problem. Why can't Google get this right?

Nexus 5x had 0 BT issues.

For me the crackling occurs intermittently. When it does happen, the crackling continues periodically.

If this is software related Google should be able to patch it, but after this amount of time I'm starting to think it may be hardware based. Maybe the BT chip isn't receiving clean DC power. Maybe the traces on the motherboard are too close to other components causing interference. This is Googles first in house phone, problems such as these could exist. If it is a hardware issue you'll have to wait for Pixel 2 or move on.