Autoplay and bluetooth issues with 2015 Golf S

We are really loving our 2015 Golf TDI S we bought, but there is a question with the Infotainment system.

Here's the deal: We LOVE the audio from the system, and have successfully paired both our iPhones to it. Have not mastered voice commands, but the bluetooth system works as advertised. I also have a large number of songs on an SD card and the audio quality could not be better.

But the issue is the lack of any way to turn OFF the audio when I want to use the map feature on my phone to bark directions at me. The BT audio function successfully brings the audio from the maps in, and the system lowers the music volume so I can hear the directions. But I want to turn OFF the music and just hear the map directions. When I hit PAUSE on any music (from the phone or SD card) it turns the volume on the system to 0. Same things happens when I hit MUTE...music (and map directions voice) goes to 0. When I turn the volume back up to hear the directions, it takes the music OFF pause and starts playing it again. There seems to be NO WAY to turn down or off just the music, on radio, phone or SD card.

Another annoyance to this issue is the autoplay "feature" on the system. When the system powers up and car starts, music starts playing whatever the media source is set to. Even if my itunes app is OFF on the phone, if "BT Audio" is selected as the source, it launches iTunes and starts playing music. If I hassle with turning the app off, the minute I touch the volume knob or use the steering wheel volume control, the system re-launches iTunes and autoplays.

There needs to be a way to manually tell the system to turn off ONLY the music...not pause...not mute, but OFF...without killing any other BT audio coming in from the phone such as the map turn-by-turn directions.

I read on many VW forums that this is a real problem for everyone, and frankly, am seriously underwhelmed at this level of technology in an otherwise great car.

I was bugged by this enough to try looking for a solution and I see you posted this a while back with no response. Sadly, I am left to believe that it's just something we have to live with. I know the improved system in the 2016 line works much better with the integrated Apple/Google car features. Unfortunately for us with older models, I think we're left with work-arounds. For example, I will be setting my Google Maps app to disable bluetooth audio and have the turn-by-turn audio just output from the phone speakers.

My workaround was that I had to remove all the music from my iphone. Horrible solution, but now when I switch to BT Audio, the system as before goes into the phone and tried to play music. But since there is none, and I am trying to get turn-by-turn directions audio out of Apple maps, all I hear is the directions. Problem solved but now I do not have music on the phone. And in order to have the phone available for BT calls, I cannot have music on it.

It sort of feels like the same engineers that so horribly designed the emissions software also botched this. How nobody at the factory didn't notice this and add a way to turn off autoconnect to play the music is beyond me. Other than this, the 2015 Golf S TDI is a very good car, 44.5 mpg average on current tank in city and mountain driving. Really great handling and fit/finish. Just a very poorly designed audio system.

I am tempted to just stop using BT on it altogether, and like you, makattack, just get my maps audio off the phone, and not even sync it. I am trying to determine now which is more valuable to me, map audio and handling calls thru the car, or having music on my phone.

I looked into briefly the other option of replacing the head unit with something like this:

http://www.sielectronic.com/index.php?m=Products&a=show&id=3

But a look through some end-user comments and the high price of it basically turned me off. It's also not clear to me if this would improve the BT functionality... or if it just simply adds navigation features separately so you don't need your phone's app for that:

https://avinusa.com/volkswagen-mk7-golf-gti-r-8-multimedia-navigation-system.html

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthre...ate-(Seamless-Integration-Electronics)/page30

Av8rdanPim said:

It sort of feels like the same engineers that so horribly designed the emissions software also botched this. How nobody at the factory didn't notice this and add a way to turn off autoconnect to play the music is beyond me. Other than this, the 2015 Golf S TDI is a very good car, 44.5 mpg average on current tank in city and mountain driving. Really great handling and fit/finish. Just a very poorly designed audio system..

Click to expand...

You should be looking at your phone for the answer, not the car. You already have an open stream using the Bluetooth with your music and your phone is just outputting the navigation over the same stream as an audio output, because that's how the phone handles it. Your car just continues the open stream.

Actually, hankster88 may have a good point. I suspect my problem is a little different from the original posters. In my case, the Google Maps voice navigation directions over Bluetooth A2DP stream results in the VW Head Units volume dropping down to zero before the full directions completely announced. I can intercept it with the volume controls on the steering wheel or head unit, but since the mobile phone can also set the volume, I'm trying this app to see if I can change my phones behavior:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=a2dp.Vol&hl=en

I feel silly. The whole volume issue with different apps appears to be related to the Speed Sensitive Volume setting on the head units bluetooth volume adjustment menu. I had it set to the lowest and middle values, and it didn't seem to make any difference. Setting it to the highest value (8 I believe) allows the Google Maps app to interrupt music and not have the BT volume reset to zero. Still seems like a bug, and this is at best a work-around.