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Strange pitch shift while streaming from phone

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by Christian Wattengård, Mar 10, 2017.

  1. Christian Wattengård

    Christian Wattengård New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 10, 2017
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    Location:
    Trondheim
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    Excel
    So I've seen a few posts about this, but I didn't find any with a solution. I have this problem on my 2010 Prius HD Navi unit and it's really annoying. I've seen others describe it as a slight shift noticeable only to a trained ear, well, both me and my fiance notice it, and it's really annoying and jarring.

    I tried to catch it on a recording to show you


    It's not the best tune to show it on, I wanted to chose one from the youtube archive so the video didn't get taken down. We normally listen to dance and trance, so there is lots of pure synth sounds and such. And this kind of music is completely unlistenable.

    And it's not the phone. I had this problem on both my iPhone 6, and my current Galaxy S7 Edge.

    Did someone find a solution?
     
    #1 Christian Wattengård, Mar 10, 2017
  2. Dyjital

    Dyjital Member

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    Location:
    Oregon
    Vehicle:
    2023 Prius
    Model:
    XLE AWD-e
    How are you connecting? BT? Aux? USB?

    Typically the whine comes from interference with EMF bleeding into a wired audio cable. When we used to run high end stereos we would go as far to run power down one side of a car and the RCA's down the other side to keep them apart as long as possible.

    Non shielded cables do it as well as poor grounds in aftermarket decks. In other vehicles the whine pitch changes with engine speed (alternator) but that's a non-issue in a Prii so it would be constant.

    Some phones and plugs can have an em leak at the charging port that can interfere with an aux connection (wife's old Pilot I had an aftermarket power/aux setup that did that).
     
    #2 Dyjital, Apr 14, 2017
  3. xliderider

    xliderider Senior Member

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    Location:
    Honolulu, HI
    Vehicle:
    2011 Prius
    Model:
    Three
    If you have a USB port, put your music on a USB stick. We have a JBL audio with navigation in our 2011 with no problem.
     
    #3 xliderider, Apr 14, 2017
  4. Dyjital

    Dyjital Member

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    Vehicle:
    2023 Prius
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    XLE AWD-e
    Downside is some people such as myself run Apple Music, iPhones and our iTunes libraries from our phones. A USB stick won't play protected .AAC files, they also don't stream Pandora. The headunits are only so advanced when compared to the current generation of iPhone or Android phone.

    :)
     
    #4 Dyjital, Apr 14, 2017
  5. Christian Wattengård

    Christian Wattengård New Member

    Joined:
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    Location:
    Trondheim
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    Excel
    It's only BT. I don't have USB and that's not the point anyway. It supports streaming over BT so that should work "Use option X instead" is not a valid solution. I haven't carried individual files since many years ago. Spotify and podcasts FTW.

    And it's not any kind of whine, it's like I'm playing the music on a DJ-turntable and fiddling with the pitch-shift at the same time. Very annoying and very obvious on the kind of music I like to listen to in the car (synthy EDM).
     
    #5 Christian Wattengård, Apr 14, 2017
  6. mgb4tim

    mgb4tim Noob

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2009
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    Location:
    Pittsburgh, PA
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    III
    I get the same thing, occasionally, with my 2010 via Bluetooth. I use an LG G4 with a microSD card to play my music files. When I used LG's player it did it really often. When I use Google Play Music, it's much less frequent.
     
    #6 mgb4tim, Apr 14, 2017
    AzusaPrius likes this.
  7. Dyjital

    Dyjital Member

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    Location:
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    Vehicle:
    2023 Prius
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    XLE AWD-e
    Good choice in music..
    I was having an issue with BT and distortion until I setup the device to normalize audio (on iPhone: Settings -> Music -> Sound Check (on)). When a track would increase in volume over the tracks normalized audio. --- if that makes sense???

    Have you tried that? What it's appearing to be is a mismatch between device output and processing on the HU's end.

    It's a start..
     
    #7 Dyjital, Apr 14, 2017
  8. wpointw

    wpointw New Member

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    Jul 27, 2020
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    Location:
    Quebec, Canada
    Vehicle:
    2020 Prius Prime
    Model:
    Technology
    Oh no! Bad news because it does exactly the same thing on my brand new Prius Prime 2020 with my iPhone 8, using Apple Music. Congratulations for describing the problem, which is very hard to explain, but I am so disappointed to see there are no solutions here...
     
    #8 wpointw, Jul 27, 2020
  9. AzusaPrius

    AzusaPrius Senior Member

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    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
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    IV
    Dont turn the volume all the way up on your phone, maybe half way that should help. Use only the volume on the head unit and adjust the volume on the phone to remove the noise.
     
    #9 AzusaPrius, Jul 28, 2020
    Montgomery likes this.
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