Bovee Tune2air WMA1000 - Wireless Bluetooth Music Interface Adapter for Car Audio Integration

Short summary:- Solid product.- Audio quality is good (technical details below)- Steering wheel controls and iDrive display behave the same as if the phone were connected directly to the car's Y-cable- Does not interfere with bluetooth for phone calls and address bookThis review is divided into two parts.1) Describe my experience using the device2) Technical info about audio qualityThis review describes my personal experience in a BMW with the CIC version of iDrive after daily use over one month. The WMA1000 is connected to the BMW-supplied Y-cable under the center armrest. It syncs with an iPhone 5 running iOS 7 in an '09 3-series with iDrive. CIC is defined here:[...]The WMA1000 works flawlessly. Steering wheel buttons and iDrive display behave as if an iPhone were plugged directly into the car's Y-cable. Pressing the car's volume button (on/off for audio) causes the WMA1000 to play/pause audio from the iPhone. You can select music through the iDrive menus, or you can select music (or podcasts, pandora, etc.) on the iPhone's touch screen with the same behavior and restrictions as if you did that while the iPhone were directly connected to the Y-cable. The WMA1000 draws power from the USB cable. Bluetooth syncs shortly after powering on iDrive. The unit "turns off" when the car cuts power to the USB connector.With iOS 7, iTunes radio stations I've already created show up in the "playlists" category in the iDrive menu. First real playlists, then radio stations, then genius playlists. Each subgroup is alphanumerically sorted within the subgroup. This makes it easy to bounce between radio stations from steering wheel buttons. The "next" button skips to the next song within the current iTunes radio station.When using the podcast app the name of the current podcast and % progress shows up on the iDrive screen. But I don't see a way to navigate to a different podcast. And when the current podcast ends the iDrive screen does not update for the new one until you reconnect bluetooth. I assume this is a limitation of iOS 7 and would happen if I physically connected the iPhone to the Y-cable, but I have not conducted that experiment.While the iPhone is connected to the WMA1000 for A2DP audio, the separate bluetooth connection for phone and address book continues to work as it did before. The two bluetooth links do not interfere with each other's functionality.In newer BMW cars, with built-in A2DP bluetooth audio, you can toggle between different iPhones for A2DP audio from the iDrive menus. I have not tried to switch phones on the WMA1000. IIRC, the included instructions said something about disconnecting bluetooth from the 1st phone before connecting from the 2nd phone. I just hand my phone to the passengers in my car and don't bother switching the bluetooth link to a different phone. The phone's battery drains quickly while listening to iTunes radio over bluetooth. Except for short trips you will want to plug in your phone for power. That can be accomplished by obtaining a USB-car power adapter for use in any of the car's power ports. FYI, for an E9x you can acquire and install the European part that exposes two power ports under the rear seat AC controls, and there are DIY instructions on the E9x forums.Now for some technical details.This information comes from a friend who did a test and sent an inquiry to the manufacturer. He explained that the A2DP spec defines mandatory support for SBC, which is of lesser quality than AAC/MP3 at the same bit rate. He said he looked at the data sheet for the chip used by ViseeO inside the WMA1000 and he thinks the chip supports both SBC and AAC. The iPhone supports A2DP codecs for both. Sending music in AAC format would consume less power on the phone, while transcoding to SBC consumes power and is a bit lossy.He wrote: "Heard back from the manufacturer: They support SBC only, not AAC. That supports the logs from the iPhone showing SBC with bit pool 53 (the highest for 44.1KHz as I recall). It would've been nice if they supported AAC, but regardless I'm still very pleased."He said that he did a web search about available products and was unable to find one that was known to support AAC. He has a less expensive competing product that compressed audio too much (bit pool 41) and he was annoyed by the compression. Looking for a better solution, the WMA1000 looked the most promising and that's why he bought this one. He expressed opinion that the chip inside is perhaps the current best-of-breed for an A2DP bridge. Based on his info I bought one too. We are both satisfied with the WMA1000.Supporting data:Nov 18 19:12:02 apollo mediaserverd[46] <Notice>: <LEAudio> BTAudioXpcConnection.cpp[133]: HandleAudioDevicePublishMsg(): <dictionary: 0x145f16f0> { count = 2, contents ="kBTAudioMsgArgs" => <dictionary: 0x145ddee0> { count = 2, contents ="kBTAudioMsgArgDeviceType" => : 1952539500"kBTAudioMsgArgDeviceProperties" => <dictionary: 0x145db770> { count = 10, contents ="kBTAudioMsgPropertyFrameCount" => : 7"kBTAudioMsgPropertyCategory" => : 1"kBTAudioMsgPropertyCodec" => : 0"kBTAudioMsgPropertyLatency" => : 81269"kBTAudioMsgPropertyName" => <string: 0x145a4810> { length = 8, contents = "Tune2Air" }"kBTAudioMsgPropertyBitpool" => : 53"kBTAudioMsgPropertyDeviceUID" => <snip>"kBTAudioMsgPropertyFrameLen" => : 118"kBTAudioMsgPropertyRtpInterval" => : 20317"kBTAudioMsgPropertyVolumeIsAbsolute" => : false}}"kBTAudioMsgId" => : 2

Perhaps the easiest, cheapest, and most practical mod I will do!! Works great in my 2010 GT-R Premium (US Spec). I love every aspect of this car, however, with the advanced technology incorporated in this car's design, I couldn't believe it had Bluetooth functionality for phone use, but not Bluetooth streaming audio, but a 30-pin Ipod cable running to the auxiliary port behind the OE audio setup. Initially it didn't bother me, as I didn't buy this car for it's luxuries, but of course, after running through CD's, radio broadcasts becoming too repetitive, not being a fan of Apple products for my entertainment purposes, and the urge to listen to Spotify while "cruising", I decided to do some research for solutions to stream Bluetooth audio to my factory setup.I came across a thread on the GTRLife forums that had the perfect solution. The WMA1000 Bluetooth adapter that would allow me to connect my Samsung Note 5 via Bluetooth to this device, which connected to my Ipod cable, thus allowing me to use the OEM "aux" source on my car, and as an added bonus, retain steering wheel audio control and display song information on my OEM audio screen. The only issue mentioned is that sometimes the device wouldn't power up or would take an excessively long time to turn on. For reasons unknown, this problem was eliminated by adding a CableJive dockXtender Premium (2-foot), sold by Amazon as well for $25 at this time. This cable is placed between the Ipod connector from my car and the Bluetooth adapter.I saw many had success and decided it was worth a try, which worked almost flawlessly. At this point, everything works as stated, however, when streaming Spotify, the song title does not show up on my display. I have not tried any other music applications to see if this changes. This extremely minor flaw does not matter to me, if I really want to know the name of the song I can just pick my phone up and look, I will likely never use that display as I have other performance parameters I keep visible on my display, therefore 5 stars!If anyone is interested, at the bottom of this review is the web address to the thread I read to find this information and the cable I purchased. Scared to use this link, just search "GT-R DIY Streaming Bluetooth Audio" you should come across it, or search the cable name. Although this refers to the CBA (2009-2011) Nissan GT-R's, perhaps this may help anyone else having similar issues. Overall, easy (2-step) install, just plug in appropriately and connect from Bluetooth device's settings menu, quick setup, works great, and the sound quality is great![...] CableJive dockXtenderPremium Dock Extender Cable for iPhone, iPod, iPad (2 foot black); Hold Your Phone in Your Hand While you Charge and Play Music. Compatible with all 30-Pin Audio Docks, Speaker Docks, Docking Stations, including Bose SoundDock, Logitech, iHome, JBL, Phillips, Sony and Others Bovee ViseeO WMA1000 Wireless Bluetooth Music Interface Adaptor for in car iPod Integration