Gary K
New Member
- Thread starter
- #1
Hi
I just got my 25 civic hatch sport hybrid with the 7" non-bose stereo. While some are not happy with the sound, I am struggling with a lot of functional issues. I just want to play local copies of my music collection, listen to the radio, etc.
I am posting my list to:
- see if anyone has solved the issues with the current stereo
- let others know the limitations, and my best solutions
- maybe (hah!) Honda listens and can do something about it with upgrades
Radio
1. RDS data is horrible. Small text and very few characters. On a few stations, I have seen the artist/song title, but its scrolled through (approx) 8 characters at a time in small text. It's a joke.
Playing music from USB flash drive
2. Meta data/tags on files are not used. There is no ability to (for example) select Artists and see a list of artists and click into it to see list of albums. Even with folders, you only get a flat list of folders with music files in them, but no hierarchy of folders. So even if I have folders like /Beatles/Revolver/<songs> and /Beatles/Rubber Soul/<songs> all the unit shows me is the folders [Revolver] and [Rubber Soul]. Depending on the other folders you have, the folders for a given artist will be scattered throughout the list, which is just in alphabetical order. No way to select the top /Beatles folder and see the sub folders to just get a list of Beatles albums.
This is 2024. I just want an interface that has existed on every mp3 player for the last 20 years.
Android Auto
3. The UI for all music players seems to be the standard AA UI. You can see a list of Artists or similar. But... there is no quick way to jump way down the list, such as a real scroll bar. You can press the A..Z button and find the letter of what you are looking for, but doing this while driving is difficult and thus dangerous. Also...
4. The selection wheel does not scroll through the list (of for example Artists). For some reason it skips tracks forward/backwards (why??). Also...
5. If you select an artist to see the albums from that artist, but then hit back button, you are put at the start of the artist list. Good luck if you start by scrolling all the way down to "Who" and hit "Wilco" by mistake. Hit back button and you see the start of the list, requiring you to scroll/search again. You are not returned to where you were ("W"s in my example)
General
6. no support for a usb hub. So even if the flash drive was usable, I'd have to swap it in and out for Phone/wireless AA/wired AA when needed. I tried the hidden menu USB Hub Mode setting, etc and can't get one to work. If I could fix the above, I would love to have a flash drive with all my music always there and usable. Then use AA when I need navigation or similar.
At this point, the best experience I found for playing music is using BT to my phone. I have VLC installed, and for some reason, it exposes its catalog/database via BT to the stereo. Nothing pretty, but I can select Artists, and then see a list of albums, etc. The only downsides to this are that a) i need my phone and BT on b) I have to be choosy what music to load, as storage on my phone is limited, while usb flash drives are cheap for huge capacity c) If I want AA navigation, I am back to the AA UI.
I'm considering an "AI box" like Magic Box, Elite Car Box, Carlinkit Tbox. I think I could load my music on that, load a quality music player on it which would solve a few of the above issues. And get wireless AA as a bonus.
Has anyone solved any of the above issues? Am I missing something? Any other solutions short of replacing the head unit? I find it hard to believe Honda ships this.
Thanks!
I just got my 25 civic hatch sport hybrid with the 7" non-bose stereo. While some are not happy with the sound, I am struggling with a lot of functional issues. I just want to play local copies of my music collection, listen to the radio, etc.
I am posting my list to:
- see if anyone has solved the issues with the current stereo
- let others know the limitations, and my best solutions
- maybe (hah!) Honda listens and can do something about it with upgrades
Radio
1. RDS data is horrible. Small text and very few characters. On a few stations, I have seen the artist/song title, but its scrolled through (approx) 8 characters at a time in small text. It's a joke.
Playing music from USB flash drive
2. Meta data/tags on files are not used. There is no ability to (for example) select Artists and see a list of artists and click into it to see list of albums. Even with folders, you only get a flat list of folders with music files in them, but no hierarchy of folders. So even if I have folders like /Beatles/Revolver/<songs> and /Beatles/Rubber Soul/<songs> all the unit shows me is the folders [Revolver] and [Rubber Soul]. Depending on the other folders you have, the folders for a given artist will be scattered throughout the list, which is just in alphabetical order. No way to select the top /Beatles folder and see the sub folders to just get a list of Beatles albums.
This is 2024. I just want an interface that has existed on every mp3 player for the last 20 years.
Android Auto
3. The UI for all music players seems to be the standard AA UI. You can see a list of Artists or similar. But... there is no quick way to jump way down the list, such as a real scroll bar. You can press the A..Z button and find the letter of what you are looking for, but doing this while driving is difficult and thus dangerous. Also...
4. The selection wheel does not scroll through the list (of for example Artists). For some reason it skips tracks forward/backwards (why??). Also...
5. If you select an artist to see the albums from that artist, but then hit back button, you are put at the start of the artist list. Good luck if you start by scrolling all the way down to "Who" and hit "Wilco" by mistake. Hit back button and you see the start of the list, requiring you to scroll/search again. You are not returned to where you were ("W"s in my example)
General
6. no support for a usb hub. So even if the flash drive was usable, I'd have to swap it in and out for Phone/wireless AA/wired AA when needed. I tried the hidden menu USB Hub Mode setting, etc and can't get one to work. If I could fix the above, I would love to have a flash drive with all my music always there and usable. Then use AA when I need navigation or similar.
At this point, the best experience I found for playing music is using BT to my phone. I have VLC installed, and for some reason, it exposes its catalog/database via BT to the stereo. Nothing pretty, but I can select Artists, and then see a list of albums, etc. The only downsides to this are that a) i need my phone and BT on b) I have to be choosy what music to load, as storage on my phone is limited, while usb flash drives are cheap for huge capacity c) If I want AA navigation, I am back to the AA UI.
I'm considering an "AI box" like Magic Box, Elite Car Box, Carlinkit Tbox. I think I could load my music on that, load a quality music player on it which would solve a few of the above issues. And get wireless AA as a bonus.
Has anyone solved any of the above issues? Am I missing something? Any other solutions short of replacing the head unit? I find it hard to believe Honda ships this.
Thanks!
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