PCM Radio - Last source when restarting the car works except... (Apple Music question)

arijaycomet

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Scenario #1 - The Good
Listening to certain sources (streaming radio using the little “tower/globe” icon, or SAT radio SirusXM) works fine. After I exit the car and then come back in, the same source/station I was listening to resumes perfect. YAY!

Scenario #2 - The Bad
However — this is not the case if the prior media source was Apple Music. Instead it defaults to some other source as noted above in scenario 1. It never goes back / resumes to Apple Music

Observation - The Ugly
When the car starts up, it seems to take a bit before you can even select Apple as a source. While this doesn’t seem to impede the other streaming sources, which seem to load up quickly — the handshake for Apple takes a bit, the icon doesn’t appear for a minute — and as such, the source never reverts back correct.

Have others who perhaps use Apple Music experienced the same issue? Have you found a way to fix this?

PS: Another good/bad I have is this : once the Apple Music icon comes back and I choose it, it resumes the last playlist. Except it always starts back at the beginning of said playlist. Which is equally as annoying as the source not resuming. But less of an issue, I suppose. Grrr....
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Doc B

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Scenario #1 - The Good
Listening to certain sources (streaming radio using the little “tower/globe” icon, or SAT radio SirusXM) works fine. After I exit the car and then come back in, the same source/station I was listening to resumes perfect. YAY!

Scenario #2 - The Bad
However — this is not the case if the prior media source was Apple Music. Instead it defaults to some other source as noted above in scenario 1. It never goes back / resumes to Apple Music

Observation - The Ugly
When the car starts up, it seems to take a bit before you can even select Apple as a source. While this doesn’t seem to impede the other streaming sources, which seem to load up quickly — the handshake for Apple takes a bit, the icon doesn’t appear for a minute — and as such, the source never reverts back correct.

Have others who perhaps use Apple Music experienced the same issue? Have you found a way to fix this?

PS: Another good/bad I have is this : once the Apple Music icon comes back and I choose it, it resumes the last playlist. Except it always starts back at the beginning of said playlist. Which is equally as annoying as the source not resuming. But less of an issue, I suppose. Grrr....
Exactly the same problems here with Apple Music. There is something very weird going to with the Apple Music handshake (or maybe elbow bump).

Another thing you’ll probably find is that if you start the car in an area with less than ideal cell coverage, such as an underground garage, Apple Music (obviously) will not work - however, when you leave the garage into an area with good cellular coverage, often Apple Music will not wake-up even though all the other cellular services, such as internet radio, do. Sometimes Apple Music will wake-up randomly later on, but I’ve had hour and a half long journeys where Apple Music does not wake-up at all. Only solution in that case is to reboot the PCM in an area of good cellular coverage.
 
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arijaycomet

arijaycomet

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That happened to me once @Doc B ... just the other day where Apple Music never worked. Icon was grey and wouldn’t load. So yes thanks for sharing a parallel experience. Guess some future software updates might fix some of this but I won’t hold my breathe.
 

ron_b

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Now someone in who speaks German can reach out to the 3rd party to ask ;)


Apple Music Integration im Porsche Taycan
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Yeah this is one of my bugbears (along with the WIFI thread) of the functionality of PCM... I kind of prefer the integrated Apple Music to CarPlay. I was always a fan of CarPlay (wired in the past) but in Taycan the feel of (and look) of CarPlay somehow doesn’t fit the car.

I do have the same experience as what is posted. I start underground so the Apple Music icon takes a while to work as a possible source or on some days does not even exist and show up as an option. I do automatically connect to wireless CarPlay with my phone so I was wondering if maybe this “disturbs“ Apple Music working. However it probably is as stated by @Doc B a problem with the handshake.

Oddly this only happens in the morning. When I leave the office parking garage (also underground) it will continue playing the song I was last on (guess enough of the song is still downloaded in some kind of cache.) Due to COVID I don’t spend a full day in the office so the car spends 12+ hours in the home underground garage and 6+ hours in the office underground garage.

Guess no solution at this time.....
 


Smithy37

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What is frustrating me is if I’m listening to the cars radio (FM/DAB/Satellite) when I get back in the car the radio resumes and it will automatically start loading wireless carplay & once initiated it then turns the cars radio off as carplay becomes the default audio source. Sometimes this takes a few minutes so it can be quite annoying.

I also had Apple Music installed on my phone so every time wireless carplay initiated that would bring a random track from Apple Music on to the screen but not play it (usually one of my physically purchased iTunes track rather than a random Apple Music playlist). So regardless of whatever source of music you may have been enjoying on your phone Apple Music would always elbow it’s way back to the front.
Is this a PCM issue or the way carplay is coded, I don’t know. Fortunately I am a Spotify man and was only using Apple Music through its introductory trial period, so I removed it from my phone and now the last source played on my phone is always cued up.

Another frustration, the steering volume wheel. Enjoying carplay and want to pause a track you are listening too, then press the thumb wheel. It pauses. Great. Want to resume then forget about pressing the thumb wheel again, it won’t unpause your track. You must press the button on the PCM. I am currently experimenting with this and can only guarantee this behaviour is found in the myTuner radio app. I’m not sure about Spotify or Tidal. I need to mess around more.
Another thing that did frustrate is if you were to pause myTuner app then it disappeared from the CarPlay Dashboard media controls so that meant a few more button pushes to bring it back. However last night, after a recent app update, it stayed within the carplay media controls after I paused it. So does this mean it has been fixed? Here’s hoping.

Another equally worrying foible I’ve found is handling a call through carplay. I’ve only had one call in the car when using wireless carplay so far, so really need to experiment (and become more popular). The accept call worked on the steering wheel. However hanging up using the phone button on the wheel appeared not to. Need to play around with this more to understand fully it’s behaviour.

So to summarise, those that have wireless carplay or are about to get it and will use it as default, as I do, be prepared for a bumpy experience.
I’m not sure if this is carplay itself or the PCM or a combination of both. My 991.2 wired carplay never showed any of these rather annoying glitches though, although neither was it wireless.
I have my suspicions with whom’s feet this poor implementation lies at.
 
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arijaycomet

arijaycomet

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@Smithy37 thanks for the feedback. Just a few days ago I received a wireless CarPlay Adapter -- the one off Amazon everyone talks about here:
https://amzn.to/3skNVbf

But alas, my car is at the detail shop now for clear bra/PPF installation. I will not have it for a few days. Once I get it back, I hope to do more testing. In my experience, in cars with both wired and wireless Apple CarPlay, it should resume back to the same track without any issues. But I agree with your last statement -- the PCM/Porsche system is likely to blame there.

I'll let you guys know my findings. At this point the purpose of this thread was in hopes there was a fix so that I could just use the "native" PCM system. Whole point of having Apple Music baked right into PCM would be to use it. I'm a big Apple fan boy, so I am paying for their new "One" service (music, iCloud, fitness, etc). So for me there is no trial period-- I'll be able to use Music in PCM forever -- but, I wont bother if its shite! LOL
 

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Scenario #1 - The Good
Listening to certain sources (streaming radio using the little “tower/globe” icon, or SAT radio SirusXM) works fine. After I exit the car and then come back in, the same source/station I was listening to resumes perfect. YAY!

Scenario #2 - The Bad
However — this is not the case if the prior media source was Apple Music. Instead it defaults to some other source as noted above in scenario 1. It never goes back / resumes to Apple Music

Observation - The Ugly
When the car starts up, it seems to take a bit before you can even select Apple as a source. While this doesn’t seem to impede the other streaming sources, which seem to load up quickly — the handshake for Apple takes a bit, the icon doesn’t appear for a minute — and as such, the source never reverts back correct.

Have others who perhaps use Apple Music experienced the same issue? Have you found a way to fix this?

PS: Another good/bad I have is this : once the Apple Music icon comes back and I choose it, it resumes the last playlist. Except it always starts back at the beginning of said playlist. Which is equally as annoying as the source not resuming. But less of an issue, I suppose. Grrr....
@louv and I both documented a similar issue in another thread (you can search for it) where the PCM was timing out when trying to read all the files on a USB drive at start up. If you had more than about 3000 files, it would apparently time out (give up) and then revert to an unused station (freq) at the bottom of the FM band. IOW: Shut down while listening to something in your USB library - Start Up on an empty FM band.

However, I must say I haven't had this issue in a very long time and I have about 7000 files on my USB drive in the car. The PCM remembers what I was listening to (on my usb drive) and now picks up where it has left off. OTA updates aside, It appears that the PCM may have finally fully indexed all the files on my drive (by reading the metadata tag inside each and every file). The PCM also appears to have left a marker file at the root of the filesystem on the USB device (I can see it) which I expect it uses to determine if anything on the device has changed. Quite simply, if a time/date stamp on any file in the file system is newer than what is recorded by the "marker file", then the PCM will likely have to reindex everything. I'm guessing, I won't see that timeout problem until I update the contents of my USB drive and the PCM has to reindex everything once again. Quite honestly, I don't remember the size of the "marker file" so I don't have enough info to guess where the PCM is storing its "indexed" data (inside that file or by using non-volatile memory in the PCM itself).

Anyway...

TLDR: The PCM will give up and kick you out of your "last source" if it can't obtain data fast enough to provide a valid overview of the "contents" of that source.
 

Smithy37

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What is frustrating me is if I’m listening to the cars radio (FM/DAB/Satellite) when I get back in the car the radio resumes and it will automatically start loading wireless carplay & once initiated it then turns the cars radio off as carplay becomes the default audio source. Sometimes this takes a few minutes so it can be quite annoying.

I also had Apple Music installed on my phone so every time wireless carplay initiated that would bring a random track from Apple Music on to the screen but not play it (usually one of my physically purchased iTunes track rather than a random Apple Music playlist). So regardless of whatever source of music you may have been enjoying on your phone Apple Music would always elbow it’s way back to the front.
Is this a PCM issue or the way carplay is coded, I don’t know. Fortunately I am a Spotify man and was only using Apple Music through its introductory trial period, so I removed it from my phone and now the last source played on my phone is always cued up.

Another frustration, the steering volume wheel. Enjoying carplay and want to pause a track you are listening too, then press the thumb wheel. It pauses. Great. Want to resume then forget about pressing the thumb wheel again, it won’t unpause your track. You must press the button on the PCM. I am currently experimenting with this and can only guarantee this behaviour is found in the myTuner radio app. I’m not sure about Spotify or Tidal. I need to mess around more.
Another thing that did frustrate is if you were to pause myTuner app then it disappeared from the CarPlay Dashboard media controls so that meant a few more button pushes to bring it back. However last night, after a recent app update, it stayed within the carplay media controls after I paused it. So does this mean it has been fixed? Here’s hoping.

Another equally worrying foible I’ve found is handling a call through carplay. I’ve only had one call in the car when using wireless carplay so far, so really need to experiment (and become more popular). The accept call worked on the steering wheel. However hanging up using the phone button on the wheel appeared not to. Need to play around with this more to understand fully it’s behaviour.

So to summarise, those that have wireless carplay or are about to get it and will use it as default, as I do, be prepared for a bumpy experience.
I’m not sure if this is carplay itself or the PCM or a combination of both. My 991.2 wired carplay never showed any of these rather annoying glitches though, although neither was it wireless.
I have my suspicions with whom’s feet this poor implementation lies at.
Further to my earlier comments. I’ve had a lot more success with Spotify than MyTuner radio app.
It does pause & resume from the volume thumb wheel on the steering wheel & it will resume playing after a phone call. So the issues I seem to be experiencing are MyTuner related and not CarPlay. Happy to correct my initial findings.

I still need to experiment with the phone controls on the steering wheel whilst using CarPlay though. Jury is still out on that one.
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