Audio/navigation Shortcomings

[Rabbers]

Strangely but altogether pleasingly, certain irritating problems I have had with the Navigation and ML

Audio system in my 300h appear to have resolved themselves automatically in the course of two months of ownership without my having had to take the car in to the dealer (though it must be said

that several telephone conversations with the latter have left me unenlightened as to what Lexus is doing to resolve other not dissimilar "teething problems" reported by customers). Technical illiteracy prevents me from offering any comprehensible explanation, so I must limit myself to a simple description of the symptoms in question and their apparent self-healing. If it sounds as though I believe the system to be inhabited by some kind of ghostly electronic doctor, so be it.

1. While the Browse button on the audio screen used to take at least a minute to light up upon

connection of a 16GB pen drive and substantially longer in the case of a 32GB one, the time the

system now takes to read the contents before enabling selection from lists duplicated from the

drives in perfect alphabetical order has become at least halved and may still be improving.

2. While the system has always immediately read and enabled selection from the contents of my

iPod Classic (which occupy 115GB of a maximum 160GB), it would often - maybe one time out of

every five uses - suddenly stop playing and present a blank screen. This issue could not be resolved by merely re-setting and re-connecting the blocked iPod via its 30-pin cable, which a passenger could easily do, but necessitated stopping and re-starting the car in order for the connection to function again. The problem, touch wood, has not occurred for some weeks and therefore appears to have resolved itself.

3. Exactly the same glitch used to occur, though less frequently, when music from my Iphone 4s

was playing via Bluetooth, and this also appears to have resolved itself. On the other hand, the

Bluetooth connection still occasionally fails in normal Telephone mode for no apparent reason.

The Vocal Commands system for Navigation (whose basic functions work very well) can be either

irritating or, depending on your point of view, a rich source of entertainment. Considering that I was

getting no more than a 50% successful recognition rate for even the simplest commands, I was fast developing a complex about what the system appeared to consider slovenly articulation on my part.

I therefore thought I would switch the system to English from Italian, Italy being where I live and

the only country in which I have so far driven the car. Regrettably, the improvement, if any, was

marginal (thus contradicting the widespread view that slurred phonemes matter less in English

than in most Latin languages). So, after trying to bark out a few commands having experimentally switched to German, admittedly for my own amusement and not unexpectedly with little success, I

then decided to try a combination of English for the Vocal Commands and Italian for Navigation. To

my surprise, the familiar Italian voice that guided me for the turns and distances etc., was replaced,

when it came to naming the streets, by an English one that pronounced the names so badly as to

make them largely unintelligible (thus defeating the whole purpose of vocal guidance). To get the

street-names back to comprehensible Italian, I therefore had no alternative but to revert to the

original Italian for both Commands and Navigation, thus ending up precisely where I had started

(but hopefully with my blood pressure back to normal now that I was linguistically at peace again).

When using vocal commands I now lay bets with myself as to whether the system is going to

co-operate. And, sad to say, the odds remain against it. As regards commands for Audio or Phone

Calls, perseverance has so far yielded no victories, but I am resolved to try again at some future

time perhaps after first gargling or sucking a boiled sweet.

[Roger Bill]

Hi Renato, Very interesting & nicely written report, many thanks.

This is just a guess because I don't even have an IS300h yet. Maybe the Gracenote software needs time to build a catalogue of album artwork, track titles, artist information, etc when a memory stick containing new music is first inserted in the car. Then, when the catalogue has been compiled and saved either to the memory stick or to internal storage in the car, you could expect the memory stick and it's contents would be recognised much quicker. Maybe if someone knows the actual details they could either correct me or chip in with more detail.

Re the Bluetooth phone issue; could it be an apple Iphone problem? For example, see: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3440168?start=90&tstart=0

[Rabbers]

Roger Bill-Thank you very much for your illuminating suggestion that the gradual build-up of a Gracenote database could be the

cause of the slow but steady improvement in the responsiveness of the audio system. I am sure you are right. I will add the

incidental observation that, when the system has the choice of of using either one's own data for album cover art or that supplied

by Gracenote, it will invariably prefer the latter. In its chapter on iPod connectivity, the owner's manual in fact points out that

artwork provided by Gracenote "may differ from the actual one" (I am translating from the Italian here), which I take to mean that

covers often change when albums are re-issued etc., and that Gracework probably has the latest in its database (which, in theory

but apparently not in practice, should be the same as in iTunes, apple being one of Gracenote's best customers). I intend to

turn off the Gracenote function and then see what practical difference this makes since I deem all the data I originally imported

into my Iphone, iPod and memory sticks, mainly from CDs themselves imported into iTunes, to be both orderly and comprehensive.

The consensus emerging from the apple Support forum (thanks for providing the link) to the effect that the Iphone 4s' Bluetooth

connection is "rubbish" (to quote one of the contributing nerds) left me somewhat perplexed. This is not because it is upsetting

to hear negative opinions being voiced about what (in the words of another of the contributors) is "otherwise a nice piece of kit",

but because somebody somewhere within the Lexus customer-service organization with specialized knowledge of the company's

audio systems must be aware of possible connectivity issues affecting given products or brands. And while it would certainly be

impolitic and perhaps counter-productive for them to actively recommend against use of an apple product, they could, through

their dealers, usefully mention product-specific bad connectivity as a possible explanation for reported problems rather than

leaving customers (and no doubt many dealers) in the dark or hoping for future software "fixes" that may well never come.

[Roger Bill]

Hi Renato, Glad you found the links useful. Here's another which might be of interest: http://www.lexus.com/MobileLink/

It's a listing of Lexus USA tests on various phones. Back in 2009 when I bought my IS250 I think I found a similar list on either the Lexus UK or European web site so it might be worth searching those sites especially now the Lexus software in the USA and Europe has diverged quite a lot. Happy hunting!