I have a 2016 IS200t with the standard stereo system. When I have the radio on the sound is fine and the level I have the volume on is normal - 35-40. When I’m connected via Bluetooth and playing via Spotify on my iPhone, the sound is not nearly as good as the hd radio or even normal radio and I have to have the volume up to 50+ at times. I have compared the sound playing same song on on hd radio vs Bluetooth and there is a significant difference. I’ve also tested the sound via inserting a CD and the CD sound quality is just as lacking as Bluetooth. Does anyone have similar issues?

Thanks

 

The volume difference is pretty easy to explain. Your phone has its own volume setting, which you would have to increase in order to match the relative volume of the car's radio.

Can you tell us what sound options you have enabled? i.e., what's the EQ look like? Do you have the simulated surround sound on?

 

emptysky - I can see how Bluetooth quality would be inferior but I am surprised the sound is poor with a CD. Now I am sure you have already checked this but if my memory is correct, you need to set the sound for each of the music option you have. For example, the music settings you have if you set it while listening to XM/Sirius will not be ported over if you listen to a USB device etc...So check the sound setting for your CD setting to make sure its been adjusted to your liking. It might just be set to the factory setting which is quite neutral for bass and treble

My 2 cents

 

Your phone volume setting need to be high. 100% if you want to match the radio volume setting. Also, the there are individual equalisers depending on your source. Radio has its own, BT its own and so on.

 

My iphone volume is turned up 100%, the equalizer settings on spotify is on bass boost. I will look again at the stereo sound settings, I've tried changing those around in the past w/ no difference.

 

From your OP, are you saying that the sound is low when you have Bluetooth playing through your speakers in the car or is the quality muddied/distorted? As others mentioned, you first need to make sure the sound EQ for all different types of media are set to your liking since each stores its own configuration.

By default if you didn't mess with the sound settings before, the equalizers would be set at the middle across the board so make sure they're set right. Perhaps you disconnected the battery and those stored settings were lost, but never reset? Also, try turning off bass boost for Spotify to see if that makes a difference - maybe the artificial enhancer via phone over Bluetooth is giving you a lower volume/distortion as it's coming through your car speakers.

 

Make sure your settings in spotify are set to download songs at the highest quality. Modern Bluetooth technology is far superior to HD radio.

 

Also check and make sure you have Normalize Volume disabled in your Spotify settings.

 

due to 2 reasons:
1) audio over bluetooth (vs over aux / iphone wire), the quality will always be lower. I am not sure exactly what the reason for that is but maybe it's data speed transfer is faster over a cable? but that's how it's always been, if you look air apple air pods vs their counterpart, same thing, air pods are quieter than the wired headphones

2) spotify's music quality tends to not be the best. if you import a song directly to itunes library and play it directly off the music player, the quality (loudness & bass) will be a lot louder than spotify. if you want to listen to better quality music, download the song (try to find 320 kbps), drag it to itunes, and then listen to it like that (which is a huge nuisance in today's day and age)

gl