I long ago gave up on using the in-car bluetooth setup on my 2013 RX350 for phone calls, due to repeatedly hearing from the 'other party' that I sounded terrible (tried different phones, no change). I'm actually using the original wired headphones that came with the phone to make calls, and it works great .. but I'd like to revisit the bluetooth solution.

Looking at the roof-mounted microphone assembly (in the dome light/sunroof control cluster), it occurred to me, could I remove the microphone from that location and somehow (with lots of experimentation, etc) reposition it to be closer to my mouth. Step 1 would be to find the mic - presumably surface mounted on a circuit board - and then either remove it and attach to a piece of wire, or, just wire in a new mic. Has anyone messed with the microphone on this car?

I know it would look silly with a dangling mic, but I would first do a proof-of-concept then figure a way to make it look good IF it works better.

 

I've done that with my older 2004 RX350 where I passed the wiring of a mic to the dome light and it worked just great. I see no harm of trying.
You'll first have to remove the light plastic covers then check for screws to drop the dome light assembly and find your way from there.
But I'm wondering if you have already exhausted all other means of checking the reason behind the problem?

 

Good idea.
Just wanted to chime in and say my 2010 RX and Iphone 8 works flawless on bluetooth.
May try a newer phone?

 

 

Thanks for the encouragement! First, what kind of 'mic' did you use? not knowing anything about the specs of the current mic, it's not clear what one would replace it with. Do you recall what you used, and how you chose it? Was it easy to wire the new mic to the assembly? Did you just remove the current mic and solder a few wires to the same terminals?

I was thinking of picking up a replacement dome-light assembly on ebay and using that to play with, in case I do harm.

As for exhausing all other means ... I'm an engineer with a fair understanding of audio 'basic principles'. The physics of picking up a voice while concurrently eliminating all background noise is very difficult. It's generally achieved by having at least 2 mics, and then eliminating (filtering out) any sound that is common to both, and focusing on (filtering in) any sound that is received by only 1 of the mics. This works on the principle that 'near' sound will hit the two mics differently while 'far' sound will arrive at both mics simultaneously. The further the mic is from the voice, the harder this is to achieve - basic physics. I've probably purchased or tried at least 15-20 bluetooth 'over the ear' solutions over the years, and not one has given decent results and I put it down mainly to the problem of mic distance from mouth. I would also point out - so many people say their bluetooth is 'great' but they are really referring to the results they hear while in the car - NOT what the remote person experiences. You need a trusted, unbiased person at the other end to give you critical feedback in order to really determine if it's any good or not. When someone tells me it sounds 'ok', I then switch over to the wired mic, and they all say ... 'much better'. It's not a wired vs bluetooth issue, but rather, a microphone placement issue.

As an aside, I see lots of 2013 dome light assemblies advertised that include 3 homelink buttons. My dome light assembly has no homelink buttons; they are located on the rearview mirror. So I guess there were different configurations for 2013?

I'm sure 'additional' bluetooth sources would make things worse, potentially but no, I only have the phone and I am 99% alone in the car.

I'd LOVE to know how to get to the quality settings menu. From what I'm reading, you need to access the un-published 'maintenance' or 'secret' menu. For our RX350, is it 'press/hold menu, flip light switch on/off 4-5 times? I'll try that today.

 

 

Do you know what changes they made? Do they have access to more than the 'hidden service menu' I've seen referenced here (which seems to allow you to adjust the mic volume)? You may have a very competent local dealership - lucky you - but I've had less than stellar interactions with my various local dealerships when it comes to tech issues. Also, you can't really say whether a change is a success or not unless you drive for a while, and have a few conversations. Being out of warranty, I'm not sure my local guys will want to spend the time that I think may be involved. So trying a few things myself is quite appealing! I'm happy to try the menus first.

 

My situation was a bit different. My CD changer broke down and I replaced the whole CD/Radio/Casette with a generic system but fits perfectly. The newer mic came with the double DIN unit and the bluetooth pairing was directly communicated with the new CD/Radio. Thank God, the display for the entertainment system is different than the GPS/AC display in that generation.
So what I was trying to encourage you to do is to take the dome light assembly out to reach for the mic and check it out.

Just wait till you you make sure if your mic is planted/soldered to the dome light circuit board or coming from the dash infotainment system.. Even if it's soldered up there, I would get a new mic and solder it on the passenger side if there's space. I remember that some people were saying that the mic could move a little so all what it needs is re-positioning.

Mine is also attached to the rearview mirror.

I'm also interested to learn about the procedure for how to adjust the bluetooth connection and volume adjustment.

And for how to check the voice clarity over bluetooth, when I installed the system on my 2004, I spoke to my friend across the house to make sure that we can communicate without distortion. Then he sat in my Lexi and swapped positions. Sound was crystal clear.

Keep us posted please. Take pics ...
Thanks,
h

 

Service Menu ... On my 2013 RX350 Nav model, I did the following:
1) Turn off car. With foot OFF the brake, Press the power button to get into accessory mode (this is so you don't have the engine running while doing this).
2) Press/hold the 'menu' button on the center-console interface
3) Flip the light switch between on and auto 3 or 4 times - until you see the menu appear on the screen.
4) let go of 'Menu'.

The first menu you see, I forget what the choices are but I think there were three, and from that menu I chose something like 'Function Menu'


The two relevant choices seem to be Mic&Voice Recognition and HF Voice Quality Stetting.
The Mic&Voice Recognition looks like this:


The first line is a bit like a 'VU meter' - it reflects the strength of your voice when being recorded. The second line lets you do a test recording, and then play it back - So you press the red 'Rec' button, talk, and then 'stop'. Note - it only records a few seconds so no real need to press stop - you'll typically run out of time. Press 'Play' to hear what you just recorded.

You can use this screen to listen to how well your voice is recorded with your head at various positions, at various levels of your own voice, etc. Note for me, the volume meter hardly reflected a 'blip' with all my talking.

The HF Voice Quality Setting menu looks like this:



It's not clear to me what 'Receive' and 'Send' mean exactly in this context; I tried adjusting both and couldn't hear a discernible difference between them - I need to spend more time playing around with this. I assumed 'Receive' was going to be 'microphone', but that may be a simplistic guess; what is 'send' ...? Also, interestingly, you can only go 'up 1' on the receive (from 0 to +1) but you can go way down to maybe -4. 'Send' has a different range. I made various changes and went to the other screen to 'test', but didn't notice any difference. For the 'Voice Quality Type', I didn't want to mess too much with that - but basically, you use the numeric keypad on the screen to enter numbers and the numbers show in the Type window. My guess is, perhaps, a 'tone' setting? Bass/Treble type setting perhaps? I didn't risk pressing "INIT". 'Phone' is grayed out; maybe if my phone was paired at the time, it would have shown? I'll try again tomorrow with the phone paired.

ALSO - I was able to determine that only the 'left' 'sound vent' on the roof console seems to have an active mic behind it - I made several test recordings while rubbing each vent and only the left one resulted in obvious 'blips' on the level meter.


Anyone else have any insight into these settings?

 

I appreciate the detailed post and the pics.
Yes, only one mic towards the driver's position (depending on the country.) This is what I meant in my post by "I would get a new mic and solder it on the passenger side if there's space." so please try to add a new mic without removing the old one.

Once I'm back home, I can go through the menu that you went through and report back if there's anything different. In the mean time, please pair your phone and try again to check if the greyed-out button becomes active. This will help you perform a record/play simple test.

Please keep us posted.
Cheers

 

Did some more testing today, and made more observations.

1) I was able to get into the same menu while sitting at a traffic light with engine running, and do test recordings while driving ... so you don't HAVE to be stationary or have the engine off.
2) My settings are limited to +1 on the 'receive' and +2 on the 'send' settings. I can go larger on the negative side (-5 perhaps).
3) I was able to set 'voice quality' to 'some' numbers but not others. Or more to the point, I could enter any numbers, and press 'set', and exit the screen, but only certain numbers were actually saved. So to test, I would enter a number, press 'set', exit and re-enter the menu to see if it was 'accepted' or not. I could enter 10, 20, but not 15 or 25, or 80. I could enter 300 but not 30, and I could enter 1000, 2000, 3000 ... so as of now, I have no idea what the rationale behind these numbers is.
4) I tried setting both 'send' and 'receive' to a range of values (+1, -4, etc) and also set the voice quality to a range of numbers, and really, I could NOT tell anything different!
5) even with phone paired, the 'phone' button was not available ... but really, for my tests, I'm more interested in the basics anyway.

Will play more later ...

 

Yet more testing / observations ...
1) with my phone fully paired, the setting screen now has the 'Phone' button active, not grayed out.
2) Clicking on it, the screen changes to the following:

Note the 'device name' now shows Samsung ... . And the button at the bottom, which did say 'phone', now says 'DCM'. Clicking on that button location essentially toggles between two devices - DCM and my phone. Both show identical info. So this time, I changed the 'Send' and 'Receive' values for the 'phone' device. But test recordings on the other screen still did not indicated any meaningful difference.

So I'm at a loss to understand the purpose of these screens.

 

hi did u ever fight anything out with these settings