Product Reviews

Streaming Bluetooth Music with Factory iPod Cable for Audis

ViseeO Tune2Air Streaming Bluetooth Music Player

Once I upgraded from my iPhone 4S to the 5S, I was no longer able to use my factory iPod cable to play music from my phone, since Apple introduced the Lightning connector that isn’t compatible with the old 30 pin connector that the older iPhones and iPods used. I tried buying an adapter, but none of them worked – so for a while, I went without streaming music such as Pandora in my car, but I could only handle so much pop radio before I caved and looked for alternatives…and along comes the $80 ViseeO Tune2Air Bluetooth Adapter, which works perfectly with the OEM iPod cable. You can pick it up on Amazon with free shipping:

The beauty of this product is its simplicity – simply plug it in to the iPod cable and connect to it once, then every time you get in your car it connects automatically. To play music from your iPhone, just fire up your favorite music app such as Pandora, Slacker, Spotify or just the Apple Music/MP3s you have saved to your phone itself – and switch your RNS-E to the CD setting and it plays. This should be compatible with any Audi radio that has the factory 30-pin iPod cable such as the Symphony II and other B6/B7 era head units.

ViseeO Tune2Air Streaming Bluetooth Music Player

You can then store the cable with the Tune2Air in your glovebox out of the way, so anyone in your car would simply think that the car supported streaming music wirelessly as an OEM feature. There is plenty of signal for the music when the unit is in the glovebox, so all of the wiring stays hidden.

The only downside is that the music is a little quiet, so you need to turn up the volume on either your phone or the RNS-E headunit,  or both. Simple fix. You can control the music via your phone or the radio interface,  so it is still compatible with your steering wheel controls and easy to use – it does not display the song information on the headunit (just track 1, track 2, etc.) but that’s no big deal, IMO…you can still change the tracks, control volume, and do all of the important features.

For $80, I’d highly recommend this product – it sure beats listening to the radio…be sure to pick up a car charger if you don’t have one already, as streaming music does drain your phone batteries.

Nick Roshon

Nick has been an Audi owner and fanatic for the last 10 years, and started Nick's Car Blog in 2009 to share DIYs and pictures of his A4. Currently he drives a 2012 Audi TT-RS, and has previously owned a B7 S4, B7 A4, and an 82 Audi Coupe (GT) LeMons race car. In his day job, Nick is a digital marketer and lives in San Diego, CA, USA.

46 Comments

  1. Hi Nick, just wondering what kind of iPod cable you have? May I have a link where I can buy one?

  2. Oh, thx, but is it for mmi? I mean I don’t understand how to connect this to the rnse head unit tho?

  3. Hi Nick, what function does your iPod run through on the RNS-E? I have the same car with a CD changer and assume that the iPod would now deactivate that system.

  4. Hey Nick. First post, love the site. Big thanks as this info has been a huge help!

    I also have a 2006 S4, with OEM BT for phone, and CD changer in the glove box. No ipod connection to my knowledge tho. Is your CD changer in the glovebox or trunk? Where does your ipod cable lead to?

    Thanks!

  5. Both my CD changer and iPod cable are in my glovebox. The iPod cable leads to the back of the RNS-E head unit, which you can’t see unless you pull it out. Sounds like you don’t have the factory iPod connector, but you can retrofit one if you’d like – there might be other options that are better in your case though…

  6. Gotcha. Your ipod cable is an oem one correct? I’m wondering if all I need to do is pick-up the cable and plug into my of my rns-e? When you click on the cd button, do you have the option to select CD or mp3? Mine does, but I assumed the mp3 referred to the 2 SD card slots behind the screen…

  7. Yes, mine is OEM. You can just pickup a cable, they run a little over $100 IIRC. MP3 does refer to the SD card, the iPod will play over the “CD” channel.

  8. Awesome, I’ll try to track down that ipod cable for the back of the rns-e. Seems like that would be the cleanest install. Thanks!

  9. Oh I also forgot to ask if your setup retains both the cd changer and ipod functionality? Several I am seeing disable the glove box cd changer.

    Currently looking into if 8E0051444B would retain both.

  10. So I have a question. I tried a few cheaper 30 pin Bluetooth adapters and they don’t work at all, i’m just assuming the car doesn’t communicate with them. I have the Symphony II in a B7 just to clarify. So with the Tune2air I don’t have to do anything else other than plug it in, pair it with the phone, and it will work with the factory radio? Just figured I would ask before dropping the money on it only to end up returning it like the others.

  11. Hey Nick, I just want to say you’ve got a great blog, very informative. I’ve got a quick question. Do you know if this adapter is compatible with any Bluetooth device, or is it only compatible with Apple devices? My phone is a Samsung, and I’d love to be able to use this adapter.

    Thanks!

  12. It will work for any smartphone that has bluetooth – your Samsung (or any Android device really) should work great with this!

    Cheers,
    Nick

  13. Hi Nick, your Blog is fantastic brother. I have already used a couple of your how-to’s to customize my car. Quick question. Does the oem Bluetooth telephone functionality still work with this unit? I’ve never tried pairing my phone to more than one Bluetooth device at a time. Thank you in advance for your help.

  14. Yes, it still works – that is the exact same setup I have, OEM bluetooth for phone calls and this for music. Once in a blue moon they’ll get confused/crossed up but it’s very rare, this setup works really well IMO. Thanks for the kind words!

  15. Hi Nick, one more quick question. I saw in your photo that you have an iPhone 5S and so I was hoping you could tell me if your ViseeO Tune2Air Bluetooth Adapter works with iOS 8.4? I read a few reviews on Amazon of people complaining that their adapter stopped working after they upgraded their operating system on their phones, but others say it is working with their iPhone 6… If you haven’t updated, can you tell me what version of iOS you are on? Thanks again!

  16. I just wanted to update the comments list in regards to compatibility with iOS 8.4. I recently upgraded my iPhone 5S from iOS 8.1.2 (held out until all vital chia apps were compatible with 8.4) and the Tune2air unit continued to work flawlessly.

    I tested the unit against my iPad 4 running iOS 8.4 first to ensure that my iPhone would continue to stream music on the Tune2air device before installing the update. Let’s hope it keeps working on iOS 9 set to come out this fall…

  17. I wouldn’t think the OS should have much to do with it, Bluetooth is more of a hardware thing from my understanding, but good news either way. I haven’t had any issues upgrading OSs on my iPhone 5S or 6 in regards to syncing with the Tune2Air…

  18. Thanks Nick. I’m still a bit confused bc I’m reading that with this part #, you will loose use of the CD player in the glove box. Yet your setup has retained both. What am I missing here?

  19. I’m confused myself now. I know you can’t play both at the same time, as the iPod cable plays over the “CD” input. I thought my CD player still worked though. TBH I haven’t attempted to play a CD in ages though, so I should probably verify. Perhaps I’m mistaken that the CD player still works…

  20. This is great, i would rather stream a2dp and don’t care if the CD changer works but how come Amazon says I will loose both Cd changer and satellite radio? I actually do use my satellite radio and that would be a disappointment. Can you or anyone who has tried the 8E0051444B retrofit solution confirm if your satellite radio still works afterwards?
    http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Audi-Accessories-8E0051444B-Adapter/dp/B00A0J9ICW/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1443015968&sr=8-1&keywords=8E0051444B

  21. That’s strange, my car came with the factory iPod cable like what you linked to and both satellite and CD changer worked fine. I suppose you could always buy and return if it doesn’t work out?

  22. Actually I think your car came with an Audi Multimedia Interface (AMI) which is a rectangular plug in your glove box, so then there are a plethora of adapters to connect to various media devices such as the $20 iPod cable. The 8E0051444B unit does not add an AMI port, it just gives you an iPod plug. The dongle you have is rectangular to iPod and the dongle with the kit above is round to iPod leaving me to believe integration is completely different. Has anyone on Nick’s blog actually done a 8E0051444B install and confirm if and how it works? I wish I could just add an AMI port but nobody sells that.

  23. Nick.

    I know you addressed it in your writeup but just triple checking… When you you get in your car, and turn on the car, do you does the ViseeO Tune2air automatically turn on and connect to you phone or do you have to reach into the glovebox and turn it on.

    Just asking as i have a bluetooth dongle thing i use that seems to need to get resynced everytime i turn the car on/off.

    thanks!

  24. We have had a WMA 3000A for six months and very happy. All was good but don’t use that often.We have an iPhone 5S and 3 x iPhone 6 – all on ios 9.1 (family of 4 and kids spoilt!). Everything had worked, but now we can pair alright and the “blue” light flashes and goes solid after pairing, BUT the MMI (MMI 3G) sits there permanently on “loading”. Anybody got comments, we know the unit was working a few weeks ago, is it the IOS 9.1, OR are we unluckly and has the Viseeo WMA3000A gone faulty? Comments appreciated, thanks.

  25. I’m on the latest iOS 9.1 myself and not having any issues, so my hunch is maybe yours is faulty? Have you tried just disconnecting and reconnecting the Viseeo from the MMI and reconnecting it, and also telling the iPhone to forget the device then re-enter it? It might just need a hard reset…

  26. Thanks Nick; I think I have it figured out. Went through all the debug you suggested and used my 30 Pin MMI to lightning cable (got same result so it was never the Viseeo – its just that the Viseeo was our permanent music link!). I also used a USB MMI cable and other sources to test Audi input.

    In the end it looks to us like Apple have changed how they hand-shake the Music Library. Two of the phones had either no music or just the U2 Apple Album, Songs of Innocense (not off line), as the kids always use there music apps only rather than the Music Library. It seems that unless there is at least as single song in the Music Library to handshake with the Audi MMI System (we have tested and shown this), the interface is stuck on “loading”, so the music apps the kids use never get a chance to start to play their content. Apologies for the long answer, and thanks for the steer.

  27. Viseeo Tune2Air worked great till I updated to iOS 9.1 – now the songs show on my car screen and time changes as if the song is playing, but there is no sound. Same result when iPhone 4s w iOS 9.1 is plugged in. iPhone 6 used w Tune2Air.
    Will plug in iPad or older phone w different OS to test it tomorrow.
    (I briefly had sound after attempting to reset the MMI, unsuccessfully. )

  28. Hi Ron,
    Check out the comment above yours and see if that works. The commenter found that adding a few MP3s saved to the phone itself (rather than only streaming audio like Pandora) fixed the issue.

    It seems that unless there is at least as single song in the Music Library to handshake with the Audi MMI System (we have tested and shown this), the interface is stuck on “loading”, so the music apps the kids use never get a chance to start to play their content. Apologies for the long answer, and thanks for the steer.

  29. Awesome write up man, just got this all hooked up works great it would be nice to see song info on rns but its fine, easiest bluetooth hook up Ive ever done !

  30. Can someone confirm that this specifically works with the oem ipod on a b7 w/ symphony head unit? I’m staring at a cheaper one I got off amazon that doesn’t work.

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