We do need to hear from our customers who have the BTA, as I posted earlier. Thus far we only have 6 reports of echo or low voice pickup, and we have a boatload of BTA units out, and plenty of other customers with no problem. So we are anxious to hear from you if you have the echo. Thanks.

 

Look at it another way. only 2 have said its good. 6 have taken the time to report the issue. so it doesnt matter how many you have sold - its a 3-1 ratio.

you can take the argument that you would not report if you didnt have problems - but I think this forum is better than that. If it works - it works. but the stats still say that 3-1 issues versus it being good.

need fixing eric ?. and your our contact to dension.

make sense ?

 

Ray, I did not post that to 'claim' there were just a few bad ones in the bunch. Geez, the engineers have been on this for nearly four weeks, and remember, WE are not the engineering guys, we're just trying to gather as much data as we can to HELP them! There are no reports of echo or low voice pickup in Europe yet and none outside the US. In fact, we've even gone so far as to contact someone we know at Bose, who knows the Porsche audio system, as we are digging in deep ourselves and have some thoughts on what might be going on.

We have at least 60 customers using BTA that are quite happy and not experiencing a problem. They don't all live here online, but they do reply to us when we request it via email. This also includes a good number of Porsche dealers who have had successful installs with no complaints.

My post was just to encourage more of those out there who ARE on here to email me the details.

Stats are actually quite good, but that is meaningless. If we don't have at least 99% satisfaction, stats are useless. We're doing everything WE can at this point. Just have to have some patience.

I know some of this may get lost in the translation, but hopefully you understand we're doing all we can on this, and Dension is well aware of the problems, and we know they are working towards a solution.

Thanks.

 

I am chilled :-). Okay - understood. Thanks for your persistence on this though - all the same.

btw. dension did get back to me on the support case I logged. They claim:

1. the echo and mike pickup - obviously aware of the problem (they also seemed to elude to the fact that there is quite a large amount of problems here) and are actively addressing it - they feel that a firmware upgrade will fix it and to "stay tuned".
2. +select not sticking and reverting back to +page. apparently by design. They claim I am in +select mode - which explains why my right **** is working.
3. page size too small. they are going to send a config file to increase this for me. I have 1000's of songs on my ipod and its laborious to keep going through a page size of 20. do you have access to config files ?. what can be changed eric ?. mike pickup ?
4. having to hit ff/telephone button. instead of the select **** when selecting contact indexes. They admit it a big complaint from people. Not sure if they are going to correct this UI issue though.

 

We've made a lot of noise, so yes, they 'see' it a a big problem, but we're a very large distributor, so we put our foot down and demanded they get this fixed, as we buy a lot of inventory. But thus far, only a few reports, and only in the US, from what we know as of today. We do have the config files, but they were not recommended for this issue or the one you mention. We'll see if we can test them for that application and if they work, we'll turn them loose as well. We also mentioned the ff/phone button and asked them to reconfig the menus. We hope this might come in the next firmware revision.

 

If one alters the mike - can you send me one ?. see what happens... assuming I can undo it of course. I'll try anything for now.

also - if you have the page size increase one - send me that too. :-).

one other thing you may want to mention (if not already) is the signal meter on the pcm.. not working with the iphone. either of my iphones on both my cars.

 

I unfortunately can't test this as I ended up returning mine because of the echo and poor pickup.

I hope this gets resolved as the system could be very good.

Can Dension implement noise cancellation? I ended up buying a Jawbone 2 Bluetooth headset (yuck, a headset....I know ) which used noise cancellation and people on the other end report that it does a very good job of removing engine/road noise during calls.

 

We've had a number of conversations with Dension Engineering about the two issues, and we've requested a revision on the mic (hardware) and on the firmware for several reasons that we alone discovered in some reverse engineering.

Sometimes, the sound coming from the speakers is too much, and we believe it is overpowering the mic. We also know we can cancel out one channel, and try to bring the phone call in on only one channel, to help resolve this.

We also found that if we cut off Audio Pilot, and Surround, on the Bose-equipped cars, we saw reduced or eliminated problems. But this was only on 3 Porsches so far. On some customer cars, it did not make a difference.

We've asked for some additional mic options, and we believe that will resolve at least 50% of the problem. We've also suggested to Dension several things to revise in the firmware to get us there, and we're hoping that will resolve the balance, giving us a perfect answer when done.

We have actually taken apart several BTA units to tweak some things, and that's what we are doing on our end, as the Euro folks do their own testing/re-engineering/etc.

More to come. Thanks Jeff.

 

Update 8/1/08:

We have just received a beta version of firmware update that may resolve these issues and will be testing it in several vehicles over the next few days. I'll let everyone here (and who emailed me) know as soon as we know if this does the trick.

Thanks.

 

Hi,
I've got a 2005 Cayenne with Bose hi-fi and PCM navigation and I installed the Gateway 500 with BTA 1500. I use a Blackberry 8310 via the Bluetooth. All works quite well except for 3 things:

1. Poor mic picup. Callers on the other end of the line complain that they can barely hear me.

2. When I turn up the volume higher so they can hear me better they get a terrible echo of their own voice when they speak.

3. We cant seem to find any button in the car to answer the phone when it rings. The display next to the speedometer shows "answer" or "reject" but we can find any button to press to answer. We have tried all the obvious ones. We end up having to find the phone from a jacket pocket or my wifes handbag etc to answer the call.

I've tried Dension but after several emails we still cant resolve it. I've been monitoring your threads here and was hoping you might have something. The Beta version sounds promising. Any luck?

 

vm10, assuming we sold it to you, email me your full name so I can reply back, and create a ticket directly with engineering.

New mic is in development and should be to us next week, and we've replaced a few already with a new mic that worked fine. We have some volume tweaks too.

Just send email to eric@bumperplugs.com with the above info, and let me get to work on it for you.

Thanks.

 

skyytek/Eric,

Could you give an update to this thread? Was every problem resolved with the Dension please? In particular the echo and poor mic pickup problems? TIA

 

oops. sorry - yes. All was fixed by eric. My mike pickup is perfect now. But remember - the problem seemed to be on an isolated number of units - in my case it was the mike on both my cars. Echo is not there anymore either - that was related to the mike too.

The other stuff I listed is/are still issue(s) - but a minor ones. I have got used to it now.

 

Any pointers for future users please?

1. For 997, best position for the mic is in the steering column, like the stock mic?

2. Other side hears your voice well? My friend has a Tooki and voice doesn't come out very well; perfect when the car is stopped, but the moment car starts moving, it's difficult to understand his speech.

3. As far as Ipod use, some minor functional inconveniences, but overall works well?

4. Any other advice for future users as far as installation, function, etc.?

Thanks in advance.

 

for 997 the best position is near the dome light, or behind he steering column or next to the A frame near the drivers side near the visor. all positions work equally well for me (coz I tried them all). Obviously the nearer you are to the mike the better - so A frame is probably the best choice.

they can hear me and I can hear them. No echo. crystal clear. But like I stated I had hassle with mine until we swapped out the mikes in both cars and both now work perfectly. Its as good as my bmw and that is a very good bluetooth.

I dont like the nav. for ipod on both tooki, dension and the rest of them. If you have a large song selection its a bit painful. But mainly I use play lists which makes it a lot less painful. Sound quality is amazing though.

I had porsche do my very first install and they messed it up a bit (albeit the guy admitted he didnt do much of these). I know someone who knows fiber optic stuff inside out at best buy and had them do it. worked perfectly first time on both cars. So I think it depends on the installer. The main problem with porsche is that they are not very good at tidying all the wires up etc and even left my head unit a bit loose. I wouldnt recommend doing it yourself unless you have a bit of time on your hands and know what your doing. One thing I would like to point out is that if you dont have a cd player you have to do something in the programming of the head unit to make it think you have a cd - I had porsche do that on one of my cars.