Hi All,

I bought a new 07 AO 3LT Z51 MN6 with Nav about two weeks ago. I just got past break-in, so this last weekend I changed the oil and added a shift-skip module. Time to test out the capabilities of the car So far, the only aggravating thing about the car is the NAV/audio system. I'm not talking about Bose audio quality, believe it or not.

I sent the following message to http://www.bowlinggreenassemblyplant.com. If I hear anything back, I'll let you know. Let me know what you think, or if you think I'm being too nit-picky. This is my semi-DD, so music will matter more to me than the weekend warriors with the car.

I bought a new 07 3LT Corvette with NAV on 4-20-08. So far, the car has met or exceeded almost all of my expectations, except for one so far.

The navigation/audio system has several bugs that should not be in a 3rd model year system. It appears they are still there in the 08 model, so these issues still are a 4th model year system. I am a software engineer and think most of the bugs could be fixed relatively easily by Denso. I don't want to think I hate the car because of these issues, because that just isn't true. This is a great car. However, when I think of my vette, I think of a great car with a poor audio/NAV system.
1. Not a bug per se, but a $1750 NAV system really should have text-to-speech. My friend has an 05 (last gen) Tahoe, and it has text-to-speech. If text-to-speech is added to the version 5.0 DVD, I bet GM could sell a lot of $200 DVD upgrades to the NAV. This should be relatively easily added as it is obvious Denso has the capability to add text-to-speech to other models.
2. Sometimes when playing an MP3 CD, a Nav instruction is stated, then the system stops playing the song afterwords. There is no MP3 audio playing, and I have to manually start the track over. This seems to occur about 5% of the time. It is repeatable enough that Denso should be able to fix this (maybe pause the MP3 before stating the instruction, then un-pausing the MP3 afterwards).
3. On certain MP3 tracks, the system cuts them short (sometimes by 30 seconds or more), then goes to the next track. I suspect it has to do with VBR MP3 files, but I am not certain. No other MP3 audio player I own acts the same way with these files, whether it is a car MP3 cd player, a computer or portable MP3 player.
4. When playing MP3 files on the NAV system, the tracks are titled "Folder 7 Track 1". I would title them by their IDv1 tag so we can see the song title or artist. I am sure this is a very easy fix for Denso.
5. The MP3 player has issues with long directory names or file names, while no other MP3 player I have has the same issue. It seems to skip over MP3 with long file names. I understand the manual says 32 characters max, but why is this limitation there? I can burn MP3 CDs to only have 8.3 file names and directories, so I can get around this limitation, but it is indicative of a system that is not quite completed.

I hope I don't come across upset with my car, because I'm not. I think every one of these suggestions can be easily fixed by Denso without too much re-designing, and would provide a better audio/NAV experience for all Corvette owners.

 

Welcome to the forum. It would seem that the majority of your issues come from the mp3 playback capabilities of the current navigation head unit. There is no doubt that the implementation of the of the mp3 playback on the head unit could use some work. It is very finicky. It is important to note however that the nav radio is severely limited by the Gen II communications bus that is currently in use on the Corvette. The C6 Corvette software and systems are much older than the model year of the car would indicate. The nav unit is not a "gen 3 model" as you indicated. It actually remains unchanged from the 2004 production start of the C6 (2005) Corvette.

I need some clarification on your note about "text to speech". I don't know what you mean. Are you referring to text to speech in the traditional sense where the radio would interpret the text on the screen and read it back to you as audio or are you requesting that the nav unit respond to spoken commands? If the latter, the nav unit does have the ability to respond to spoken commands.

 

Hi talon90,

Thanks for your reply. I understand the system hardware is from 2004 for the 2005 model year. None of the issues I mention are hardware limitations. They are software design issues that could have been ironed out by the 2008 model year, the 4th year of the same hardware. This is what I mean. Note that MP3 playback was added partway through the 2005 model year via software update. It wasn't there for the initial C6's, so Denso certainly have the capability to upgrade the SW.

Text-to-speech is the ability to say the name of streets. For example, "Turn right in one-half-of a mile" would be replaced with "Turn right in one-half of a mile onto Main Street". Almost all GPS's have this now, even $130 portable units. This makes it so you don't have to look at the screen (or HUD) to use the navigation directions. To me, there is no excuse except complacency that this hasn't been added yet. The 2005 Tahoe has it in their factory nav. The 2005 Tahoe can't have newer or more advanced hardware than the C6 Nav system, and I am sure both the C6 Nav and Tahoe Nav are designed by Denso.

We are in a digital world and the MP3 capability should be as good as a
$60 Sony aftermarket unit, or a $10 cheapo no-name MP3 player. As a software engineer, the MP3 implementation seems very half-baked.

This is my one complaint with the car so far but I use MP3 enough where it seems unnecessarily limited and eminently fixable. So many things on this car are so well designed that this seems more obvious than it would be on a car with tons of flaws.

 

I guess I am the only one who has an issue with the MP3 capabilities of a $1750 nav system.....

 

You certainly are not. I found this out after I posted last week with issues I had after buying an 08... turned out to be several threads and many people not loving the current mp3/nav system.

 

hey hokieZ, you are not the only one with issues on the nav/mp3 system. thanks again for helping me to learn to burn mp3's using nero. i will be watching to see your reply from bg on this. previous systems would play data discs from compressed files just fine. you could put 32 cd's on one mp3. beats me why they would change it. worked just fine. i have a 2005 vert, but the nav/radio system locked up at times and was replaced with the 2008 version. that's when i found the problem. thanks, for the info. i have helped others in my club with the same problem. dealers don't have a clue either. cranky

 

Tons of people hate the MP3 playback bugs, myself included. I probably listen to 2 hours of mp3s a day in the car, and havent ever tried the radio/Xm and rarely listen to regular audio cds, so I hit the bugs quite often.

Not only that, but just about every single MP3 I listen to is between 1 and 3 hours long, so the early cutoff bug can be a real pain! Sometimes a 2 hour track will stop after 15 minutes...that's frustrating. I'm not actually sure that i've heard the end of any of my mp3s actually.

But, what can I do? I've figured I probably just have to rip the system out and put in an aftermarket system (with bluetooth...another rant I figured i'd see in your post, but didnt) and be done with it.

 

Bluetooth is a hardware issue and couldn't easily be added to existing systems, so I didn't mention it. I think it should have bluetooth too, but I understand it wasn't so common when the C6 came out, so be it. All the things I mentioned can be modified with software only using the existing hardware.

(If they give me the source code and development tools, I could iron a couple of these out myself)

 

Hi All - I've got a 2005 C6 with Nav and the same MP3 problem in that it does not display the ID3 tag info for each track. It just displays file names. On one hand, it is encouraging to see other Corvette owners with the same problem but on the other hand, it is discouraging because there doesn't seem to be a fix imminent. Does anyone know if a fix is coming? Also, I thought that maybe this MP3 problem of not displaying the ID tag info may have been due to the software that I had been using (Easy Media Creator and sometmes MAGIX). Does the MP3 burning software make any difference? Will the Nav system display the ID tag info properly if I use different MP3 burning software (like Nero or something)?? Thanks.

 

I agree with you about the mp3 playback. Compared to nearly everything else available today it is a joke. Not only does it require esoteric file name structures it is also slow to change tracks.

I'm also a software developer and I agree that these things could probably be fixed easily if they are not hardware limited, e.g. if the chipset they are using to read data off of cd's can't handle the longer file names no amount of software fixes will help.

 

Hi All - In my previous posting from a few days ago, I mentioned that my 2005 C6 Nav system, when playing MP3 discs, would not display the ID3 tag info of each track. It would just show the file name of each track. Since then, I burned another MP3 disc using different software, Easy Media Creator 10. I made a short, 2 folder "test" MP3 disc with about 23 tracks in each folder. This time, the Nav system displayed the ID3 tags of all 46 tracks perfectly! Now, I'm planning to burn some larger MP3 discs. But I should add that, in my prievious posting, when I said that I used Easy Media Creator, I actually used Easy CD Creator (made by the same company, Roxio, I think). Maybe the software used to burn the MP3 discs does make a difference. I really don't know. Also, I did not run into any of the "cutting off the track" or "truncating" problems, or the stopping and pausing or anything else mentioned by other posters. The Nav system played each track fine. B U T, there was one bug with the whole affair: I selected the random mode for playback. The Nav system did play each track randomly, but only in one folder at a time. It did not randomly play from Folder 1, track X to Folder 2, track Y. It played only one folder at time. Which I find somewhat annoying because I would like to hear all the tracks randomly, which is exactly what my inexpensive (less than $100) credit card sized MP3 player from Best Buy does. If the Best Buy cheapie can do it, the C6 Nav ought to be able to it. But overall, I am really not complaining. I'm really happy that I can see the ID3 tag info now, and as far as the random playing issue that I described goes, I think that if I burn the next MP3 disc with only folder (with all of the tracks that are on the disc), it might circumvent the random playing issue. So far, so good.

 

That's why I'm just going to avoid all these stupid issues from now on, and get an aftermarket system.

I am sick of waiting for GM's "solution" (aka VAPORWARE) and it will probably be full of glitches anyways.

 

I don't really have an issue with the nav not reading the street names to me, but I agree that the mp3 capability is very flakey.

When I got mine home I popped in one of my tried and true CDs full of mp3s that I've used in my truck for years (and on various computers) and it wouldn't even access the disk (yes, it's CD-R). Tried several tried and true mp3 disks, and some sort of worked (skipped songs, etc), others wouldn't even read.

So I agree on you mp3 assessment.

Now, to get started with my iPod integration.

 

The PAL unit for the IPOD works very well. Since I went to that I havent listened to an MP3 disc even once!

 

Hey Bad Kitty -

Thanks for the info on the IPOD PAL unit. But would please clarify .... what is the IPOD PAL unit, and how does one hook it up?? Thanks!

 

PAL (Personally anticpated lastyear) ...

straight from Chevroletyoudown...

Mr. Snow,

Thank you for inquiring about the Personal Audio Link (PAL) iPod interface for your Corvette. We regret to inform you that the release of our Corvette PAL has been delayed due to unforeseen circumstances. Unfortunately, a revised target date is not available at this time.

We have released the PAL for Chevy HHR & Cobalt, Pontiac G5 & Solstice and Saturn SKY (all one part number); however, this is not a "one size fits all" product, and this part will not work in a Corvette. GM has three distinct serial data communication protocols and multiple radio options, and the PAL must be developed, tested and validated for each combination in order to achieve the highly integrated product our customers demand (hardly a "hokey aftermarket connection").

Although we are unable to provide specific timing for this or any other future PAL vehicle application, I can assure you that our engineers are diligently working to release it for the Corvette just as soon as they possibly can.

All Chevy dealers will be notified when the Corvette PAL is ready for sale.

Attached are 2 documents containing information about the Personal Audio Link that we provide to our GM dealers. You might find these helpful in assessing your options. Keep in mind that the Corvette product is not completely developed or validated yet, so some of the specifics may be slightly different from what you see here.



Your continued patience is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
JOYCE HENK | GM ACCESSORIES MARKETING

 

LOL... Does this remind anyone else of the end of the first Indiana Jones movie?

Intelligence: "I assure you Dr. Brody, Dr. Jones. We have top men working on it right now."
Indy: "Who?"
Intelligence: "Top... Men..."

 

Bad Kitty could you let us know what the GM part number is on the PAL (Personal Audio Link) that you are referencing that works well? Do you have it working in a Corvette, or is it in another vehicle? The letter from GM posted after your feedback that PAL works in you rvehicle identifies a unit that works in vehicles that have 11 bit GMLAN communication buses. The C6 Corvette was designed using the Class 2 databus and would not work with the unit that the GM letter is referencing is available today. I feel pretty misled by the Corvette sales brochure for the vehicle which indicated that PAL would be available. With GM indicating no revised target date being available and the C6 Corvette being one of very few vehicles made by GM still using Class 2, I would not hold my breath for it being available soon or at all.

 

What were in the two documents that will allow us to assess our options?

 

I find it really strange that the nav/cd system on my 2004 CTS worked nearly flawlessly for the 3 years I had it. The nav system was one of the slickest ones I've seen. The bose system was "passable". Why can't GM take a hint from one of their own divisions?? Time for GM to step up to the plate and make some fixes.....maybe even talk to Cadillac?