Review of GROM BT3 bluetooth audio adaptor

[peter51]

Hi P38 owners,
For those who would like to retain the original head unit but were thinking of fitting a Bluetooth adaptor, I have the following to report.
I recently purchased the GROM BT3 bluetooth adaptor. It allows you to stream music from your phone/iPad through the Alpine head unit, retain steering wheel button functionality and answer phone calls by Bluetooth.
It works as advertised. However for audiophiles amongst you, the fidelity of any music streamed via Bluetooth is muddy and unengaging. They lows are clipped and there is no midrange or highs. I simple cannot listen to the music from it ? it sounds like music from a cassette player. I understood there would be some loss of quality via bluetooth transmission ? but for me it destroys the musical experience.
The cost is $229 for this unit. It does have a direct cable link at additional cost.
Hopefully this will help others.
Peter

[Keithy P38]

I wonder if the cable link would rectify the quality issue with the music?

Cheers
Keithy

[prelude]

Hi Peter,

thanks for the review!

Seeing as you have a 2000 P38 and the fact that you can use the BT3 module I take it you do not have the clarion headunit?

I have experience with the BT3 however, in a 1998 honda legend (or acura Rl3.5 as it is known in the US, not sure about australia?) What I have found is that there are digital bursts of audio when I operate my phone for example and that the microphone has insufficient audio levels, ie. people can hardly hear me and I need to shout loudly for them to understand what I am saying.

Other than that, it works as advertised and the cable connection works perfectly. I have yet to measure it using a white noise source and spectrum analyzer but I might get to that soon-ish. As far as blue tooth is concerned I agree that it does sound rather poor but not as bad as you describe (casette quality)

Since I have a clarion headunit which was modified by a previous owner I have the option of connection my phone directly through a 3.5mm jack. However the audio levels are far to high and the phone interference is picked up by the audio circuit. I tried an audio galvanic seperator but that did not work. It seems the interference is picked up by the wires extending from the radio.

To solve this issue I ordered a jabra streamer bluetooth interface and I can report that this has solved the issue, also, the audio response of this units is also fairly good.

[TheTree]

I found that it was the head unit itself (clarion) which seemed responsible for the poor sound. After replacing it with a chinese DVD player the sound was much improved but it may just have been my clarion unit which was on the way out.

Steve