Listening to Audible Audio in Car

[rachelmanija]

Technical help please! I can't find anything that addresses this specific problem.

I want to listen to Audible audiobooks in my car. When I use a usb cable to plug my phone into the car and then hit "aux" on the car audio system, the car panel says "unsupported" and the audiobook plays from my phone, not through the car audio system.

Is there any way to fix this?

ETA: I got it! I needed a different cable.

Comments

[affreca]

(I listen to audible in rental cars). Do you have to use the usb cable or can you switch to either an aux cable (the type with headphone plugs on both side though not all cars have that type of input) or bluetooth?

[rachelmanija]

Hmm... I'm not sure. I'll look into that.

[karanguni]

Is it a USB at the car's end and a lightning/USB on your phone's? Can anything other than audible play?

[alchemise]

Can your car read from usb sticks?

Also, some usb cables only transmit power, not data. I had to go through a bunch before I found one that would allow my phone to talk to my car.

[cgbookcat1]

I use an Aux cable, and it works well.

[jesuswasbatman]

Is the AUX cable analogue rather than digital?

[carbonel]

If your car has a USB port, does it also have Bluetooth? And does your phone? I assume there's a reason you haven't gone that route.

I have a related but not identical frustration because I have tried (and failed) many ways to get my iPod (the old kind) to play through my new car's sound system. I've bought two different (inexpensive, at least) devices to try to make it work, to no avail. (I can point you in their direction if you think they'd help you.)

I was able to use the iPod as a drive rather than a device via the USB port, but it would glitch every few minutes and lose its place, which made it infeasible. Apparently this is a known issue with the Honda Fit. I never thought I'd miss my the tape player from my old car that much (used it as an adapter).

I ended up giving up (at least for now) on the iPod, and am playing audiobooks via VLC from my iPhone. It's not satisfactory, but it works. (Note that the sound quality is fine. It's the fact that I can't use my iPod that's unsatisfactory.)

[darchildre]

Possibly a dumb question/solution, but sometimes when I plug my phone into other devices, I have to choose in the settings what the other device has access to while plugged in. (For instance: whether it's just charging, or can access files on my phone.) Does your phone give you any kind of choices when plugged in for what you'd like it to do?

[davidgillon]

Have a look at the docs for your phone (google them if you don't have a copy) and see if it needs to be in a specific mode to talk to other stuff. My current (ageing) Samsung is like that - which is still better than the prior Samsung that also needed you to run an app on the target device.