Yes and ‘no’. (me!/“I do”)
In truth I do not use Apple Music (hate it with a passion, but that is to do with the software/the interface and the ethics, and nothing to do with the catalogue, which is fine)
But, on topic, I
have installed Apple Music on the M11+
In fact I did so again this morning….
With a tonne of issues.
Fun stuff like ‘authorisation’.
Magically this time around it seems like I can download ALL tracks to the M11+, and due to a flashing hiccup, having the entire internal storage (after OS) available for ‘scratchspace’ and a little configuration, it isn’t SOOOO bad.
Definitely sucks power like it wants to hibernate for a millenia, and the data throughput is insane.. with added bonuses like my nice little ‘offline’ music player wanting to update everything etc.
But this time around it might actually be able to play a few tracks without ‘gaps’ (I turn OFF crossfade), and without stutters AND without skipping tracks on the playlist cause it decides it cannot move enough data ‘home’ to confirm that track ‘three’ of an album is
just as much apart of my monthly subscription as track ‘two’ and ‘four’. (not my previous experience or expereince ANYTIME I am stuck in ‘streaming mode only’)
Anyhow downtalking atrocious third party music apps aside;
I COULD NOT GET MUSIC OUTPUT when moving rooms/rigs… (akin to ‘going to the car’)
There was no method to the madness.
I rebooted the M11+ (twice!), I restarted the outboard DAC, I tried various playback modes and settings…
Something that WAS working fine, just magically went dead.
In this mornings’ instance, the solution was to rotate between SPDIF output/LO/PO on the 3.5mm jack.
Doing so, when in the appropriate mode and using the appropriate software, seemed to kick things to working again.
But
(and this is a BIG butt)
In the time of ‘toying’ with this device to get Apple Music outputting sound
again (a long process involving food and toilet breaks) there was a lot of hiccups that showed that we had left familiar territory and probably outside of bounds of aspects that testing teams may have picked up on. (with FiiO; Apple
LOVE when their products don’t work ‘well’ under a competitors ecosystem).
I noticed several times in ‘Pure’ Music mode, that I was ‘on the android desktop‘ (a feature of ‘regular’ android mode), and I was even getting prompts to update the FiiO music app to version 3.10 (nothing normal to me when using <Pure Mode>). I was switching between apps (yes in ‘Pure’ Mode), between Apple Music and ‘HF Player’, and definitely there is a few things that Apple Music does to the hardware in terms of ‘hardwiring’ its’ device ownership that screws with things in ‘unexpected ways’.
Whether this takes a little jiggle to get things to settle or whether this is an ongoing battle (knowing Apple ‘since Jobs’, likely the latter..)
I honestly cannot see any reason to persevere with such atrocious software (back end AND front end[bad]=“why bother”), but for me it came good with the SPDIF toggle being switched on/off/on…
Now this may only be relevant assuming you are outputting Digital, and in my case I went the COAX pathway…
I doubt your car is using this method, although this is hard to say, as Apple has used a range of connectors and ‘methods’ to output music, and lets face it, this isn’t THEIR hardware, so probably no effort on THEIR part to play nice/‘make it work’ (the attitude being ‘you will buy another Apple product if it doesn’t’)..
It is fair to say that My M11+ straight from box had an 8.5(/10) for hardware reliability and ‘being able to access the features I bought’
After a few updates over a half year, I’d say FiiO have raised the bar on their hardware functioning; I’d presently rate 9.25(/10) for the included FiiO Music App and the hardware ‘doing what it should do’.
This isn’t hard to get a ten. (for using hardware that we pay for- I EXPECT IT in fact!)
The Fiio is presently docked a few ‘points’ due to a few functions being pointless for me (that I bought it for, that don’t really work, and MAY get fixed via software).
In fairness, the more a device can do, the harder it is to make it do all those tasks ‘well’.
I bought this ’swiss army knife’ to do a lot of things. 3/5 of those things didn’t work (at all) upon purchase.
Now, assuming the M11+ doesn’t hit all of its ‘full stride’ in its’ present “out of box” state, its BEST usage scenario isn’t
perfect.
So what happens when I start playing with ‘other‘ apps on it?
HF Player: nothing insidious; player still works- I can output converted DSD via SPDIF (AND USB), so I gain features.. (reason I continue to use said software).
-worst that comes out of going to Play store and downloading an app?
Android can now be ‘Googled’. Google are a business and run to turn a profit; retiring outdated version of Operating Systems is important to these vendors- they like statistics that show adoption rate to ‘new Operating Systems’, so their motivation, to get the rest of the sheep to do the same, is to convince everyone that they are being left behind/‘they NEED’ the new OS.
Each time I have allowed the M11+ to go online via the Android store I have regretted it. I‘ve been in the IT scene for enough decades and ‘hung out with enough high level security experts’ to know that once Android handshakes with Google with my user ID in place……..
Anyhow, lets pretend that Android doesn’t ‘back end’ update simply when connecting to the Play Store (like I can confirm has happened and has made me reflash the M11+ back to ‘out of box state’ (and then LEFT IT OFFLINE!!)).
So the necessary evil of ‘going online’ with the M11+ is many and varied….
Installing Apple Music?
Can use the APK from the ‘FiiO store’ (and doesn’t require updating software to continue to use)-PERFECT!!
It still likely bastardises our Android version, and given Android 10 being TWO operating systems behind the present Android build, is likely no worse than what Google themselves are doing…
We likely lose battery life (but gain security we ‘don’t need’), we likely get a few millisecond delays on screens updating and ‘small stuff’ (none of this is worth sweating/‘worrying about’).
Now- regarding the OP (
@padawan25), I still haven’t caught ‘HOW’ you connect to the car?
I know this seems straightworward to you, but we all have different ways to do this; for example I use an older cassette tape interface to allow an ‘AUX IN’ to the Car Stereo.
Most stereo will have a 3.5mm input for analogue feed into their preamps’.
The typical setup would then be:
Put the FiiO M11+ into ‘LO’ mode (‘line-out’) for the 3.5mm jack, and use a male 3.5mm jack cable to 3.5mm jack and simply feed that way.
Due to a few previous Apple docking methods using various forms of ‘digital output’ and many cars having specific inputs aka ‘special’ jacks, I have been in cars with Apple connections (not third party).
I can only assume you are using the 3.5mm output, which is the same as feeding audio to headphones, so the question really becomes ‘at which point does it STOP working’.
This is straightforward- play apple music (output via 3.5mm) into earbuds; does this work? (yes? goto step two)
without altering ANYTHING, simply remove the earbuds, and plug in the cars’ 3.5mm jack into the M11+ headphone connector (the one we just took the ‘buds’ from). You may have to press ‘Play‘ again as the music likely stopped when we removed the ‘test buds’.
Assuming the cable is connected to the cars ‘aux in’ (using the aforementioned 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable), the headdeck is set to ‘aux’ and the volume on the FiiO is up (ideally set to ‘Full Volume output’, but later we will simply use ‘Line Out mode’ to do this for us
properly), turning up the car head decks’ volume
SHOULD be audiable…
Lets start with this- if we cannot get this up and running, I see no point in getting caught up in semantics of which jack and which software is in use (Etc)
So far, based on the posts I have read, it is not ‘very clear’ as to what is going on…
@padawan25 I have done phone support for 50000+ inbound calls; I can generally ‘visualise’ what a user is describing ‘fairly easily’ (I was really good at this task btw).
I’d say, based on what I have, perhaps only skimmed, of the issues you have experienced- hard to say what is going on, because I don’t actually know what you are doing (yes- I gather you feel you’ve written this down explicitly, but treat the internet like an uncaring stranger and it will seldom disappoint)..
Vehicle mode, to my understanding, is a battery care strategy that stops a battery getting charge when it doesn’t need it.
Whilst it is good to have, it isn’t ‘strictly necessary’, and for the point of troubleshooting, we just need to establish:
Does Apple Music work (*yes)
offline (yes)
via headphones (yes)
into the 3.5mm aux in, using the headphone output (?)
Anyhow - a longish post mostly venting/expressing my morning efforts, partly without music, due to ‘system irregularities‘ and Apple/Android hiccups…
YOU ARE NOT ALONE
smiles with’
[edit ten minutes later]: Spoke too soon; album just dropped playback.
Touching the M11+, Apple music apparently ‘not running’, refiring up Apple Music ‘wants me to do the personalisation screen (NO THANKS!)’, clicking on song, can resume.
This is akin to all my previous efforts with Apple Music- completely useless for ‘full albums’ I may wish to listen to- it skips songs and drops playback often, although previously I chalked this up to it wasting too much bandwidth on snooping rather than ‘consumer first’ (ie ‘moved data’ given preference for the USERS needs)
upon trying to ‘edit this post’ (on Apple devices), required refring up the webbrowser (still wouldnt reload headfi), until I loaded gmail, then headfi would refresh (and returned to the main page).. I’d chalk this up to a ‘bad tech day’ (for me), but I find most modern world tech has not even ‘a quarter’ the reliability of what I used mid 2000s…
We don’t seem to be ‘improving’, but certainly are given a lot of chances to rebuy what we already have…. (the new stuff claims its better using ‘very selective criteria’)
The downtime to consumers and the ‘money going uphill’ will only sustain these ‘fake industries’ for so long… (then any companies that still have user ethics and pro support will be bought up by the big dogs until there is literally
nothing left worth considering)
In the meantime we have FiiO giving EXCEPTIONAL bang for buck and end user care. (Well done!)
