Hi there, recently a buddy of mine bought a 2013 Clubman, and luckily I also get to drive it. Unfortunately, I cannot drive without music, and I don't ever plan to own a second rate phone that mini seems to cater to.

My own 15-year old car has a fairly cheap bluetooth stereo that can stream audio beautifully from my Samsung Galaxy S4, change tracks remotely, etc. Is there any hope for the mini? I tried fiddling with the bluetooth options, but I could only get the phone to work. Aux is a no-go both because of the quality drop and the fact that I can't change tracks on the road without fiddling with my phone. USB does nothing (may be Samsung's fault here).

Are there stereo upgrades? (Lossless) Adapters? Outta luck?

 

Only thing I can think of is Others have used it and seem to like it.

 

Copy your music onto a USB thumb drive, place in USB port. Can control everything via the radio. Will even sort your music by genre, artist, etc.

 

In short, if you want any sort of sound quality, you probably can't do Bluetooth streaming, with the Mini system.

But as stated, you can put wav files or apple lossless in a USB drive, and have at it.

 

 

$5

 

I wound up switching to the Bluetooth unit and am using it with my Galaxy Note 3 and it works flawlessly and sounds great.
The greatest part is that my steering wheel controls for next and previous song works as well as compared to using the Kinivo or the Belkin unit.
It has an old style iphone connector on it so it works with the Y Cable from mini.
ViseeO makes a special Y cable for the mini that allows the song names to be passed to the radio as well and I have that on order. Right now it just says next where the song name would be. LOVE LOVE LOVE this unit. It even works in my other car with a Dension PCM Adapter although there is no song name support in that scenario.

 

Whoa, that's pretty damn cool! Could you take a picture of how it operates?

 

It simply plugs into the Y Cable and shows up as an IPOD but you can connect Android or iPhone phones to it.

 

I get the concept, I just wanted to see how it actually looks on the display in the car.

 

When I get the cable I can take a pic of the phone and radio with matching song names if you don't believe me . ;-)

 

It's not that I don't believe you, just want to see how it looks. So, I assume it's on the "AUX" mode, and not "USB"?

 

Just like your iPhone or iPod, iPad would. Very Cool !

 

I can't get the IPOD to show up, it just says CD/RADIO/AUX/USB. Plugged in an iphone 4, and it said the cable was the wrong kind?

 

You need to use the real mini Y cable. Not the cheap one from amazon.

 

I bought the one from ViseeO...

 

It never switches to IPOD mode on the factory stereo.
My factory cable with the ViseeO Bluetooth unit gets the stereo to show the IPOD icon and it works. I can then select next and previous track from the steering wheel but no damn song names show on the radio.
Even my cheapo amazon cable with the ViseeO bluetooth unit gets the IPOD icon to show but the ViseeO cable does not.
I have to contact the vendor to see what's up.
This is frustrating. I have a 2012 Mini cooper S by the way.
Let's see what they say.

 

I also tried it with my 6th gen iPod and it didn't work so I am out of luck with my Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Oh well.
They offered a full refund so I will send it back.
Sad but fair.

 

Note 3 user here. Any updates besides trying a authentic MINI Y cable?

 

I was told by the Visee0 people that the cable they supply is for iPhones and iPods.
It didn't work with my iPod nano so I sent it back and received a refund.
so now as it stands my note 3 with factory y cable and viseeO bluetooth adapter work but I can't get names on the radio display, it just says "Next" where the name would be .
It does allow me to advance to next song or go back to previous with the steering wheel controls and the volume controls work on the wheel too.
I am pretty content with this. I have my radio on a CD Mount anyway just under the radio so my phone displays the song name and album art anyway and it looks great too. I am Very content with this solution.

 

Gotcha, thanks for the reply. I will probably go this route as well!

 

Does your car radio automatically start on iPod every time? Or are there times you'll get in the car and the FM radio will be playing because the iPod mode didnt turn on, in time so it just defaulted to the radio? Cause I have the ViseeO but very often mine doesn't start up in iPod mode...it starts up in FM but if go to audio iPod is there....so it seems that the iPod was just delayed in starting up...

 

After countless searching, this may be the route I take. Playing Google Music through an aux cable sucks something awful.

So, is there a link to the MINI cable? Is it technically the one for an ipod but you can connect an S4 to it?

I'd also assume this will work if you have the Sirius app on the phone too.

I've got a second radio authorized through Sirius and have one of those universal kits that I could mount but I don't really want to clutter up the car. I really dig that cravenspeed scissor mount that I'm considering.

Thanks!

 

The mini cable is the one I am using. The ViseeO cable is for use with iPhone but as I mentioned in other posts I don't have faith that it will work because it didn't work with my note3. The seller says that it works with iPhones to display names on the radio but it did not work with my iPod nano.

I have the Cravenspeed scissor mount for sale if you want to buy it. I'm not sure if it fits the s4 so please check the specs if you are interested.

 

I believe it has to be the new 75mm one to fit 5" phones and up.