Redirecting Sygic (a2dp or speaker) to phone audio bluetooth

Hi,

I've installed the pro version yesterday but still have no clue if I bought the right software to solve the following problem:

My phone (Xperia Z1, 4.3) connects nicely to my car via phone audio, hence phone calls are no issue. In addition it can also play music via a2dp if bluetooth audio is selected in the car - which usually is not the case as I use an USB stick as audio source. While driving I run two apps for navigation and traffic info - both of them can use the phone speaker, one can use bluetooth audio (a2dp) while the second additionally supports bluetooth/hfp. As I never use a2dp as audio source in my car, only the second app works perfectly by interrupting the car audio in case of notifications, as an incoming phone call would do. The first app then has to use the phone speakers - which suck btw.

After this long introduction here are my questions. Is it possible to activate soundabout when necessary, i.e. without rebooting, and redirect all phone speaker audio to bluetooth/hfp? Or alternatively redirect everything which is originally sent to phone bluethooth a2pd to hfp instead? Of course the existing bluetooth connection phone<->car shall be untouched.

I've been browsing this forum but haven't found an answer so far. I'm using Sygic, not google navigation. For testing purpose I connected to a Samsung bluetooth headset and ran soundabout in foreground. I can't even run the TTS example posted on this forum - I never hear anything during the TTS test.

Cheers
Torsten

Hmm, after further testing I'm still confused. More info

The app that supports bluetooth/hfp is "blitzer.de plus". It offers automatic (OS), speaker, a2dp and hfp. Apart from 6 different languages it does not offer any more TTS options. When it gives a warning, the car shows an incoming call from my phone.

The app that supports speaker and a2dp only is Sygic Navigation. One can choose whether to use the phone speaker. If unchecked, it sends via a2dp (if bluetooth device connected) or speaker (no bluetooth connection).  It seems to bring its own TTS as you install languages and male/female voices from their server.

I did more testing tonight and also followed https://soundabout.forumotion.com/t202-navigation-text-to-speech-audio-to-various-outputs-bluetooth-mono-in-car. I heard the sample TTS via the car once but could not reproduce it. Quite often it was sent to the phone speakers or was not heard at all.

From my understanding the fact that I can hear all Sygic audio via a2pd would result in soundabout ->  Media audio -> bluetooth (mono). The TTS settings from above should not hurt. I would set TTS audio output to bluetooth (mono), too. I would restrict the bluetooth paring phone<>car to phone audio.

Does this sound reasonable?

Slowly it's getting interesting...

1 Boot phone
2 Connect bluetooth headset
3 Start the blitzed.de app in hfp mode (crackle and faint buzzing sound in headset)
4 Blitzer.de does use headset
5 Starting roundabout (again buzzing sound in headset)
6 Sygic does use headset, too
7 Blitzer.de works fine but buzzing disappears afterwards
8 Soundabout off and on - sound does not come back, Sygic uses speakers from now on

Second try

1 Reboot
2 Connect headset
3 Start roundabout (buzzing sound)
4 Sygic audio is on headset
5 Close sygic -> buzzing disappears
6 roundabout off/on but headset is mute

Any ideas?

Further tries show that blitzer.de on hfp sends to the headset only in case of a notification. Soundabout seems to open and keep a connection to the headset, which works for some time. However, the connection is lost over here as soon as the navigation app is closed.

After having tested two other apps which seem to aim at the same thing there is one common issue - the service works fine until I stop Sygic. The only advantage of the other apps is that I can restart the service afterwards, whereas in case of soundabout the phone needs to be rebooted. I definitely need to convince the Sygic guys to work on a better bluetooth implementation such that helper apps are no longer necessary  

The problem is that all 3 apps are not going to play nice with each other.

Blitzer.de is trying to route audio to either A2DP, Bluetooth HSP (mono), or speaker.

Sygic is trying to route audio to either A2DP or speaker.

SoundAbout is trying to route to where ever you set media or TTS audio (if the other apps use TTS).

If Blitzer.de and Sygic are set to not use Bluetooth A2DP or Bluetooth HSP mono, and are both set to speaker, the question whether those two apps FORCE the audio to speaker or just send the audio to whatever the phone is currently using for media audio.

If they could send to whatever the phone is currently using for media audio, then SoundAbout could direct both apps audio to use either Bluetooth A2DP, Bluetooth mono, wired headset....or what ever you want.

Also, If Blitzer.de is using Bluetooth HSP mono, and Sygic is trying to use A2DP, it won't work. Those two different Bluetooth profiles cannot be used at the same time. Normally, when Bluetooth mono is started, then Bluetooth A2DP gets shut down by the Android audio policy manager.

Thanks David! In order to understand my options, I tried just to get Sygic to bluetooth/mono. Using the speaker output in Sygic does not work. While soundabout is active (buzzing sound in headset) Sygic's audio still goes to the phone speakers. When I disable speaker output, soundabout does capture audio messages but only until Sygic is stopped. After that the headset is mute and cannot be brought back to life via restarting soundabout - in that case I have to reboot. During these tests, blitzer.de was not running, hence no interference.

It seems as if I have lost, doesn't it?

I tried Sygic but couldn't' get it to work as my GPS doesn't want to lock on anymore. What setting in SoundAbout did you use to get audio to Bluetooth mono? Did you use the "Media audio" setting or did you use the TTS settings?

I had all three sources (media, phone, tts) set to "let app decide".

A minute ago I set media and phone to speaker and tts to bluetooth/mono. The TTS test came through the headset whereas Sygic used the speaker.