I ordered and installed my Dension GW500 +BTA1500 bluetooth. It works with my iPhone and I thought I'd share my experience thus far.

I always think of reviews as what i like, what could be better, and what really needs to be improved.

WHAT I LIKE: iPod Integration with PCM is quite good. Songs display with titles or artists. Navigation interface takes a little getting use to but is quite good. Reliability seems very good. For the BTA 1500, once I did the calibration for use with my iPhone 4 the mic pick up is pretty good.

WHAT COULD BE BETTER: I haven't figured out how to do voice dialing. It's a bit odd as most bluetooth speakers (even the <$50) allows you to hold the answer call button and it triggers the voice dialing on the phone.

WHAT REALLY NEEDS TO BETTER:
1. The Bluetooth audio sounds very tinny. The sound quality is not even tolerable IMHO. I guess I'll go with a dedicated iPod.
2. When I dial from the phone I don't get the ringtone over the speakers. It isn't until someone answers the call does it mute the stereo and kick in through the speakers. This is really troublesome because the switch over takes a short second and you often miss the answering hello. The weird things is if i dial from the PCM i get to hear the ringing and all. This really needs to be fixed!
3. If I have the sound up on my iPhone too high it makes the system not work through the speakers.
4. The BTA 1500 doesn't do hand-offs. For example if you get to your destination and turn off the car and turn off the PCM it drops the call. It should switch back to the phone. Very odd behavior.


I will say that perhaps I'm doing something wrong and I'm happy to be corrected - Please.

Overall I'd give this product a 7 out of 10. Needs a bit more maturing but is a really good base to build upon. And before anyone asks - i'm on the latest firmware.

Comments welcome...

 

Did anyone else notice similar faults? Curious. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong.

 

I'm still trying to install my Dension Gateway (I keep getting the optical loop error). Curious.....did you install it up near the head-unit or in the back of the car?

 

recently installed the ipod and bluetooth modules (near the head unit). My observations are a follows:

I too enjoy the ipod integration. Random appears to be truly random (or at least good enough to where I cannot perceive any sort of ordering which I really like). The only comment is that from time to time I have to remove the ipod and reconnect to restore connectivity which is no big deal. My ipod is always charged.

The a2dp profile (the one that allows playing of music from iphone via bluetooth) does not work well and the sound quality is not acceptable. I do not play music over bluetooth due to sound qualify issues. Something is happening to the high frequencies...Cymbal crashes sound like a crumbling bag. If I had not other feedback on this item, I would logically believe that I might have a bad unit. I often use the a2dp profile while at home through headphones so I know how good the a2dp profiles can sound. This one is for the engineers to figure out.

The phone integration does not meet my expectations. There are funky volume/calibration button pushes which allow changing of the volume and supposedly the mike gain. Through sheer luck, I now have consistent volume through the speakers but most complain that they cannot hear me (mike gain obviously not set correctly). At this point I am afraid to try anything for fear of loosing the speaker volume. If I had a consistently long commute and had to place calls while on the go, I'd be searching for another solution or pestering dension to help me get all the settings correct. Once I get time, I do plan to phone the vendor or open tickets with dension.

I too really wish that as soon as dial is initiated that the radio would switch off because I too miss the "hello" from the other side and the majority of time has proven to be awkward.

Phone book sync is a "no go" at least for the iphone 3gs given the contacts I currently have. I have been told that the phone numbers have to be in a required format (I believe numbers only). Well, I have 600+ contacts...you do the math for how long that would take to correct! Not a huge deal as I can use the phone to dial out.

I agree with the comments about the "hand off". I have learned to keep my pepper idling until I am done talking. I have not tried a hand off from handset to dension.

I will say that I believe many of the "issues" we are having are firmware related. The unit I received had the latest firmware. I will also say that after picking through the documentation, I'd recommend dedicated documentation for the porshe cayenne. (hint: setting of speaker volume and mike gain as nothing I read gave clear directions for the pcm in the cayenne).

In my opinion, this product is short of being production ready for the cayenne. I would be money well spent in R&D if someone was paid to document EXACTLY what steps were required to correctly setup in the cayenne. I cannot comment on the accuracy for any other MOST systems. The issue is that this unit is designed for so many makes that it would take a considerable effort to cover each variant. I have no doubt that this product will mature with subsequent releases.

Would I buy both components again given my experiences? Probably not...I'd probably spend time reviewing some of the other solutions out there and see if I could obtain best of breed bluetooth integration which is what lead me to the purchase in the beginning.


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Man, I'm torn. I was seriously thinking of going with the Dension GW500 + BTA bluetooth, but now I'm wondering if I should just get a new head unit -- something like the Pioneer Avic series unit. My main concern with getting a new head unit is that I really do use the trip feature a LOT. Do the newer head units (like the Avic) have a similar feature that is comparable to the trip feature? I'm not really talking about navigation, but specifically the time/distance since last start, avg mph, and so forth.

 

There's a calibration you can run for speaker and mic volume. It worked great. Will post tonight how to do it.

I agree that most of these are firmware upgradeable.

- voice dialing
- proper handoff
- bt audio quality

If they just fixed these and a couple other minor nits they would have a killer product. That said with the number of firmware updates I think they should be close.

 

I currently have the Dension Gateway in my 04 CTT and have been very happy with it. I've used it with a USB Stick and both the IPhone 3G and the 4. No Probs at all. I should add, however, I connected using the IPod cable or USB cable vice using bluetooth, so I cannot speak to the a2dp (bluetooth) interface. I also did not go with the BTA1500 module as reports on the mic sound quality were not good. Overall, I'd say its a great means of getting IPod/IPhone/USB connectivity.

 

I thought about getting the Denison. Thanks for the posting sorry to hear about the issues I have been happy with the mObridge Abt2010. I would recommended it to friend.

 

For mic volume

Microphone and Speaker Volume with BTA1500
Dension released a new BTA1500 firmware (1.5 – available since September 2009) that lets you change the microphone and the speakers volume separately via the car’s head unit. You can set the microphone’s volume value to 1 through 31. The optimal value will be different depending on the car type, cell-phone model and the microphone installation. Please note that the values are not incremental, i.e. 16 is not necessarily louder than 15. Each car will have an optimal setting.

You can easily change the default setting of the microphone if you go to the phone menu and dial *** and then enter the microphone volume’s value (e.g. ***12). The calibration process can take up to 15 seconds. In the case of Mercedes Command Head Unit, put a + in front of the *s or #s. When finished, the system returns to the dial menu.

Please ensure that the GW500 is updated to SW version 2.19.

To change the speakers volume you need to do the same procedure but instead of dialing *’s you need to dial #’s (e.g. ###14). The calibration takes about 5-15 seconds.

After the calibration please dial any number and check the result of your configuration.

If the settings are not correct, please change the values and test the new settings again.

Please note: If your cell-phone starts calling the dialed numbers during the calibration process, you have an older release of BTA1500 where this option is unfortunately not available.

Some recommended settings



Mic (***)
Audio (###)
iPhone
12
8
Nokia
11
7
Sony Ericcson
11
6

 

I will certainly try these out again when I have a chance. The latest firmware is 2.22. Could you comment on the exact sequence and preconditions? Such as:

phone turned on, bluetooth synched, ***12 then press dial, etc. Unless phone is synched, cannot access the dial menu. So exact state of setup prior to configuration would greatly be appreciated! One guy I was working with indicated the phone has to be off but the moment you touch the * button, the stations change so I am thinking the phone HAS to be on.

If those that read this are firmware programmers, it would be nice to provide some sort of visual feedback after the configuration parameters have been input and accepted (the icing would be a display of the configuration parameters).

Has anyone had successes with the bluetooth audio? Is anyone aware of any settings to address the high frequency distortion? I'd really like to utilize the bluetooth audio as my phone is always up to date with respect to playlists and such.

What about the address book? Not as important but this should work or so I have been told...

Thanks

 

phone on and bt on. just dial it like you are dialing a phone number. might need the volume patch if it doesn't hold the setting. mine needs it and i still have to do it.

 

I just installed the Dension w/ the BT1500... When I make calls everything works fine, however when I receive calls it picks up the call but I cannot hear them over the speakers? I have no idea what is going on, but it doesn't work. Any ideas?

 

Use the answer button on the PCM otherwise it answers on the phone but you can switch to Bluetooth. The dension system isn't smart enough to switch for you. The only time this is a problem is when you try to answer a call waiting call.

 

If you mean the phone book -- once the Bluetoof devices are mated - the phone's phonebook should very shortly be available on the screen. There is no storage in the PCM for phonebooks, so this has to be reloaded from the phone each time they mate. And "Favorite" phone numbers doesn't work either - same issue with storage. I suspect the Porsche phone system ($$$$$$$$$) has some form of storage built into their phone interface.

Your other question - when someone calls me - the audio mutes, and I can't recall having to hit the answer button, but it's possible.. (not many people call me.. Thank Dog!)

The volume settings made all the difference on my setup - people don't even realize that I'm talking via a car interface. It's really quite good once you find the magic numbers. I seem to recall something like 11/13 for my HTC Incredible-II (Verizon phone).. but I'd have to look in the glovebox to make sure (I made notes.)

USB and iPod interfaces for music work great - and my iPod is normally the most up to date source for music for me. The streaming BT does work - I found that out when somehow my phone decided to start playing music, and I got back in the truck and to my surprise the same music came out of the speakers. Didn't seem to be any awful distortion - but I only listened for a few seconds until I realized where it was coming from.

Only thing that doesn't work for me is voice-dialing. That's apparently a flaw in the Droid OS - not in the BTA1500.. other phones have been reported to voice dial just fine.

My only annoyance is trying to find music, and that's a flaw I suspect all the add-on adaptors will have since they use the PCM CD interface for the menu structure. I have about 3,000 tracks on my iPod (from about 400 albums - or 27 days of music as the iPod likes to tell me..) and that requires a lot of scrolling through multiple screens to find what I want. Would be nice if there was a search function, but I'm guessing since the CD interface didn't have it - it couldn't be implimented. Would also be nice if ALL the albums/artists/tracks could be loaded on a single screen you could scroll through, but again- I suspect the number per screen is limited by the PCM-CD interface.

This makes a good reason to make some really good playlists on the iPod - makes it much easier to at least find the genre of music/entertainment I want. Only problem - the iTunes interface doesn't allow changing genre that I can find, and some albums are misclassified, or have different genres for the same thing ("Comedy" and "Humor" come to mind..) It requires some detailed custom filtering in the iTunes interface to really sort the albums out.

Overall - I'm quite pleased with my GW500/BTA1500 combo. It makes a good audio system even better, despite the small inconviences.

 

i wish i could get my mic/speaker volumes setup correct. my quality ranges from barely tolerable to sucks.