I picked up my CX-5 from the service department yesterday just before closing. There was a disconnected wire that was reconnected and that fixed my problem with Bluetooth and other audio features that had stopped working. But now I'm back to square one with the iPod/USB problems. When I connect my iPod it takes forever to read and then when it starts playing a song it displays a completely different artist/song. Some songs on the display are listed 3 or 4 times in succession. When I select songs or artists to play on screen it just sits there and does nothing. It's basically a useless feature; a feature that I paid for and wanted in this car. I feel ripped off by Mazda.

 

Just called the Mazda support center again. The agent acknowledged the iPOD issues and she said a lot of people are complaining about this. She also mentioned that this issue is well documented and they are actively working on it to fix this. But she said they don't have an ETA.

At least, they have some improvement in this case. Let's hope they fix it soon.

 

Well hey that's better than saying it's "functioning" as it should. I won't hold by breath though.

 

Best news I've heard in awhile on this issue. Let's hope the fix comes to fruition. I enjoy the way the CX-5 drives but I have a number of quibbles, not the least of which is the audio system.

 

A number of quibbles is a great way to put it. Fixing the iPod issues would go a long way to making me look past those other quibbles. I guess it is my fault for not noticing everything when I bought the car, but I had blinders on and was set on the CX-5.

Some of my quibbles:

1) No padding on console arm rest
2) interior plastics are cheap, especially around console. I have a big scratch now where the seatbelt clasp rubs up against the side of the console
3) No interior mood lighting, even the previous Mazda 3 had that
4) Sirius issues like not being able to see the whole song title while driving, Really Mazda, letting me look at the second half of a song title is dangerous while driving?!?
5) Sirius song alert can only be set while not driving. So if I hear a song while driving that I want to set a reminder for, well I just can't! So if I'm lucky enough to be stopped and the song comes on, then I'm set.
6) Navigation issues, nuff said!
7) Power liftgate, kind of wish I had it
8) Power windows all around would be nice in GT
9) Seat heaters are weak

Probably missing a few. I do like the way it drives. So I can often ignore most of my quibbles, but I don't plan to keep it as long as I have previous cars.

 

Someone on another forum suggested the app "Muxica" ($1.99) and it makes shuffle work with Bluetooth! After I had no luck with the well-reviewed CarTunes ($4.99), I guessed that apps must use the AVRCP profiles to shuffle and therefore were at the mercy of the Apple/Mazda AVRCP 1.3/1.4 mis-implementation. But Muxica apparently uses its own code to shuffle, so it works over Bluetooth. I'm so happy!

 

you should check the ipod settings and change it respectively!!

 

Hey all. I made an account quick so I could share with everyone my findings on the iPod issues.

I just got a 2013 Mazda 3 i Grand Touring. Not a CX-5, but I experience all of the same problems you guys are getting, and this forum thread is the most comprehensive discussion I could find on the subject through many nights of googling the issue.

I have a 160GB iPod Classic, 2009 model/generation. It is not full. About 40GB are used. I originally tried the USB connection with the iPod, and on days 1 and 2 of driving the car, the iPod loaded flawlessly. I'm talking about 10 seconds or less. After that... NOTHING. "Reading iPod" with the nice spinny loading graphic would stay up much too long. The longest I let it stay up for without giving up was 20 minutes. 20 minutes, still loading. Gave up.

I got home that night from work and experimented. I tried starting the car with/without the iPod already connected. I tried turning off/on the car with iPod selected on the dash. I tried every combination of **** I could possibly think of. No luck at all. I went inside and took everything off of my iPod that wasn't music (videos, pics, etc.) and tried it. No luck. I tried removing all menu selections from the iPod settings menu that were not music-related menu items. Nothing. Updated my iPod to the latest version. Nothing at all worked.

Obviously the headphone jack in the AUX input was working, but that's bull****. So I go inside, get a 2GB thumb drive I have lying around, and load a bunch of folders right from my iTunes library onto it. Went out to my car, and it loaded super fast. "Ok, that's only 2GB vs. 40GB", I thought. I wondered if it was a matter of more files, or just the iPod sucking.

MORE EXPERIMENTS!

Today I bought a 500GB external (USB) hard drive, and a 64GB thumb drive. Got home, loaded about 10GB of music (the same exact music) onto both items. Go out to my car, plug in the hard drive through the USB. The hard drive did not work at all. Did not even light up the USB menu on the dash. I plugged in the USB, and it loaded pretty fast. Maybe 30 seconds. USB drive wins that round. Now for the final test.

I loaded my entire library onto the USB. The USB thumb drive and my iPod now have my entire 40GB library. The iPod doesn't load for ****. The USB thumb drive, the very first time I put it in, loaded in 6 minutes. I then played a song, turned off the car, turned it immediately back on, and it PICKED UP WHERE I LEFT OFF. I was amazed. "I solved the puzzle", I thought.

Cut to me eating lunch with my mom, come out to my car, turn on car, USB now must load entire library again. And like everyone who's experienced this, it restarts back to the first song on the drive. So, it must stay in memory for a tiny bit of time, but if you shut the car off for an extended period the memory is gone and must reload.

Now make no mistake, this ****ing sucks. But since I have a remote start for my car, and I've been starting the car in the morning anyway because of the cold weather, I can leave the dash on 'USB' when I turn off the car so that the next morning when I remote-start it the USB will be loaded before I get out there.

tl;dr

1. iPod integration is impossibly bad.
2. Flash drives load faster than iPods, it seems.
3. External hard drive in the USB did not work.

 

This suggests a very bad problem. It sounds as though the player was designed without non-volatile memory. This means that it may not have any ability to store information once the car is shut down. Typically the system has a hefty capacitor that cleans up the car power supply and this may take time to bleed off charge after shutting off the car. But after a few minutes, the system would lose all memory. So it can't remember anything about iPod play lists, or libraries previously loaded.

If this is the case, then there is NO HOPE of any software update to solve the problem.

 

Just bought mine and I'm really pissed at Mazda and Consumer Reports too! When I called the dealer they told me the same thing, that no issues had been reported! yeah right....