How can I best fast-forward podcasts in my car?

September 16, 2014 5:29 PM

My Honda Civic is quirky when it comes to playing and controlling an iPod for music or podcasts. I need a method to play lengthy podcasts over my stereo AND to retain the ability to fast-forward and rewind within those podcasts. I have many ways to stream or connect to play audio, but the only way I've found that allows me to fast-forward or rewind is also the one that apparently falls prey to a "known issue", causing me to get a random stereo "crash".

I have a 2013 Honda Civic with i-Mid technology to allow me to connect (via USB) and play an mp3 player through my stereo. Sadly, there is a known issue with my iPod and the required USB connection, and the stereo will randomly give a "USB Error" in the middle of playing a track. The only fix, I kid you not, is to stop my car, turn it off, and then turn it back on. Obviously, this is not ideal! When the iPod works, however, I can easily fast forward or rewind through lengthy tracks using the dashboard controls.

As an alternative, my phone (a Moto X) will connect to the stereo via bluetooth, but the fast-forward/rewind controls do not work, making it impossible to skip over boring sections of 3-4 hr podcasts while I am driving.

Here's the newest possibility, however...I have a new Moto360 smartwatch, which will bring up basic play/stop/next track settings on its screen when I am streaming audio from my phone to the car. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a fast-forward or rewind option on any of the podcast apps I've tested.

Does anyone have any suggestions to best allow me to stream audio to a Honda i-Mid system AND to let me fast-forward and rewind tracks?

posted by newfers to Technology (4 answers total)

I have a 2014 Accord and I too have had odd results with iPods. With my iPod Classic (80 GB, I'm not sure what generation) I get symptoms like you describe but I've never had to turn off the car. Just unplugging and re-plugging the iPod works just fine. I also have a iPod Nano (4th Gen) and it always works perfectly including FF and Rewind.

Perhaps a newer, actively supported iPod would work better for you.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:15 PM on September 16, 2014

I use Pocket Casts on my Android phone, which provides "rewind 10s" and "fast-forward 30s" actions that are accessible from the lock screen and from my Pebble smart watch (in place of the "prev. track" and "next track" actions provided by other audio apps). I'm not sure if this will work with your Moto 360 or car bluetooth controls, but it might be worth a try. It's probably useful only if your podcasts are relatively short, since skipping ahead 30 seconds at a time would get boring fast.
posted by mbrubeck at 7:26 PM on September 16, 2014

If you get an iPod touch, you could use Downcast, which allows you to granularly set the skip interval for back and forwards up to 10 minutes. Then you could either use the forward/back icons on the phone or connect via USB. No idea if a newer device would have fewer USB issues.
posted by Pacrand at 7:57 PM on September 16, 2014

With a previous car stereo, I would chop the mp3 into one minute files so that I could use skip track with them. This only works if you have gapless playback though.
posted by JonB at 12:06 AM on September 17, 2014