Technical CarPlay audio skips occasionally

[Trellat]

Does anyone else with the new model 500e find their CarPlay audio does small skips sometimes? The infotainment system is on the latest version.

I've tried both wired and wireless CarPlay - same result. Tried different phones - same result. Tried the same phones using CarPlay in a different car - no skips. So it's the Fiat causing the skips. Dealer can't help. It'll play music fine, but around once or twice per song you'll get a small skip, like the car decided to do something in the background that caused it to hitch momentarily. The music will just glitch slightly for maybe a tenth of a second and then resume, but it's audible.

Just wondering if everyone's Fiat is doing this or if I've got a dud.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Is it a buffering issue? Are any other apps on the phone active in the background when you’re listening to music in the car. Is the music stored on the phone or is it streaming from the internet.

 

[Trellat]

It's not a buffering issue as in download streaming (it hitches in the same way for songs on Spotify that have been downloaded to the phone, and even for pure wav files on the phone's drive being played directly). But it could be a buffering issue somewhere else in the chain going from phone to car to speakers. Sometimes I do have other apps running (e..g Google Maps). However, same phone doing the same things in a different car (a Kia in this case) never skips.

What it sounds like to me is the Uconnect system occasionally doing something (could be checking EV battery level or whatever), and that something takes priority over the audio stream, so it stutters briefly. But that's just my guess knowing nothing much about the whole system. The hitches in the audio are very short, not always very noticeable.