My car stereo is distorting some music. Please help me diagnose the problem

I recently traded in my car, going from a 2017 Chevrolet Cruze to a Cadillac XT5. I had no problems with the old sound system playing music stored on the phone using the Apple Music app. Now my new system seems to have taken a disliking to certain songs, seemingly at random. It distorts them, with the music sounding like the notes are all vibrating.

Here’s the details of what it happens to. It seems to occur only with songs that I own and are stored on the phone. It’s not everything, but the stuff if happens to is seemingly random. Classical music like Fazil Say playing the Mozart piano sonatas or Murray Perahia and Mozart’s piano concertos. Pop music including a lot of Leonard Cohen’s later stuff, especially from Dear Heather. Enya’s Watermark album. Other random songs like Johnny Kemp’s Just Got Paid and Debbie Gibson’s Snake Charmer. The only thing they have in common is that it’s music I have downloaded on to my phone. Some were originally ripped from a CD. Others previously purchased from the iTunes Store. When I play the same track streaming from Apple Music, it sounds normal. What might be going on?

Moved to IMHO from the Cafe as more about fixing/troubleshooting a device than about music.



Sounds to me like occasionally you’re getting a lower quality Bluetooth codec used for you connection occasionally. I’ve heard something similar when the nav voice cuts in at one of the low bit rate mono settings and the connection doesn’t bump back up when the music resumes. Hasn’t happened to me in ages and I don’t know a fix.

Have you tried playing those stored tracks on a different bluetooth speaker system, assuming you have or can borrow one?

It sounds as if the problem may be with the stored version on your phone?