I had the chance to test drive a Mazda CX-5 with its best sound system inside (sporting 9 Bose speakers and what not, which always look good on paper. I did like how it sounded in the few minutes I tested it, I have to say). It supports A2DP + AVRCP v.1.3 (sorry for my confusing previous post) as it did recognize my phone right away and showed track info on the car central display. I don't think it can display cover art, but I think (not 100% sure) it did have a placeholder for that, which is promising, but who knows. It is indeed possible that my phone (HTC Titan) is not sending cover art over AVRCP .
While in the car and testing the audio system, I did try to browse through my collection, to no avail, BUT I failed to check if the main multi-function control knob did anything (I know, very silly of me). That's also because the dealer knew nothing about the Audio System in the car and just let me play with it and find my way around it for few minutes, which I spent entirely on the buttons and controls on the dashboard and on the steering wheel, forgetting to look anywhere else.

Hopefully the BT link between cars and mobile devices is improving.


This is such a bummer. And I am a bit surprised. I've been using my phone to connect A2DP to my parrot Mki9200, and from it into my stereo system via its Aux input. Sound quality as I perceive it is indeed poorer than the stereo system itself, but surprisingly good. So I was blaming the Aux input part, assuming the BT link could deliver the decoded bitstream untouched from the phone to the Mki9200. Keep in mind that I have quite a few WMA-Lossless tracks on my phone.

So, you are saying that the BT/A2CP capable phone would need to take a music file (Mp3/WMA/Whatever) decodeit and re-encode it in some format that can be delivered over BT/A2CP, and sent (to the MKi9200 in my case).