herbert68

I have a 2013 VW Passat with the 8100NX and the Maestro module. Everything works as expected – except some of the info in the MFD (multi function display) in the instrument cluster is missing, most notably the navigation info. But this is a Pioneer problem as the headhunt doesn't supply these data. I've learned to live with these shortcomings.

Just to restate what I said above, my no-sound issues are completely resolved with the recent maestro firmware update.

You seem to suggest that Pioneer is doing map updates for the NEX series? That's wrong, Pioneer uses iGo maps from naviextras.com, a company headquartered in Hungary.

Maestro Firmware v3.3 has resolved the no sound issue for me.

For anyone who may face a similar issue, we seem to get closer to a resolution. I had posted the same question over at the Maestro RR user forum and got this response: "If you have the amp menu, that's a good thing. The engineer recommends updating the RR's firmware to v 3.3 (we just updated it today), and it should resolve this issue.†I'll get the flash in the next days and report back how it goes.

For me it's the opposite, the radio sometimes has no sound at startup, and a restart is required, but long drives work fine once the sound is established.

I just returned from my second visit to our local BestBuy installer, very nice and extremely helpful – but my sometimes-no-sound-at-startup issue still persists. My 8100 starts up fine, I can interact on the touchscreen, change channels and sources, increase and decrease audio volume, but no sound is playing. Someone here suggested to turn off the car, open the door to turn off the radio, close the door again and restart the car – this normally works to get the sound back, provided I'm in an environment where I can stop the car and do all these steps. It all started when we updated

@Multitask: No hidden files in the Windows emulator on the Mac. I now believe that the Pioneer firmware is VERY picky with USB sticks and I seems I simply had bad luck with the 5 sticks I had tried initially. My final attempt worked as advertised.

UPDATE: I finally managed to get this update installed, it was way more complex - and expensive - than anticipated. After my unsuccessful attempts mentioned above I installed Windows 10 on my MacBook Pro using the free VirtualBox from Oracle, really easy and it works perfectly. Then I formatted several of my USB sticks to Fat32 within Windows, but none of them worked. I was ready to surrender and give up, when a co-worker happened to walk by with a USB stick in his hand. I borrowed it and, boom, this time the 8100 accepted it. I have no idea why. Then it was back to my Mac, fired up th

I too was hesitant first to update my 8100 to v1.5, but eventually I did and all is good.

Great suggestion, I will try that. Thanks!

USB2? Really? Th Naviextras tech support said to use USB1... so does the instruction manual.

How did the 8000 die? Just went black? Doesn't turn on? I'm asking, because my 8100 sometimes starts up without sound. Eventually I figured out that turning off the car and open the door to turn off the radio – a button to turn off the head unit would be great –, then close the door and start the car again, this brings back the sound. Very strange!

Originally I thought I'll pass the expensive map updates, too expensive. But then someone here suggested that the 2015 3Q maps look much better, so I thought, okay, maybe I'll do another map update, one last time (I did the free one last year). That was 4 days ago and since then I have tried and tried, but I keep getting stuck on the very first step, connecting an empty FAT32 USB stick and launching the sync tool to get the Radio ID onto the USB stick. So far I have tried many different variations in formatting the stick, used a PC (hoping to get rid of the invisible files my Mac puts on e

I decided not to update the maps on my 8100NEX at the current price. Maybe they come down if no one buys. I can get a new Garmin or TomTom unit with Lifetime Maps for a fraction of the Naviextras map price alone. In fact, I'm just now looking on Ebay for a used TomTom unit for my daughter, the 5" TomTom XXL model with lifetime maps ranges from $20 to $40. No Naviextras rip-off for me!

Thanks for letting us know Bear Down. Obviously this Pioneer firmware isn't as smart as many of us would like.

A few weeks ago I had updated my 8100NEX to v1.5 and everything seemed to be working fine. Today I used the navigation for the first time since the update and I noticed that the voice guidance was very loud and the street names were missing. The voice also says things like "Please leave highway now", which seems to be missing the article in that sentence. So I poked around and tried first to find out how to reduce the volume of the voice guidance, without much success at first. Then, by chance I noticed a new (to me) button on the right of the volume popup, I says something like "auxil

My head unit is a 8100, less than a year old. But, yes, I don't expect Pioneer to make the 8200 features available on older units, as it would keep people from shelling out money for the new units.

Are you suggesting I should ditch my head unit and invest in the new one just to get features that were promised two iterations back on the 8000NEX? I'd rather use a firmware update to get these features. Or, better, happily live without them. I just don't like to be short sold by Pioneer.

Great advise, thank you kotarou! I'll check out these forums.

@philfrompa Your post made me download and launch AppRadio Live for the first time, but I have no clue how it works. I created and account, logged in and all I see is a black window with two buttons: settings and help. Is my assumption correct that I need to plugin my iPhone for this app to work? How do you get Waze to work?

Sorry to disrupt this conversation about alternatives to Maestro RR, but I'm still looking for an answer to my original question in my first post above. I hope someone can help?

Yesterday I had my Maestro RR updated to v3.2, which promised nav and phone display on the MFI (multi function instrument) at the center of the instrument cluster of my 2013 VW Passat – the nice folks at our local BestBuy shop did the software update for free! Unfortunately neither nav nor phone info showed up after putting everything back together. So today I called the iDataLink Maestro support and asked them why it doesn't work as promised. The representative asked me, "what head unit do you have?", I said, "the Pioneer Avic 81...", he interrupted me and said, "that won't work, no

No, I don't have it anymore.

Good luck, unfortunately I can't help with that, I hope someone will be able to point you in the right direction. Hard to believe that after almost two years of waiting Pioneer released such an unfinished update.