Playback not active (no sound on MBUX)
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Junior Member
Joined: Aug 2025
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2024 E450 (W214)
Playback not active (no sound on MBUX)
I don’t normally use apple CarPlay but switched over to it today to check a message and now my audio won’t play. Whenever I try to turn up the volume on the radio or Spotify it says “playback not active”. There are no click sounds. “Hey Mercedes” doesn’t work. I’ve disconnected CarPlay, disconnected and reconnected Bluetooth, turned the car on and off several times, tried every YouTube “reset mbux” trick but nothing resets and no sound comes out. Any ideas that don’t wipe out every setting and customization I have?
Senior Member
Joined: May 2025
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I don’t normally use apple CarPlay but switched over to it today to check a message and now my audio won’t play. Whenever I try to turn up the volume on the radio or Spotify it says “playback not active”. There are no click sounds. “Hey Mercedes” doesn’t work. I’ve disconnected CarPlay, disconnected and reconnected Bluetooth, turned the car on and off several times, tried every YouTube “reset mbux” trick but nothing resets and no sound comes out. Any ideas that don’t wipe out every setting and customization I have?
The only issue I have with CarPlay, is that sometimes after an iOS upgrade, Apple Maps doesn't give voice commands. I have to unmute CarPlay maps by clicking on the mute button on the CarPlay screen on the top left. Apple made a questionable design choice of having the mute button go away in a few seconds after the route is selected. Apple could have the mute icon go away if not muted, but they should leave the mute icon showing if CarPlay maps is muted. With the Apple Maps issue it only mutes the Maps voice. That issue was hard to figure out since the other CarPlay apps had sound and the mute icon is now only on the car's display, and it quickly goes away.
I am guessing that by trying CarPlay, the "source" is now CarPlay and for some reason the source is not changing back to the other sound sources. Therefore, don't concentrate on CarPlay and Bluetooth but see if you can use the other apps to get MBUX to recognize them as the sound source.
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I have not seen the "playback not active" message. Today, I was comparing Atmos and stereo tracks by using the Amazon Music app in CarPlay and the native Mercedes Amazon Music app and the sound turned off. The car sound system is pretty good at automatically switching sources. It's a big improvement over the Mercedes from 10 years ago when I had to change sources manually. However, sometimes MBUX gets confused when going back and forth between sources and turns the sound off even if one source continues to "play." I've been able to get the system to play sound again, but am not sure how other than to switch sources and wait a bit.
Senior Member
Joined: May 2025
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Today, I tried to play some music from a connected USB drive. The song was progressing, but no sound was being played. I was able to play music on CarPlay. I also tried playing music on XM, which would also show that it was playing but no sound was coming out.
I tried to switch sources in the MBUX screens but wasn't successful.
I then said, "Hey Mercedes, set media source to USB" and "Hey Mercedes, set media source to XM." Those commands worked and music started playing from the USB drive and XM Radio respectively.
There does appear to be a bug in the E-Class entertainment system where you play music in one source, but the system thinks that the source is still CarPlay and so no music is played. The workaround that worked for me is to use the "Hey Mercedes" verbal command to change the media source to the one you want to listen to.
I tried to switch sources in the MBUX screens but wasn't successful.
I then said, "Hey Mercedes, set media source to USB" and "Hey Mercedes, set media source to XM." Those commands worked and music started playing from the USB drive and XM Radio respectively.
There does appear to be a bug in the E-Class entertainment system where you play music in one source, but the system thinks that the source is still CarPlay and so no music is played. The workaround that worked for me is to use the "Hey Mercedes" verbal command to change the media source to the one you want to listen to.
MBWorld Fanatic!
Joined: Aug 2014
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From: Tennessee
W214 E450
Today, I tried to play some music from a connected USB drive. The song was progressing, but no sound was being played. I was able to play music on CarPlay. I also tried playing music on XM, which would also show that it was playing but no sound was coming out.
I tried to switch sources in the MBUX screens but wasn't successful.
I then said, "Hey Mercedes, set media source to USB" and "Hey Mercedes, set media source to XM." Those commands worked and music started playing from the USB drive and XM Radio respectively.
There does appear to be a bug in the E-Class entertainment system where you play music in one source, but the system thinks that the source is still CarPlay and so no music is played. The workaround that worked for me is to use the "Hey Mercedes" verbal command to change the media source to the one you want to listen to.
I tried to switch sources in the MBUX screens but wasn't successful.
I then said, "Hey Mercedes, set media source to USB" and "Hey Mercedes, set media source to XM." Those commands worked and music started playing from the USB drive and XM Radio respectively.
There does appear to be a bug in the E-Class entertainment system where you play music in one source, but the system thinks that the source is still CarPlay and so no music is played. The workaround that worked for me is to use the "Hey Mercedes" verbal command to change the media source to the one you want to listen to.
I still have an issue with playing USB music but got an update the other day Germany Engineering found the issue and are working on a fix. No ETA though. Perhaps the eventual update will fix several bugs with the MBUX media player sub-system. 🤷
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I hope it is an easy fix like touching the play icon in any music app switches the source to that app. Even if that isn't the "true" fix, it might be easy to implement that quickly. It is also likely that the "real" fix is a few lines of code somewhere in the source changing code. If engineering has identified the root cause, they should be able to fix it quickly.
Car manufacturers need to move to software releases every two weeks or faster. Until they do, Mercedes might fix the bug tomorrow, but do a rolling update months from now.
