Chaybone

Let me start out by saying that one of the key features that sold me on the Q7 was the B&O system. I simply love music, particularly like hearing it played well, and find that when I am driving is the best time for me to devote myself to really listening and enjoying my CD and DVD 5.1 audio collections (including the "rips" thereof which I put on an SD card at 320 mbps since it is the highest resolution the MMI can process). To that end, I ordered the Q7 with the B&O and recently picked it up.

While the car was great for driving right off the lot, the B&O system took a bit of tweaking to get it to sound right (at least to my ears and in my effort to make it sound as close to my home system as possible). With that in mind, I thought I would publish where I wound up with the settings since it made a HUGE difference - at least for me:

• Surround Sound: Off
• 3D: Off
• Treble: +2
• Bass: -1
• Balance: N
• Fade: 2-4 toward Rear (depending somewhat on the CD or 5.1 disc)

While it takes a minute or so to get use to having both Surround and 3D off (since they give each track an artificial boost kind of like having your TV set to "torch mode" with the colors at peak burn), I thought taking these processing filters out of the mix made it sound much cleaner, clearer, and more natural. I pass this along with the suggestion that you give it a try and see what you think if you have the B&O system. As I indicated above, just give yourself a minute or two to get use to it (just like you have to do with getting used to a properly calibrated television) and see what you think. In addition, and needless to say, please share what you find to be the best settings for you once you have played with this since everyone is different in what they hear and I by no means mean to imply that what sounds best to me is somehow "objectively correct". Just looking to share and hear feedback from others on what is truly a great system.

P.S., I found that if I played XM radio it sounded a bit better with the Treble and Bass at N. The sound of this source is pretty weak generally given its low bit-rate but this slight adjustment to the setting made it sound at least reasonable. Once again, the key was to turn Surround Sound and 3D off and take a minute or so to hear the music without the "filters".

M0J0

I am not surprised turning surround and 3D off helps. I have started making a FLAC collection. My old M3 could only do mp3. I also bucked up for the B&O even though most here say it is not worth it. I was just like screw it. I was already at 76K. I will be interested to see how it sounds.

Germanboxers

M0J0

You can rip FLAC at full resolution, but the MMI downsamples it.

Germanboxers

Chaybone

Interestingly enough, I asked this exact question to Audi of America. What they told me was that everything played through the MMI (including CDs and all media types) get played at a maximum of 320 kbits and 48kHz sampling frequency. When I go to the manual (pp 240 and 241) it states the same thing with the one exception that under the category of flac files it states that it has a 48 kHz sampling frequency but says nothing about kbits. All in all my guess is that what I was told by Audi is probably correct but it may be worth a test which I plan to do in the future.

Now with that all said, and for anyone waiting on a Q7 with B&O, my take on the system is that once it is "dialed in" it sounds great - even though I know I am currently playing both stereo and 5.1 media (i.e., SD card, CDs, and 5.1 DVD-As) at 320 kbits. My point of comparison is my home system which utilizes the Bowers & Wilkins D3 803 speakers as the fronts with matching B&W D3s for center and surrounds when I shift to 5.1. While the Q7 system doesn't sound as strong as that set up (which in fairness costs WAY more), the clarity of the sound is relatively comparable especially in the vocals - you just can't get the same level of articulation especially in the lower notes from a car system that you can from a high-end home set-up with tower speakers.

All in all, I was really hoping for something spectacular in the car's sound and feel that I got exactly that - even if it took me a few days to figure out how to make it happen. Hopefully that helps (and keeps folks from getting discouraged if flac is in fact downsampled to 320). Curious to hear if anyone else did an A/B with flac files vs other media already - especially if they randomized the samples to "go blind" and take out any bias. That is how I plan to do my test when I get some time.

Chrds

Funny, I have more or less the exact same experience as you.

Turn of all trickery (3D and surround) equals much better sound. I also have a full B&W Nautilus set as my home speakers (alithough with the smaller 804 D as fronts), and I have dialed the treble down a bit and the bass up. I also switched from 320 kps to lossless flac, and thought the quality went up, but that may be confirmation bias at play. Anyway, the sound is both very clear and loud. Great stuff, even if the B&O it is a very expensive add-on in Norway (in excess of USD 10.000).

Keep on rockin' - Chris

Germanboxers

I'm still skeptical about the downsampling for several reasons:
1.) the manual seems to suggest 320kbs max for MP3, not flac.
2.) if it was downsampled to 320kbs, it would be limited to 7 bit audio (128 discrete levels) versus CD's 16 bit (65,000 discrete levels).
3.) or would be limited to a practical frequency limit of 8 to 9 kHz if 16 bit was maintained.
4.) if they applied variable sampling and bit depth approach to downsampling on the fly, this would consume a pretty fair amount of computer resources for a car computer.

For those reasons, it seems far more likely to me that flac files are played as is, assuming the receiving clock can lock the signal which according to the manual is up to 48kHz.

Anecdotally for the few times I had a matching song, the flac files sound clearly superior to the same song played on the radio or Sirius.

Chaybone

Thanks Germanboxers; that would be great news if we can play flac files without any step-down. I will be sure to try this.

M0J0

https://www.audiworld.com/forums/aud...2899824/page2/

There are several threads on this if you search.