I will say up front, my hearing is not what it used to be. I'm approaching my mid-sixties (and am glad to still be hanging around, especially given my active participation in road rallies, PDS road trials, etc), however in my earlier life, I gave concert recitals, and have always thought I had an ear for sound excellence. Do any of you have any comments on the Bang & Olufsen sound system in your newer model Bimmers? I am the proud owner of an F30 335i Sportline, and the Bang & Olufsen system came standard with my vehicle. It works ok, however I am not blown away by it. I feel I am missing clarity, as I can only achieve true separation of the bass, midrange, and treble acoustic frequencies by going to either Satellite radio or my Ipod as a source, and playing either Ipod high bit rate recordings or my Satellite radio selections at a higher than normal speaking level volume. Granted, in fairness, when I access my external Ipod, this is through Bluetooth with the Ipod platform's audio file specific compression formats, and is surely possibly further impacted by my vehicle's interior layout, etc., however the Satellite radio output is what it is, and I have to say I expected more from such a loudly hyped and marketed sound system. Any comments welcome. Thank you.
Hopefully someone who's listened to the system in the car can pipe in with some thoughts - perhaps see if others hear the differences you do; might be interesting if a teenager or someone with (presumably) fairly acute hearing can or can't hear at lower volume levels the differentiation you're hearing at higher volume levels. Don't know the specifics of the system to know weak points - these guys ( http://www.bavsound.com/ ) appear to focus on providing better speakers, which is certainly a critical part of the component chain, although that only goes so far if, say, the amp output quality is sub-par. Source quality is certainly important for critical listening & comparisons - any sound compression (.mp3, etc.) is inherently compromised, although hi-bitrate compressed recordings might take a really trained ear (&, possibly, higher-end audio gear or better listening environment than a car) to hear differences from an uncompressed source file. In any case, a good-sounding cd or uncompressed sound file might be good for listening tests.
