OFFICIAL Vehicles with Factory Surround Systems

[dobyblue]

Awesome! I probably should have looked at the first page of the thread lol

 

[dobyblue]

In the current Acuras is Panasonic just doing the speakers or the head unit also? And is the sub the first thing you’d want to upgrade?

 

[Cygnus_X1]

Have you determined whether it's just reading the FL/FR from the 5.1 FLAC or can you create a 5.1 FLAC with 10 seconds material in each channel one at a time and hear it circle around the car properly?

It's interesting, Charlie at DM Motors/Sound tested the B&O in two different Audi's using 5.1 FLAC files. They both passed the 5-channel test but had a weird problem with the LFE subwoofer channel. You can see the review here.

 

[Cygnus_X1]

Well, I tested the B&O in an Acura ZDX today. It sounds really good, on par with the ELS. However, I could not get it to play discrete 5.1, no matter how I changed the settings. The rear channels would keep playing through the back and front speakers. An MDX with the ELS played it perfectly btw. Unless I was doing something wrong, it looks like we're losing that feature. I look forward to seeing more test of the B&O system in Acuras.

 

[svtmike]

2017 Audi A4 with Bang & Olufsen MMI system - plays FLAC files off of SD/USB. Supports 2.0, 5.0, 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1.

The Atmos mixes (ripped from BluRay) of PG's i/o, SW's THC, and PJ's DM all sound great in 7.1 from the driver's seat. The heights are treated as sides.

4.0 does not work correctly - seems like it treats the file as a 3.1. Easily worked around in Audacity by putting in a silent front center channel to make the file a 5.0.

 

[dobyblue]

Can do the centre thing even more quickly from the "Remix Channel Layout" module in MMH:
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...ls-for-multichannel-audio-music-videos.22693/

 

[marpow]

2017 Audi A4 with Bang & Olufsen MMI system - plays FLAC files off of SD/USB. Supports 2.0, 5.0, 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1.

The Atmos mixes (ripped from BluRay) of PG's i/o, SW's THC, and PJ's DM all sound great in 7.1 from the driver's seat. The heights are treated as sides.

4.0 does not work correctly - seems like it treats the file as a 3.1. Easily worked around in Audacity by putting in a silent front center channel to make the file a 5.0.

Great.
I am not sure what all your abbreviations mean, PJ's and DM (Downmix).
Anyway I find interesting.
Your Audi plays 7.1?
I built a 5.1 in my car (2021 Dodge Challenger), sounds fantastic, but I have to reformat a lot of titles. I have yet to try an Atmos recording to see how it sounds in my 5.1.
My multichannel 4.0 and 5.1 SACD's I reformat to 24bit/44.1Khz, seems to be best.
The stereo SACD's I do not need to reformat as long as they are no larger than DSD64.
I use a Cambridge CXU Universal Player as the source with a AC/DC convertor for power.
My player on my PC is JRiver and there is a function called Convert Format, super simple and fast, and you do not lose the original file.

 

[dobyblue]

Great.
I am not sure what all your abbreviations mean, PJ's and DM (Downmix).
Anyway I find interesting.
Your Audi plays 7.1?
I built a 5.1 in my car (2021 Dodge Challenger), sounds fantastic, but I have to reformat a lot of titles. I have yet to try an Atmos recording to see how it sounds in my 5.1.
My multichannel 4.0 and 5.1 SACD's I reformat to 24bit/44.1Khz, seems to be best.
The stereo SACD's I do not need to reformat as long as they are no larger than DSD64.
I use a Cambridge CXU Universal Player as the source with a AC/DC convertor for power.
My player on my PC is JRiver and there is a function called Convert Format, super simple and fast, and you do not lose the original file.

Pearl Jam's Dark Matter (Atmos Blu-ray)

 

[svtmike]

Great.
I am not sure what all your abbreviations mean, PJ's and DM (Downmix).
Anyway I find interesting.
Your Audi plays 7.1?
I built a 5.1 in my car (2021 Dodge Challenger), sounds fantastic, but I have to reformat a lot of titles. I have yet to try an Atmos recording to see how it sounds in my 5.1.
My multichannel 4.0 and 5.1 SACD's I reformat to 24bit/44.1Khz, seems to be best.
The stereo SACD's I do not need to reformat as long as they are no larger than DSD64.
I use a Cambridge CXU Universal Player as the source with a AC/DC convertor for power.
My player on my PC is JRiver and there is a function called Convert Format, super simple and fast, and you do not lose the original file.

Sorry for that- Peter Gabriel's i/o, Steven Wilson's The Harmony Codex, and Pearl Jam's Dark Matter.

I was very surprised that it correctly supports the 7.1 FLACs.

 

[thalter]

Mercedes-Benz doesn't seem to be getting much love in this thread, so allow me to expand on the Mercedes COMMAND 5.0 system, used in most Mercedes-Benz vehicles from around 2014 to around 2020. In my particular case, it is paired with the Harman/Kardon Logic 7 Surround Sound system in my 2019 SLC roadster.

While the system supports audio playback from the SD card slot in a variety of formats (WMA, AC3, MP4, but notably not FLAC), none of these formats support playback of 5.1 encoded media. You either get silence, or the audio gets folded down to stereo.

5.1 surround sound appears to be only supported by the DVD drive. The good news is that both DVD-V (using PCM, DTS, and AC3 encoding) and DVD-A are supported.

One final tip is that you will want to know is to turn off the Logic 7 expander. While it does a resonable job of expanding stereo audio to surround sound, it is not smart enough to know when you are listening to true 5.1 content, and will therefore try to apply its "fake" surround sound algorithm unnecessarily to 5.1 audio.

 

[cbmmm3]

I see the new Lotus Eletra comes complete with a KEF Dolby Atmos system. Its an SUV. Its 900 horsepower. 0 to 62 in 2.95 seconds.
And only 230 grand. Waiter - Ill take two. lol

 

[ddahl44]

FYI Turo rental Integra A-spec 2024 - FLAC 5.1 not recognized by USB

 

[Cygnus_X1]

FYI Turo rental Integra A-spec 2024 - FLAC 5.1 not recognized by USB

That's weird, my 2022 Acura MDX sees them just fine. Make sure your USB stick is formatted to FAT32.
One weird thing I ran into was when I converted 5.1 DTS files to 5.1 FLAC using VLC Media Player, if I kept the original DTS WAV file and encapsulated it in the FLAC file, it wouldn't work. I had to do a full conversion to FLAC to make them work.
One other problem I had when I tested a 2025 MDX with the USB-C port. I tried using a USB-A stick with a USB A-C converter and it would not read it. I had to buy a USB-C stick before it worked. I wasn't a fan of the B&O system so I got a 2022 MDX with ELS. The Acura systems can be pretty picky so you have to troubleshoot to figure out what works and what doesn't. Good luck to you.

 

[ProgRules]

Mercedes-Benz doesn't seem to be getting much love in this thread, so allow me to expand on the Mercedes COMMAND 5.0 system, used in most Mercedes-Benz vehicles from around 2014 to around 2020. In my particular case, it is paired with the Harman/Kardon Logic 7 Surround Sound system in my 2019 SLC roadster.

While the system supports audio playback from the SD card slot in a variety of formats (WMA, AC3, MP4, but notably not FLAC), none of these formats support playback of 5.1 encoded media. You either get silence, or the audio gets folded down to stereo.

5.1 surround sound appears to be only supported by the DVD drive. The good news is that both DVD-V (using PCM, DTS, and AC3 encoding) and DVD-A are supported.

One final tip is that you will want to know is to turn off the Logic 7 expander. While it does a resonable job of expanding stereo audio to surround sound, it is not smart enough to know when you are listening to true 5.1 content, and will therefore try to apply its "fake" surround sound algorithm unnecessarily to 5.1 audio.

Thanks for this info @thalter. I'm looking at a 2015 C350 which I plan to pick up Friday. The system sounds great, but just as you said it's much better with surround discs with Logic 7 off. Kind of a chore to access things on a DVD-V though...

One strange thing I found- when playing DD off a DVD, when I cut off Logic 7, there's no sound. It has to be on to play the disc. This doesn't happen with DTS- either on a DVD-V or a DTS-CD (which I was glad played, as they don't specifically mention this in the O/M). Does your system act this way?

 

[thalter]

Thanks for this info @thalter. I'm looking at a 2015 C350 which I plan to pick up Friday. The system sounds great, but just as you said it's much better with surround discs with Logic 7 off. Kind of a chore to access things on a DVD-V though...

One strange thing I found- when playing DD off a DVD, when I cut off Logic 7, there's no sound. It has to be on to play the disc. This doesn't happen with DTS- either on a DVD-V or a DTS-CD (which I was glad played, as they don't specifically mention this in the O/M). Does your system act this way?

I've never experienced the problem you describe, @ProgRules. I assume you are burning your own discs? Unfortunately, there are so many things that can go wrong with the encoding, bitrates, muxing, authoring, etc., that the problem could be just about anything. I author all my titles with just a single AC3 audio track (448 kbps) to make sure there is no possibility the wrong audio track being played back. I haven't really experimented with DTS, as none of the open-source DTS encoders I've seen are all that good, and you are not going to notice any difference in audio quality between AC3 and DTS in a car anyway.

Also, I did not know about the DTS-CD capability - good to know. I've had mixed success with burned DVD-A - for some reason it will often only play the first 10 seconds of each track and then stop. So I've stuck with DVD-V: You can jam a lot more content on a DVD-V (especially dual-layer), and again you are not going to notice the sound difference between a DVD-A and DVD-V in a car.

You are correct about the menu navigation being terrible. I usually burn my DVDs either without a menu at all, or a very minimal menu. I author each album as a single title, with each song being a separate chapter. This allows for gapless playback, and easy navigation between songs (forward and backwards). Without any menu, the disc starts playing automatically as soon as you insert it, which is convenient, but it can be difficult to navigate between titles. On discs with a lot of albums, I will sometimes create a very basic menu (single screen with a link to each album/title).

 

[ProgRules]

I've never experienced the problem you describe, @ProgRules. I assume you are burning your own discs? Unfortunately, there are so many things that can go wrong with the encoding, bitrates, muxing, authoring, etc., that the problem could be just about anything. I author all my titles with just a single AC3 audio track (448 kbps) to make sure there is no possibility the wrong audio track being played back. I haven't really experimented with DTS, as none of the open-source DTS encoders I've seen are all that good, and you are not going to notice any difference in audio quality between AC3 and DTS in a car anyway.

Also, I did not know about the DTS-CD capability - good to know. I've had mixed success with burned DVD-A - for some reason it will often only play the first 10 seconds of each track and then stop. So I've stuck with DVD-V: You can jam a lot more content on a DVD-V (especially dual-layer), and again you are not going to notice the sound difference between a DVD-A and DVD-V in a car.

You are correct about the menu navigation being terrible. I usually burn my DVDs either without a menu at all, or a very minimal menu. I author each album as a single title, with each song being a separate chapter. This allows for gapless playback, and easy navigation between songs (forward and backwards). Without any menu, the disc starts playing automatically as soon as you insert it, which is convenient, but it can be difficult to navigate between titles. On discs with a lot of albums, I will sometimes create a very basic menu (single screen with a link to each album/title).

No, these are all commercially released discs. Wierd that DD won't work w/o Logic 7 but I've only played around a little while looking pre-sale; picking it up shortly. Perhaps something else is going on.

Thanks for the info on burned discs; I will get there eventually and appreciate the heads-up.