B&O crackling noises

Hi, totally new to the forum. I found this after searching for crackling in speakers.
I have 2014 Audi Q7, so about 9 months old now and it has the stock mmi system. I have had no issues for 8 months and then occasionally I would would get crackling from the drivers side tweeter and possibly the speaker on the dash, not very easy to tell.
I did the following:

Disconnected the tweeter in the door and this pretty much solved the crackling but I lost the clarity of treble
Reconnected the tweeter and everything was fine again for a few days...grrrr then it came back
I then wiggled wires from car to the door (above the hinge), shouldn't have done anything but it did! I now very rarely have the problem
When I do have the problem I change radio station and it vanishes! If I go back to the radio station causing the issue, it comes back but both radio stations will be playing music with both bass and treble mixed in.
I did a full frequency sweep on all the speakers via a test track and it did amazingly well from 20 HZ upwards with no distortion at all

My guess is the wiggling of wires and such did nothing and that the radio channels is broadcasting dodgy waves! I am by no means an expert but I am struggling to find any other cause.

Interesting to see if that works for anyone else.
 
If it's just a single speaker then it's a fault. As you're under warranty I'd get it sorted by a dealer. My last car blew a door speaker quite early on (chronic distortion) and was replaced without any questions.
 
Vertigo1 said:
If it's just a single speaker then it's a fault. As you're under warranty I'd get it sorted by a dealer. My last car blew a door speaker quite early on (chronic distortion) and was replaced without any questions.
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I would do ANYTHING not to have a so called "professional" Audi technician (no offence to any of them on here as I am sure there are some superb mechanics out there) screw my door panel up. Last time they snapped most of the door lugs off and split the the plastic of the liner. It was a nightmare sorting it out.

Like I say the fault vanishes when switching radio channels and isn't constant so I doubt it is the speaker.
 
I have *** in my A3 Saloon. Great clarity and
volume. No problems.
No crackling at all.
 
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Martin777 said:
I would do ANYTHING not to have a so called "professional" Audi technician (no offence to any of them on here as I am sure there are some superb mechanics out there) screw my door panel up. Last time they snapped most of the door lugs off and split the the plastic of the liner. It was a nightmare sorting it out.

Like I say the fault vanishes when switching radio channels and isn't constant so I doubt it is the speaker.
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I don't get this. Who else should work on it if its not the certified Audi mechanics at the Audi dealership?

I'm currently getting my MMI replaced on my A3 right now because same faults. Who else were I am to rely on?
 
I rely on myself doing the work in the main. If it's big stuff i.e the MMI, of course I have no choice but to use Audi, however if it's a tweeter or speaker then it takes less time to do it yourself than drive to Audi and wait for them to do it. Like I said I would anything not to use them, I didn't say I don't use them!
 
Why am I answering these stupid ****** questions about warranty work, if I want to do the work which takes all of 15 minutes rather than a round trip of 1hr 30 mins to the dealer, then that's up to me isn't it!
I simply wrote about my experience with the crackling. Bored now, leaving the forum!
 
Fair enough, didn't mean to cause any offence. Was genuinely interested to hear why you weren't letting Audi look at it. The 90 minute round trip to the nearest dealer goes someway to explaining it tho, and I hope your issue gets sorted soon.
 
mjcourtney said:
Fair enough, didn't mean to cause any offence. Was genuinely interested to hear why you weren't letting Audi look at it. The 90 minute round trip to the nearest dealer goes someway to explaining it tho, and I hope your issue gets sorted soon.
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Now you have gone and made me feel bad for ranting:anbet: Two kids kicking off this morning didn't help my mood. I do think I have sorted the issue, I was just interested to hear if anyone else had found that some DAB radio channels caused distortion (not FM channels - they are fine). Cheers.
 
Yeah given what you've said I would also be leaning towards poor quality DAB transmission, or a faulty DAB receiver in your car.
It'd be worth asking in a Q7 specific forum to see if anyone else has suffered similar issues.

From what's been said above in other posts, the crackling in the A3 Bang & Olufsen is looking like poor design integration between the MMI, Canbus and Amp - so I doubt there will ever be a quick fix for this (short of sampling music at 48khz).
 
Chappy said:
Just a quick update on this, mine has got so bad that's it's going into Audi for a minimum of a week while they try a figure out what's wrong. All parts have to be ordered from Germany but they may need it longer.
The worst song so far which if any if you want to give it a try is
Carl Orff - carmina burana: o fortuna on volume 25 minimum.
It is absolutely terrible on my system, would be interesting to hear if it sounds bad on anyone else's.

Will keep everyone posted, it's going in at the beginning of April.
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I got this song on Spotify and played it yesterday and today at volumes up in the mid 30's and (touch wood!) had no crackling.
It's not something I can say I've ever heard and I've had a number of songs up at 49 (not for long granted as its far too loud).

I've tried Bluetooth via Spotify on iPhone 6 and I have some old mp3's on an SD Card.
Wonder if something has changed recently with the 5F modules as mines is a BW50-2 car.

Are there any people getting this with cars they've collected this year?
 
elpaulio said:
Wonder if something has changed recently with the 5F modules as mines is a BW50-2 car.

Are there any people getting this with cars they've collected this year?
Click to expand...

I seriously hope so! I'm going from a MY13 with more crackle than a bowl of Rice Crispies, to a MY15 In 3 weeks time. I'd love to think the new one will be Rice Crispie free.
 
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Mine has cracking noises, I assumed it was the Bluetooth / spotify scenario causing it... Perhaps not.
 
Hey guys.
The 48khz resampling is not a serious "solution" for me.
I'm taking my car in some weeks. I'm wondering if there's any news regarding this issue.
 
I have specced B&O and am concerned. Challinor- tell me it will be alright.
 
I have the B&O from my BW47 2014 car. I tend to have it quite loud with an SD Card as my usual source. So far, not heard any crackling. Wouldn't worry about it.
 
This will be my 3rd B&O and I've never had any issues with them so far, my first point of challenge would be to review the source ie your input devises, a speaker amplifies the input so check your wires / SD connection points.

I've had an iPod die on me before too so try another device if that's your Input of choice.
 
I am in the USA and was told by AoA (Audi of America) that there would not be a fix for this forthcoming and that my only solution was to re-rip my music to 48K.
 
camoto said:
I am in the USA and was told by AoA (Audi of America) that there would not be a fix for this forthcoming and that my only solution was to re-rip my music to 48K.
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That's simply unacceptable.
 
Well, until someone takes Audi & B&O to court, they will continue to churn out crackling cars ;)

And even then it'll be a settlement agreement before it gets there.
 
It wouldn't be too difficult to run an automated batch conversion of 44.1KHz mp3s and AACs to 48KHz from, say, an iTunes library onto an SD card. Yes, there would be some drop in quality but given the noisy car environment, the lack of crackling noises should make for a much more satisfactory listening experience.
 
steverobertsbbc said:
It wouldn't be too difficult to run an automated batch conversion of 44.1KHz mp3s and AACs to 48KHz from, say, an iTunes library onto an SD card. Yes, there would be some drop in quality but given the noisy car environment, the lack of crackling noises should make for a much more satisfactory listening experience.
Click to expand...

It's not about the easiness of the process. It's about not having to lose any quality in order to have the top notch Audi audio system working properly. We spend a lot of money on this cars, and we deserve to receive an according quality systems. Are you saying we must give up and accept that ridiculous "48khz crackling free only" solution?
 
Realistically, yes. It's unlikely that you're going to get a solution from Audi or B&O. I doubt it's something fixable via a firmware upgrade.
 
I've got the same issue on my A3 with the standard MMI system (with navigation plus). Happens on bluetooth and radio but oddly it seems to be worse when someone is sat in the passenger seat. Loose connection somewhere perhaps?
 
FYI I used MediaMonkey to convert my entire music collection. It took a few hours but was very easy.
 
I thought 48khz would be a better quality than 44?
 
Symon said:
I thought 48khz would be a better quality than 44?
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Potentially it would be, except that CDs are already at 44.1, so to get them to 48KHz involves sample-rate conversion, which will degrade the quality slightly. And that's from uncompressed recordings. If you're coming from a 44.1 mp3, then you have to decode back to baseband, sample-rate convert to 48 and then re-encode to mp3. Inevitably this will result in some further loss of quality, but arguably it'll still be a better listening experience than crackles.
 
steverobertsbbc said:
Potentially it would be, except that CDs are already at 44.1, so to get them to 48KHz involves sample-rate conversion, which will degrade the quality slightly. And that's from uncompressed recordings. If you're coming from a 44.1 mp3, then you have to decode back to baseband, sample-rate convert to 48 and then re-encode to mp3. Inevitably this will result in some further loss of quality, but arguably it'll still be a better listening experience than crackles.
Click to expand...
I'm learning. I started reading about aliasing in audio earlier to try and get my head around it. Sounds like it's the aliasing caused by the 44.1khz that's causing the distortion or crackling? But I may have that totally wrong.
 
Essentially, it sounds like the B&O system is operating internally at a fixed 48KHz rate and is (badly) sample-rate converting 44.1KHz music internally, producing clicking artefacts.
 
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marshalex said:
I've got the same issue on my A3 with the standard MMI system (with navigation plus). Happens on bluetooth and radio but oddly it seems to be worse when someone is sat in the passenger seat. Loose connection somewhere perhaps?
Click to expand...

OK doesn't make any difference having anyone sat in the passenger seat (only thought that as had the missus sat there when it started playing up). Seems very intermittent and gets worse the longer the audio is playing for. Booked in @Derby Audi Thursday for a look. Hoping it's going to be a quick fix, don't want to be without it too long!
 
If my B&O sound system isn't perfect i'm going to go ape poo.
 
Well, just arrived from dealer to test the B&O system on an S5 that they arranged to make the test (it had MMI 3G).
I've used an SD card with the 750Hz tone ripped at 44.1Khz mp3 and the same file ripped at 48Khz mp3 (both at 320Kbps CBR). Glad to inform that there was NO ISSUE at all. The 44.1Khz file played perfectly clear, with no crackling noises at any volume level (I've tried volumes higher than 25; btw, who can listen to music that loud??). Of course, the 48Khz file had no issue as well.
Also, I played some normal songs ripped at 44.1Khz mp3 (320Kbps CBR) just to confirm, and they had no crackling at any volume level too. Just perfectly clear sound, and nothing else.

So... one conclusion is that the issue is NOT PRESENT in all cars/systems. I don't know if it has anything to do with the car model, or if Audi has solved the issue in the MMI units.

By the way, Audi Spain called me last week, and told me that the problem may only happen with low quality audio sources, but when using high quality ones, they had no problem reported with B&O system.
 
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