Lack of power is your problem - the B&O system comes with an external amp, all other options rely on the (weedy) head unit output, which is going to be the limiting factor.
Thank you for such an extensive reply, I suppose I should just be happy with what I’ve got? ((B+O with Alpine sub box)Depends what you are expecting to achieve as to whether this is a worth while expenditure of your time and money. If you have a good home sound system (i.e. not Sonos or Bose, but rather a Hi-Fi seperates system comprising of good brands such as Elac, Linn, B&W, Tannoy etc) - then you are really going to struggle to ever achieve the kind of audio quality you can achieve through these systems. You can match them on outright volume, and you can get a lot of bass (but low in quality). But you are not going to achieve the clear stereo soundfield, the clarity, the timbre and imaging.
The car is an inherently terrible place to try to establish good sound quality. Practically everything about a car is working against you. The doors where the speaker drivers are mounted are flexible, even in a good quality car like an audi. Push on the door panel and it will move. The same happens when you push a speaker hard, much of the energy will go into flexing the door panel rather than moving the speaker cone. This is very undesirable. There is a reason expensive speakers have large, heavy, solid enclosures. The doors are also obviously not designed or braced properly to be a speaker, there are all sorts of bad, crazy vibrations, standing waves and pressure variances inside the door when speakers are running. In the best in car audio systems such as in Rolls Royce's, Bentleys, or even the Audi A8 , they try and alleviate this to some extent by having a dedicated speaker driver enclosure for every speaker driver in the car(which is partly why the B&O in that car costs £5k), this helps a lot as opposed to freely suspending the speaker drivers in the door panel as per 99% of car audio systems including the B9's B&O system.
This is not to mention the lack of clean power supply from a car, the vibrations from poorly fitting door panels, the lack of anywhere good to place the speakers in a proper stereo configuration, the resonance from the car's body, the vibration from the engine and road, the interference from all the other electronics in the car.. the list goes on and on. You can have a good sounding system in a car by spending a lot of money, but you can probably match the bespoke audio system in a Rolls Royce for 1/10th the price with a home system, and it will still be better than the Rolls Royce system in some ways. So if you have an appreciation for all of the above, then the cheapest and simplest options is to not even try, because achieving anything great will be extremely expensive and difficult.
If all you want is something "pretty decent" that will go loud and not distort, then you can reasonably expect to achieve that by just upgrading the car amplifier, throw in some decent after market speakers and add a bunch more anti vibration and sound insulating material to the door panels.
I say all that having ordered the B&O myself. There is no way I am going to attempt a custom audio job myself, and the B&O should atleast provide passable audio quality. Some here do not seem content with it, but I suspect atleast one of the following is true: They are choosing a bad audio source 2) They are using low bit rate files 3) They have not allowed 50+ hours for the system to bed in 4) They do not know what true Hi Fi actually sounds like, and prefer smiley face EQ'd consumer speakers like Bose where there is a whole lot of bass and not a lot else.
Or maybe the B&O system really does suck, I will found out soon enough
Well I've let them "run in" for 40hours plus. I don't turn the bass up on the speakers they stay on 0, I have volume around 3/7 times!? - ouch. Do you drive them quite hard ? I like music fairly loud but I rarely go much past half volume as it begins to sound quite bad, at least with my current car system. Certainly hoping I don't go through 7 speakers...
It sounds like you prefer more bass than I do, so I will probably be more than happy with the B&O bass output.
I think the 10 speaker system is acceptable up to about 50% volume. After that it distorts quite badly. My Leon also has door cards rattling, especially the passenger side. I tend to avoid it by not listening to really bass heavy tracks. I like pretty much all genres of music, from Drum & Bass to Dance, to classical and jazz music. I try and focus on the latter two while in the car to avoid too much rattling. Normally I am more than happy to listen to laid back music like that as i'm stressed from work and bad traffic lol!
Neither did I when I took the doorscard off was really surprised.
... the B&O and Audi Sound System in the A4 B9 use ASK Groups base model speakers called the "Standard" range. Surprise surprise, when you look at the £5k system in the Audi A6 upwards, it uses speakers from ASK Group too, but this time their "Premium" range.
So I did some digging... B&O have little to nothing to do with the B&O systems in Audi cars. With the exception of providing their special tweeters in the A6/7/8 that rise up from the dash, none of the other speakers in the car are designed or manufactured by B&O.
All the speakers in Audi's cars are manufactured by a company called ASK Group from Poland, from the standard systems, to Audi Sound System, to B&O.
More bad news, the speakers in the B&O and Audi Sound System are basically the same. I matched pictures of the speakers from the Audi system to the B&O and compared them to the speaker pictures on the ASK manufacturers site. They use the same line and grade speakers, with the exception of the front two woofers. So when you upgrade to B&O, here is what you pay for: Two presumably slightly better speaker units in the front door, and then 9 additional smaller speakers that are the exact same as the ones in the Audi Sound System, and from what I can tell, even the base system. Then you get a better amplifier too.
Even more bad news
So the reason the B&O sounds "better" than the Audi Sound System is this: They use more of the same base model speaker from ASK Group, and a more powerful amplifier. You do not get actually better quality & design speakers (other than perhaps the two in the front door - but I can't verify they are better, just different). But by having more speakers and a more powerful amplifier, it just allows them to push less power to each speaker to achieve the same overall sound pressure level (volume) in the car. There is one clear advantage with this, the less power you have to drive each speaker to get to a certain volume, the less distortion there will be. Speakers distort when they reach their maximum excursion and start clipping, and 'slapping'. By having more speakers you can move each individual one less, resulting in less distortion for any given volume over the lower end speaker systems.
I imagine this is replicated across the entire automotive industry. Ever wondered why high end car audio systems have 20 + speaker drivers ? well now you know. They can achieve high volume and low distortion while still using relatively cheap speaker drivers. This is probably easier and cheaper for them to implement than actually upgrading the speaker drivers themselves. There are companies like Accuton and Dynaudio that sell car speakers that cost around £1000 per unit (though car manufacturers would get a bulk deal). I would be interested to see if any of the high end car companies like Bentley go down this route with actual high quality speakers rather than quantity over quality.
http://www.askgroup.it/speakers
Personally I'd rather save a few hundred quid and have the same system without a B&O badge. All it means is B&O get a cut because their marketing department approved it!So I did some digging... B&O have little to nothing to do with the B&O systems in Audi cars. With the exception of providing their special tweeters in the A6/7/8 that rise up from the dash, none of the other speakers in the car are designed or manufactured by B&O.
All the speakers in Audi's cars are manufactured by a company called ASK Group from Poland, from the standard systems, to Audi Sound System, to B&O.
More bad news, the speakers in the B&O and Audi Sound System are basically the same. I matched pictures of the speakers from the Audi system to the B&O and compared them to the speaker pictures on the ASK manufacturers site. They use the same line and grade speakers, with the exception of the front two woofers. So when you upgrade to B&O, here is what you pay for: Two presumably slightly better speaker units in the front door, and then 9 additional smaller speakers that are the exact same as the ones in the Audi Sound System, and from what I can tell, even the base system. Then you get a better amplifier too.
Even more bad news
So the reason the B&O sounds "better" than the Audi Sound System is this: They use more of the same base model speaker from ASK Group, and a more powerful amplifier. You do not get actually better quality & design speakers (other than perhaps the two in the front door - but I can't verify they are better, just different). But by having more speakers and a more powerful amplifier, it just allows them to push less power to each speaker to achieve the same overall sound pressure level (volume) in the car. There is one clear advantage with this, the less power you have to drive each speaker to get to a certain volume, the less distortion there will be. Speakers distort when they reach their maximum excursion and start clipping, and 'slapping'. By having more speakers you can move each individual one less, resulting in less distortion for any given volume over the lower end speaker systems.
I imagine this is replicated across the entire automotive industry. Ever wondered why high end car audio systems have 20 + speaker drivers ? well now you know. They can achieve high volume and low distortion while still using relatively cheap speaker drivers. This is probably easier and cheaper for them to implement than actually upgrading the speaker drivers themselves. There are companies like Accuton and Dynaudio that sell car speakers that cost around £1000 per unit (though car manufacturers would get a bulk deal). I would be interested to see if any of the high end car companies like Bentley go down this route with actual high quality speakers rather than quantity over quality.
http://www.askgroup.it/speakers
