One of the cars that I am looking at is a 2011 Vantage S. It is in Las Vegas. White with blue interior and 28,950 miles.
I thought that I saw a negative post recently concerning the B&O radio. Any thoughts on the radio and has anyone seen the car in person ? It isn't practical for me to travel there from Ohio and I wouldn't want to ship it here and be disappointed. Thanks.

 

 

I've never heard the Premium audio which I'm sure is very nice itself, for alot cheaper. For $7650 the B&O is 13 speakers of heaven. And who doesn't love when the little mushroom tweeters emerge from the dash when you turn it on?!

 

You would love the radio, but might not like the blue interior.

 

Astons do not need radios. Listen to the engine!!!

 

 

I've had both the Premium system (V8V and V12V) and the B&O system (current V12VS).

Both are excellent for OEM car audio, but the Premium system is slightly better IMO. It is also more adjustable. The B&O is pretty, but it is not worth the huge price from new. Used on the other hand, there probably isn't much of a price difference.

As for SACDs, come on. It's a car (and a noisy one at that), not your living room. I can barely tell the difference between streamed Bluetooth content from my phone and 320 mp3's off a USB stick when driving my car, never mind lossless audio. Radio on the other hand, yeah, that's pretty awful, but nothing new there!

 

The B&O system is nice in my Rapide and equally nice in my buddy's BMW 750. I can't think of a car that has a B&O system that is not good.

I had the premium system in my Vantage. Was pretty good, the most cool part was how hard pounding the subwoofer is. It's right behind the driver's seat and can break a kidney stone!

 

The B&O is great in mine, best system I've ever owned that was an OEM fitment in the car

x2 on the source, Sat radio sounds worse to me than my local radio stations

I use an AUX cord as I'm too lazy to go through the motions of enabling a BT setup

 

I suspect you're all tone deaf....

There isn't a good sounding stereo in an AML car. There are a number of aspects that you judge in a car HiFi, Tonal Accuracy & Spectral Balance, Sound Stage, Imaging, Linearity and Noise. I think they have a reasonable noise floor.
1 out of 6. Brill.

The standard 160w audio does the job of making some sound but has a huge mid bass hole and no attack.

Premium system built by Alpine and sounds OK but still suffers from the mid bass hole and lack of attack. It does however, have some spectral balance and tonal accuracy. That's because the tweeters are smooth and the tweeter and 4" blend well together. No driver bigger than the 4" before the sub takes over is the cause of the lack of mid punch. Having an equaliser helps tune the sound.

B&O has better frequency response than the others but the sound is deeply flawed with awful sounding highs and the imagery is the worst I've experienced in some time.

Let me explain myself as best as I can for you. To get a sound that mimics a live performance, you need to be able to recreate the frequencies and energy that such a sound requires. This means you need speakers/drivers that cover the frequency range and deliver sound pressure levels that are balanced and smooth. Each of the drivers deliver a portion of that sound, but only the sum of them all deliver music. The very best systems have multiple drivers that cover the entire range and deliver that from a single point source.
Those sources will have positions that allow your ears to define left and right with accuracy. Listening the very best systems that produce an accurate sound stage will allow you to actually point at an instrument or performer. for example, drums behind, guitar on the left, singer on the right. If you've never been able to do that, you've not heard a good system.

In the premium and standard equipped cars, you have a tweeter in the door, a 4" driver next to it and a sub in the back. Errr, WTF? Mid bass? Nah, you dont need that, just crank the sub... Imagery? The drivers side speakers are as close to the driver as possible and the far side one as far away as they can. Might aswell be a mono system. Getting speakers with as equal path length as you can or time alignment is the only way to achieve a good image.

In comes B&O. Lets put a mid bass driver in coz otherwise it sounds poo and a cool motorised tweeter in the dash. Great! But why in the hell did they fit the mid in the centre tunnel facing outwards? Probably to get the imagery as bad as humanly possible. Then to make sure that all three drivers are as far apart as possible to give a disjointed sound. Awesome!
What they did do right was enclose the drivers in boxes to tighten them up, get the tweeters far away and used active crossovers. Oh, and the coolest motorised tweeters to watch! They might sound harsh, but they are soooo cool!

Take your home HiFi. Lets put one speaker next to your elbow and the other one at the other side of the couch. Then lets put the tweeters on top of the speaker cabinets and the mid range at the bottom, but on the side facing the wrong way so you block the far side mid bass by the couch. Stick a nice B&O badge on it and charge $5k for it.
One of the problems caused by making a car beautiful, then handing it to an engineer and asking "make it work" instead of an engineer handing the designer a car and asking "make it beautiful".....

There is no way to make the sound great with the stock speaker positions. You can make it sound OK to good.
Firstly, the speakers are all quite cheap paper cone drivers. Crossovers are just capacitance filters unless you have B&O which uses active crossovers (3.5khz tweeter crossover if you wondered).
Changing drivers to ones that can deliver more punch will do wonders for any drum tracks you like to listen to on all the systems. If you have premium or standard audio, change the 4" and tweeter for something with dedicated crossovers and preferably a nice silk dome tweeter. The proximity of the tweeter will always make the sound harsh unless you smooth it out. Silk dome are smoother than metallics.
Don't use surround. 3 channel setup will enhance the centre stage but at the cost of attack.
You can do a lot more, but the outlay will be much higher than the return on your investment. If you're REALLY into your music, I'd recommend leaving it alone and spend that money on a nice Naim system at home.


Brent (ex IASCA judge and nationals winner)

 

I had the premium in my 2007 Vantage. The sound quality was good for me. Until I bought my 2016 Vantage GT, with B&O stereo. Would I have ordered my GT with the B&O stereo for $ 8000? Probably not. However I must say I am glad that I have the B&O stereo. I am not a hug audiophile, but the sound quality is fantastic.
Ron

 

Those pics are just unadulterated car ****.......

 

divetheworld, good explanation on the short comings of car audio, in general. There aren't many cars where the OEM speaker placement is scrutinized to address those things.

There also isn't a lot of room in a Vantage cabin to begin with, so you aren't going to have a lot of room for any music to "breath" so to speak.

 

Had B&O on my past V12S - now I don't on the current one - sorely miss it.

 

If not just for looks it is worth it; looks the 007 part. BMW has one pop up tweeter, Aston has two!