Audi A8 B&O Sound System: Officially Named "Best in Automotive World"

Congrats to Audio and Bang & Olufsen for making our commute so musical.

I think I meant to say Audi instead of Audio, but they could change their name with this incredible sound system.

Very nice.

I'm waiting for Lexus boys.

The reference surround new for the LS460 may challenge this system in next year's test. It is quite good as well.

exactly, lexus needs to learn how to build a car for someone that cares. More speakers doesnt necessarily mean more quality.

Are you saying the Mark Levinson system is better than the Bang & Olufsen system?

If so, why?

What do you think about the Rolls Royce system with 9 amplifiers, 15 speakers and two underfloor sub-woofers with 7.1 surroundsound digital processing and your butt sits in the best leather known to man in the autoworld?

i think it's better than the ls460. lol.

naturally, of course.

The new Levinson is 19 speakers and 7.1 DISCREET surround.

These guys obviously thought that B&O is better than Mark Levinson. Big deal Toyota guys, get over it. It's their opinion.

isnt the system about 6k?

Yes and worth every penny!

yes and it is beauuuuuuuutiful

more. it better be the best. in any case, nothing to do with audi. B&O is the best out there. but they are merely a supplier to audi.

AmazingBimmer, I thinks it's simply amazing how ignorant you are. You just can't stand it can you.

ABimmer: u just proved ur self a moron

Have you ever heard the system in this car? Maybe in a house, but that's COMPLETELY different. B&O designed the system exclusively for the A8, to match its accoustics and everything. It's unbelievable.

But, it's standard with a 12-speaker Bose system, and I'm not spending $6,300 extra on ours to get this.

Since this article is outdated i don't think that we can currently compare the B&O and the Mark Levinson.

I guess we'll just have to wait for the next test.

I think you Audi guys should chek this website before submitting any comments about Mark Levinson.

marklevinsonlexus.com

And besides the LS460 has got a 19-speaker sound system which has been built specially for the LS460 and with the cars interior acoustic properties in mind aswell.

MK IV

The system in the A/S8 was built specially for the car and same with the Rolls Royce system.

The Lexus system has 450 watts and the Audi system has 1000 watts, so wouldn't you think a system with more watts would be clearer sounding since you wouldn't have to turm the volume up as loud and thus the amps would produce less distortion?

The fact is, none of you would complain about any of these car audio systems when it comes to purchasing one of these cars.

Well I would imagine with amplifires of the quality in these cars the watts has very little to do with how clear the systems sound.

But, I've been playing the guitar for many years and I do know if you have a 100 watt Marshall Super Lead Plexi like Eddie Van Halen used in the old days of Van Halen, to get any distortion out of the amp you needed to crank it up all the way, but if were'nt playing an arena you would have the cops at your door because a 100 watt Marshall is equivalent to 5000 watts of solid state power.

With home or car audio you want lots of power to reproduce what was recorded as clear as a bell, and Jimi Hendrix needed as much distortion to play Voodoo Chile the way he wanted.

That depends on the type of band you play in, because if you play in a metal band then you would want tons of distortion and if you play in a very traditional country band you want a clean sound, but when you begin talking about guitar amps there are so many different types of amps that I could write a 500 page book on the subject.

If you're a guitar player that uses 7 string guitars you don't want a Marshall like Hendrix used because the amp won't cover the loweer frequency of that low B string and you want a Fender Bassman like country and blues playes like, so you buy a Diezel Herbert ot Bogner Ubershall that was designed for the detuned guitars.

Home/car audio you want it to be clear across the frequency spectrum with no drop outs or booms, you want to hear all the notes evenly and clearly.

You don't want the Fender Bassman for detuned metal because it's a 3 - 10 inch speaker amp that's good for ther Rolling Stones type of music.

MDalle, another crazy thing is you can go into a pro-recording studio in London, New York, Nashville or Los Angeles and a studio will have a couple million dollars in equipment to record music and after the tracks have been recorded, mixed, compressed and mastered the end result is a Compact Disk that cost maybe a $1.50.

I've been to the Anaheim House of Blues at Disneytown many times and when I saw Dwight Yoakam there the house PA system and the band sounded excellent, but when I saw Judas Priest they insisted the same house PA be cranked up to the max and all I heard was phase inversion, in other words the frequencies were clashing and cancelling one another out.

ACURA HAS THE BEST SOUND SYSTEM FOR THE MONEY!

i vote this the dumbest comment of the post

Who's Acura???I know this is an Audio blog,but Acura doesn't even offer a RWD vehicle or V8,so by default the Acura is not even in the same league!!!

Hey, hey, wait a minute. Don't some of you like to disregard magazine reviews because the magazines were paid off/biased for one manufacturer??? I guess this opinion changes when a magazine chooses a winner that you personally like huh???

Back to the topic - The Mark Levinson is often mentioned as the best. However why don't we wait and see for an official review to choose the winner??? But what is the fun then huh?

Here it goes:

Mark Levinson is the best!

About 3 years ago I was invited to a hotel in Irvine, Ca and in the parking lot Toyota had about 12 Avalons and they paid me a hundred bucks to sit in each car and fill out what I liked and disliked about the audio system and on some of them was the name Mark Levinson.

So you can thank me for helping Toyota in choosing which audio system would end up in the LS 460.

And I'll ya, none of you would be able to tell which of these highend systems sound better because they're all that good.

I completely agree. They're all fantastic systems- and besides bragging rights, I see no reason to opt for the B&O over the standard Bose 12-speaker in the A8. I have a ten-speaker Bose in my S4 and it's perfectly good. That's saying a lot, because Bose is hit-or-miss.

Your full of it "EL34",Toyota never offered Mark Levinson on any of their vehicles!!

Car magazines are allowed an opinion, right? If they like this system over Mark Levinson, then fine, it's their opinion.

Period. I'm done here.

A8 was pretty quiet on the road on Monday when we drove it.

Whatever.

Just give me the standard system. 12 speakers, 350 watts; that's enough.

Congratulations to Audi. Its good to win awards.

Yes, and they've won about 100 this year alone.