Not all B&O Installs are the same
 

Having an interesting couple of days with an A4 Avant while Glasgow Audi are being incompetent at diagnosing and replacing a faulty door handle sensor.

Anyways.. This A4 has a decent spec: 3G MMI (which seems really fast, possibly faster than the 3G plus in the A7) and various other buttons, but crap seats and a B&O install.

This doesn't have pop up dash speakers, or shiny grills everywhere and certainly is nowhere near as good as the A7 or D3 installs I've heard. It gets muddy and sounds frankly crap above a volume level of 20 where the A7 happily goes to 34 (don't ask why 34... I don't know either) with very little distortion, and even at that, I can't tell if it's the speakers or the blood beginning to leak from my ears (yes, it's that loud).

Anyway... Just thought you ought to know :)

Oh.. and on the A7.. the car doesn't want to lock with the rear driver's door handle when it's really rainy (not common up here at all!), they had an error from it when it was in being serviced, asked to have it for 2 days to test further, and then another day, despite me telling them exactly how to replicate the fault.. They have now had it demonstrate the fault, and despite telling me they had ordered the parts in advance just in case, I will still have to wait until Monday... Grr..

I had a three week old A4 TDI 2 weeks ago when the A8 was in for service, I thought the MMI was much of a much with the A8 but the mapping was excellent, it only had B and O which was pretty average.

Also found the flat bottom steering wheel took some time to get used to!

The auto locking on my S8 is inconsistent, need to look at that one!

I has an S4 loaner with B&O which was crap, flat, muzzy and lifeless. The car on the other hand was in every delightful way it could be, the opposite.
I can't detect any difference between the 2G & 3G MMI in my S8 & Q5

Got B&O in my company A4, it's nowhere near as good as the Bose in the RS 6. The B&O (Advanced) in the 7/8 models is much more expensive than an A3/A4 a completely different system. I'm looking forward to trying the B&O with 3D sound in the new Q7!

At moderate listening levels I find the B&O in the S5 fine. It's certainly better than the standard setup in terms of clarity and staging. It really doesn't appreciate poor quality sources either - if you're not feeding it 320kbps it doesn't sound very good at all.

Works well with DAB and loses a lot of the compressed tinny sound of FM

Given it's sold for £500 compared to the £6700 they charge on the A8 it bloody well should be worse!

I can accept that the A4 B&O might not be as good as the more expensive setup's in A8's, but it is way short of decent.
I've learned that you can't take for granted that an Audi Bang & Olufsen will be worth the money. Not great marketing that

I didn't expect it to be a8 or a7 standard, but i would say it was worse than my d3 Bose and not much better than the standard kit in my d2!

Yes, I'd agree. It barely reaches bose levels of quality in the A4/5 range and to be honest has cheapened the exclusivity of B&O.

Bummer if you pay 5K+ for B&O on your A6/7/8 and folks in A4's pay 500 notes and think they got the same thing.

The A7 is loud. Dam loud. 34 is usable, if you open the sunroof. I do miss the B&O. The Rs6 is epic, and B&O wasn't available so I can live with 'just bose', but if I ever venture near C7 RS6/7 land it will have to have B&O again, and that's gonna narrow my market somewhat +++

Glad to see you're making use of the extended warranty..... :D

Had a new A5 for a week in November (here: http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=9015 ) which had B&O. I connected my phone up and wasn't overly impressed by the system. It wasn't as good as I was hoping, but I have had a play with B&O in a new A8L which Chelmsford Audi had in their showroom while mine was being worked on and it was by far the best system I've heard in a car.