Best Factory Audio Systems?

[Frank Dernie]

An EV with a silent sealed cabin and multiple drivers / multi-channel with advanced dsp including timing etc.

They should achieve more! I mean, we are not going to get high end 2 channel dedicted room type sound, but a lot of potential is there.

The old paradigm of engine/road noise and poor accoustic treatment with limited speaker positioing should now be overcome.

One of our cars is a BYD with Dynaudio speakers and Dirac tune. It sounds quite nice, a lot is probably due to the quiter background. Still can not do bass right, but we have solved that in our homes with multiple sources/subs, dirac ART, cardioid etc.

Not really.
Road noise dominates low frequencies and is at a high level so the standard get around of excessive bass boost is still necessary.
The drive units are still constrained to be in completrely wrong places relative to the listeners. Coax speakers help, and have been around in cars audio mods for decades and DSP helps a lot to make it "nice" but still lipstick on a pig.

 

[Arindal]

I compared the standard system to the Bose option, which has some DSP and surround sound offerings, and the standard system was less coloured and had a fairly even frequency response so was non-irritating listening to speech and chose that.

Interesting. I had a similar impression, when comparing top-notch B&O system to standard stereo in Audi A7. That was not the case with Porsche Panamera, though, in which the standard system was somehow colorated, and the expensive Burmester delivered quite a neutral reproduction.

I really like the standard audio in 2025 BMW 420i coupe - they nailed it and glad did not look for upgrades.

Did you listen to the H/K in comparison? Usually, in BMWs these are extraordinarily good for the money.

 

[Frank Dernie]

the expensive Burmester delivered quite a neutral reproduction.

For £4k extra it should! but I don't consider a car to be a place to listen seriously to music, so uncoloured speech is more important to me and I spent the money on rear wheel steer, torque vectoring and active anti-roll bars instead

 

[agiletiger]

I have a BMW with the H/K upgrade in it. I did some tweaking based on what others have done both on here and the Bimmer forum. Got it to a point that I’m happy with.

I travel for work a lot and have used a lot of different ones. Only two really stand out for me: Mercedes Benz with Burmester and Genesis with Meridian. And then, there’s a crowded and distant second place where you find just about everyone else including my BMW.

EV’s may be quieter but I’ve heard my share of mediocre systems in them. The one in my wife’s Nissan Ariya is one of the worst. Mustang Mach E is not great.

It also has become much more difficult to customize the newer all screen cars. On my last car, I replaced all the speakers, added an amp, and replaced the head unit with one that had a powerful DSP - did auto calibration for the timing alignment and levels. Thats the only thing I miss about that car!

 

[pablolie]

Back in the day, to me the Scandinavian brands (Volvo, Saab) had the best systems. But I am pretty much happy with anything that's in a car, it's such a flawed environment that my expectations are always quite low. And as soon as you're doing 60 mile per hour, even a Rolls will be too noisy to truly enjoy audio (unless one uses NC headphones).

 

[terfenol-D]

Volvo XC90 with the B&W system was by far the best car stereo I’ve ever had…too bad the rest of the car was a dumpster fire.

The mark levinson in my wife’s previous generation RX350 is excellent however most reviews of current gen Lexus indicate the mark levinson is not worth. Sadly Lexus seems to be cutting a lot of corners in their current gen vehicles.

 

[Head_Unit]

Question: is the audio system actually designed and manufactured by the company named, or is it just a marketing partnership with a "brand name" slapped on to the components while the actual system is designed and made by somebody else?

A company I worked for supplied speakers for the Ford-"JBL" sound system. It was totally a marketing partnership, Ford could get stuff from any vendor who met the spec. System I like are a 2020?? Tesla Model Y I was driving for a month, and a Kia EV6 2024. And NOTHING ever from BMW, not even a 750iL I was driving for some weeks.

 

[Head_Unit]

And as soon as you're doing 60 mile per hour, even a Rolls will be too noisy to truly enjoy audio (unless one uses NC headphones).

Well, that depends on your living conditions. I'm blessed with a pretty quiet house, but many folks are in noisy environments and/or have immediate neighbors so they can't turn it up even moderately loud. In those cases, the car can be BETTER (especially EVs)

 

[MatrixS2000]

2.0L inline 4 cylinder + 9000 RPM redline + 6 speed short throw manual transmission + Invidia exhaust + a few other “things” = mechanical music is off the scale…my car stereo = off!

 

[pablolie]

2.0L inline 4 cylinder + 9000 RPM redline + 6 speed short throw manual transmission + Invidia exhaust + a few other “things” = mechanical music is off the scale…my car stereo = off!

... S2000... so much fun!

 

[pablolie]

Well, that depends on your living conditions. I'm blessed with a pretty quiet house, but many folks are in noisy environments and/or have immediate neighbors so they can't turn it up even moderately loud. In those cases, the car can be BETTER (especially EVs)

I could never live in place that's noisier than a car - even a Rolls, and yes I've been in some - at 60mph. I don't have an RR handy to measure the noise level at that speed right now...

 

[Frank Dernie]

2.0L inline 4 cylinder + 9000 RPM redline + 6 speed short throw manual transmission + Invidia exhaust + a few other “things” = mechanical music is off the scale…my car stereo = off!

Great fun, but only for short journeys IME!
In my case flat-plane crank V8 9000rpm 6 speed gated 'box and 3 pedals. Fantastic fun for a thrash around twisty roads, particularly the quiet ones, but a tiring drive to get to more distant ones.

 

[MatrixS2000]

Great fun, but only for short journeys IME!

No truer words have been spoken…my 02 S2000 (I am the original owner) has somewhere around 44K km.

 

[Everett T]

Volvo XC90 with the B&W system was by far the best car stereo I’ve ever had…too bad the rest of the car was a dumpster fire.

The mark levinson in my wife’s previous generation RX350 is excellent however most reviews of current gen Lexus indicate the mark levinson is not worth. Sadly Lexus seems to be cutting a lot of corners in their current gen vehicles.

Seems like all of the Harmon products perform very well regardless of which name they branded. Revel is my favorite but I highly enjoyed the Logic 7 system in our BMW and that was 20 years ago, lol.

 

[Head_Unit]

I could never live in place that's noisier than a car

Well I don't know if many dwelling are noisier but many dwellings especially in cities or next to train lines are not quiet at all. The noise levels and spectra and characteristics differ but my point is more that many people don't have a dedicated quiet space. And many people cannot crank it up where they live but in the car they can. Therefore the total fidelity may be best in the car for many.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Well I don't know if many dwelling are noisier but many dwellings especially in cities or next to train lines are not quiet at all. The noise levels and spectra and characteristics differ but my point is more that many people don't have a dedicated quiet space. And many people cannot crank it up where they live but in the car they can. Therefore the total fidelity may be best in the car for many.

Judged by how loud it can be played, possibly, judged by low colouration and even frequency response never so far IME.
Imaging has to be faked by DSP (or accepted to be all over the place) because of drive unit and listener location.

Overall, I accepted years ago SQ in cars was poor, and often just freakily manipulated to suit certain types of pop music which sounded weird compared to how it is at home.

 

[10PSPMemSticksForMiku2007]

I have never expected good sound in a car.
Neither the listening position nor practical drive unit locations are consistent with good sound, with tweeters often in completely different locations to mid drivers, for example, and noise, particularly in the bass even in electric cars, is a detriment.

You are absolutely right. The speaker locations in most cars are absolutely wrong. Mids and tweeters are often too far away from each other even on bookshelf speakers. Being several feet apart in a car is simply ridiculous. To have good sound in a car, you want a three way front stage plus the subwoofer, with at least the mid and tweeter being positioned very close together. A pillar mount or door pod for mid/hi is the best way. Even a tweeter that can be crossed low pillar mounted with a mid pointed upwards and dash mounted is a big improvement over factory locations.
If possible, you can even put midbass behind or on the dash - and it is a lot of work, sometimes having to take off the dash to build an enclosure. By doing that, you can get less inter modulation distortion, especially if the mid/hi is coaxial.
For midbass speakers, the door is usually not the best location either.
When starting from scratch, you can take a bluetooth speaker and place it in various locations to determine the frequency response, placing each speaker where the are no nulls in its passband.

As for factory systems, I've never been impressed with one, but I've driven few luxury cars. I have heard a few of the "high end" bose and jbl systems on Ford and GM vehicles. The Silverado has oh shit handles where the speakers should be.

I'll never get a chance to hear them but maybe

KEF x Lotus Partnership

KEF US

us.kef.com

KEF in Lotus

First of all, congratulations on this deal. I bet it's a big thing for both companies. I hardly think anyone needs to hear me say it, I do have respect and high regards for KEF products, but here, I think they maybe went one step to far. This is an interior of a Lotus vehicle. It sports the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Unofficially, I have KEF speakers in my car. I would recommend. You almost never sit closer to the speakers than when you are in the car.

 

[anphex]

The default Tesla sound system is suprisingly clean and neutral. Comes with loudness currection (bathtub eq) by default, but not too aggressively. Other than that it think its reasonably flat and clean. Guess they use inexpensive drivers and make some magic with the on board DSP happen.

 

[Redacted]

It's all made up by marketing teams to glean extra margin, even if it sounds OK.
"If Carlsberg made an XYZ" - then, it'd be just as crappy as their generic, fake lager (as sold to the UK market)

 

[maximilianx33]

In my opinion, with original audio, the name on the speakers is less important and more important is how the entire system is tuned for the specific interior of the car. Some expensive systems sound very impressive for the first few minutes, because they have a lot of bass and strong treble, but on a longer drive it can be a bit annoying. The McIntosh in the Grand Cherokee would definitely be one of my favorites. It helps that it has enough power, but it doesn't have to artificially overdo everything. The Bowers & Wilkins systems in the Volvo also have very good reviews. The Burmester can also play excellently, although with some settings there can be too much bass. I'm not really surprised by what you write about the Revel. Sometimes a more expensive system is significantly better just with a quality music source and after the equalizer is set correctly. With regular radio or compressed streaming, the difference can be much smaller than one would expect based on the price. Has anyone here compared the McIntosh and Klipsch side by side in similarly sized cars?