Originally Posted by JKBMaryland

I have 17k miles on my '18 SB and have tried very hard to use the voice commands for the Nav system. I give up .It simply doesn't work worth a tinker's damn. I have spoken to the dealer several times and they give me their wry smile and a pat on the head but I can never get it to work properly. When I use it, it reminds me of a comedy sketch where the driver goes nuts because everything that I ask for is misunderstood to the extreme. I have moved on to using CarPlay and asking Siri for directions. That works but I should need a work around for the car's Nav system.

Originally Posted by superswiss

What specific commands are you using that aren't working? Are you doing it while stationary or while driving on potentially a noisy road? Also, are you in your car by yourself or is somebody with you and are they talking? Generally, I don't have issues with the Audi voice recognition. I don't actually use it all that often as most of the time I plan my destinations in advance and just send them to the car from my phone. I occasionally use the Google search command to navigate to an unplanned destination and the success rate is probably around 98%. Other than Google search, don't try to use POI commands with the MMI. The internal database is severely outdated and it's not very straight forward to navigate to a place by name unless you use the Google search command. If I have somebody in the car, I don't even try to use voice commands unless they are quiet. Most voice systems get confused if somebody else is talking at the same time. Google is the first who claims their latest technology can pick a single person out of a crowed, but I haven't tried it yet.

Apple didn't develop Siri. They acquired a company. Sure they added to it and improved it over time, but as mentioned above, more complex voice interactions such as trying to text are often futile. I have yet to use a system that understands me every time. It just doesn't exist. Short interactions generally work ok. Directions work ok, unless the name of the street sounds foreign or the business name sounds foreign. Google does a better job at guessing based on its database, but honestly I find myself repeating the commands often and then have to resort to typing because neither Siri nor Google gets what I'm looking for.

I've also noticed that some people talk like a machine when they use voice commands, which often doesn't work. Speak naturally and at the same volume that you speak to a person who isn't deaf. Raising the volume of your voice or even yelling generally doesn't work. If your car interior is noisy then the background noise will interfere. I'm generally impressed how well it works despite road noise in most cars I've driven, but for example in the R8 it's useless to try using voice command while driving. The engine and exhaust are too loud, but in most other Audi's it works pretty well unless there is a lot of road noise. Some road surfaces in the USA generate a lot of noise. Not sure where you live, but I used to travel to Texas a lot for example and the way they surfaces their highways generates a lot of noise while driving. Here in CA they use normal asphalt and especially all the roads that have been resurfaced recently are very quiet now. The older concrete roads are much louder.