farmerjones

Are you sure this is not caused by the "surround sound" effect"? Rear speakers are completely altered by the surround sound adjustment and is intended only for use with front seat passengers. The rear will always sound "weird" to back seat passengers with surround effect on. Maybe I am stating the obvious to you, but I'm confident some owners missed that point. Also, with no midrange speakers or center channel speakers in the back seat, and being located closer to the subwoofer, the rear seat will always be poor(er) than the front.

I've come to the conclusion that the B&O branding is more marketing than actual premium sound. For the record, this is true for most any car. The Burmeister system in a MB C-class doesn't sound like a S-class. The B&W in a Volvo XC60 is not as good as a XC90. And the B&O in a Audi A4 is not as good as a A8. Of course the price of the system probably reflects the performance. I, too, wish when you checked the "premium" audio box that (regardless of cost) what you got was premium, not just marketing hype with an incremental performance increase.

JohnnyStaccato

Yeah I'm sure it's not the surround sound effect. I have that turned all the way down. And I'm not complaining about what things like sound like to someone seated in the back seat. My complaint is that the sound in the front seat suffers due to the poor quality of the rear speakers. It's not the end of the world, I'm sure I'll get used to how things sound and find more important things to gripe about sooner or later. It's just disappointing. And it's such a significant difference between the front and back that I honestly wondered if there was something defective with my car. So I was looking for opinions from others to determine if it was just me. But sadly it appears that it's just the way the system was designed.

sleevemedia

I felt the same way until I read this thread: this must be a defect. I'm coming from an Alpine custom install that proved that every seat can get good sound. Among other features, that system had a parametric EQ to knock down two harsh mid frequencies so that everything didn't sound like it was playing through a kazoo. Lack of a midrange tone control aside, the rear speakers sound like AM radio.

Benzie

Initially I was disappointed like you in the sound from the rear, probably because I'm old school and the way things used to be in cars, you always had your larger speakers in the back and small ones up front so the back speakers usually did the heavy lifting. I think all that has changed with our cars....sound engineers have been busy making things sound as they should, with the music coming from in front. And that's not a bad thing, just different. And screw the passengers if they want premium sound they can either ride shotgun or buy their own Audi lol. No, really I was a bit disappointed in the B&O when I first got the car but as I've become more accustomed to the sound I've come more to appreciate how awesome that system is. Tonight I was listening to "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. You know how that song opens with that really hard impact of cymbal and snare? On the B&O, that thing hit instantaneously and perfectly like you could hear every detail cleanly.....older systems would always falter in delivering that hit so accurately from a dead silence, so it would always play a little distorted but the B&O played it flawlessly, and that's when I realized it is a great system. A few times already I've heard lyrics for the first time in songs I've known for years. It really is a very nice system once you get everything adjusted the way you like it. Just give yourself a chance to get used to it and let go of the old rear bias paradigm.

parad1mg

I think it's just a bad design. I had to put my ear right next to the speaker panel just to see if they are working.

I was excited with the B&O when I took home my Q5 prestige thinking I don't have to modify the stock sound system any more but just got really disappointed when I started tuning it. All my other cars that I've built the sound system works great regardless of where you sit in the car.

Kibo2505

Thanks guys now i am worried about this while waiting for my q5 with b&o to arrive... how is it possible that the rear speakers are not working/not loud in a 19 speaker setup?