davco61383

I have the 19 speaker B&O system and don't plan on using the 3D audio setting, but plan on keeping the original amplifier. Which speakers are really worth the upgrade and which aren't?

MarkP888

Following...

bruce_miranda

1. Center and matching front door mids.
2. A pillar bottom and rear door matching tweeters
3. Front door woofers
4. Rear door woofers
5. Subwoofer

Don't bother with
1. Top A pillar tweeters
2. Center tweeter
3. Dashboard end
4. Rear surrounds

MarkP888

I agree on this. The one exception might be the center tweeter, which is really not very good (sloppy, harsh, UNpleasing). Most of that second list isn't even used unless you turn on the 3D effects, which sound horrific.

One thing I will mention. I think the mids and lows in this system are not that bad. I think the real weak spot is the tweeters. If it were me, I would start with ONLY replacing the tweeters in the A-pillar (lower), and the tweeter in the center and see where that gets you. This is still on my todo list as well. Even with the level tuning I have done, I would still love a better quality tweeter.

Mark

MarkP888

@bruce_miranda, have you spent any time digging into what is going on in the HU or AMP? I had an observation early on that content is noticeably MORE compressed [and crappy-sounding] coming from a USB drive (lossless WAV or FLAC content) vs the same content played from my phone over Bluetooth. So it seems there is DSP processing applied to some sources more or differently from others. It would be great to figure out how to turn it off. I am wondering if there is a serial interface to the HU to expose some configuration. Using OBDEleven I found gain controls for each source, but they aren't straightforward gain values. They seem to be magic values to signal the amp to process differently. With USB gain value set the same as BT, the audio comes through noticeably louder, but, the USB content still sounds different and more compressed. And when the content first starts you hear a burst of "loud" audio and then it forces it down to a lower level with a compressor. I don't hear that behavior at all from BT content. It comes through clean and louder.

I know why manufacturers do this... compressing all the audio makes it less dynamic, and it means they can use cheaper components and not worry about folks blowing speakers as easily. But for folks who know how to treat their system and won't blow the speakers, it would be

Mark