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Audiophile Here, How is the Elite sound system quality?

17K views 17 replies 14 participants last post by  Tsnor 
#1 ·
Lets face it, Odysseys of days past have always had atrocious sound quality.

I am not looking for a Mark Levinson experience, just decent music free of
the constraints of the 8 bps ******* favorite XM Sirius, to which we were
all captive on long trips before Android Car Play and 4G LTE.

With anticipated thanks,

Bob
 
#5 ·
It works well enough for me in the Elite trim. It's good but not exceptional, I am not picky though especially when most of the time I am trying to hear something above the 60+ dB of background noise. I am no audiophile so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

There are 11 speakers in Elite and 7 in the other trims. The only one they share is the Pioneer subwoofer mounted in the cargo area. The door-mounted full range speakers have 17-cm drivers in all trims, made by Panasonic in Elite and by Pioneer in the others; the A-pillar mounted tweeters are made by Panasonic in Elite and Pioneer in the others. The two center speakers, the 8-cm on dash and 9-cm at the base of the RES screen, are made by Panasonic and unique to the Elite trim. What is interesting is that the Panasonic speakers upsold in Elite are actually cheaper than the Pioneers in the lower trims. What a nice way to pad profits...

I am not a big fan of XM either. But what do you have against ********? :D
 
#10 ·
While I have never had any stock system sound as good as any aftermarket system, I like sound in the Elite and along with my wife's BMW X4 they are the best stock systems I've heard. It sounds better than my 2010 SS Camaro did even with subwoofer upgrades. Not that it is powerful, just that it sounds clear and has a decent low end.

The settings that have worked so far are to turn the bass down fairly low in the equalizer setting (the "bass" setting in the equalizer is an annoying low-midrange band) and then maximize the subwoofer which is a different setting.

Sound of video/movies and video games in the rear system is surprisingly good, like home theater.
 
#12 ·
Elite here. Sound is better than the previous gen Touring Elite, but again it's nothing to write home about. I do think the cabin noise is a little better than the previous gen as well so that may attribute to the better sound.
 
#14 ·
I find the subwoofer kicks a little more than the 4th gen Elite that I had. Probably the same setup...but to me the bass is deeper in this new generation. I, too, found myself turning the subwoofer volume down just a bit (not the bass) after initially setting it at the levels I remembered having in my 2014 Elite.

So far I've been very happy with the sound quality. I've also noticed that turning that DTS Neural sound ON makes a marked improvement over what I had in my '14 Elite (DTS had little to no effect in my opinion).

But still, nothing compares to the 4-speaker BOSE setup I had in my mom's 1994 Nissan Maxima! Those speakers would absolutely SCREAM :)
 
#17 ·
I do have one complaint regarding audio quality. When my kids are using one of the built-in apps (PBS Kids, for example) in the back, I hear intermittent crackles in Android Auto (in music playback as well as voice guidance for navigation). If my kids watch the same PBS Kids show via Chromecast, I have no problem with audio up front. It appears that the head unit somehow has a problem decoding two audio streams simultaneously.

Have been curious about the audio format transmitted over Android Auto. Not only have I been unable to find a design spec sheet from Google, no one appears to have even asked that question. On the other hand, Apple at least published some details for CarPlay (48kHz/16-bit stereo LPCM over USB, and AAC LC with an unspecified bit rate when connected wirelessly). I just have to assume Android Auto would match that. For what it is worth, in my unscientific comparison test I stored a number of FLAC tracks ripped from my CD collection and played them in two ways: 1) Amazon Music over Android Auto; 2) streamed to Chromecast using Bubble UPnP player and let Chromecast decode FLAC and send 44.1kHz/16-bit LPCM to the HDMI port. To my ears they sound the same.
 
#18 ·
I have a base EX. The head unit is good. Gapless playback from USB, handles WMA-lossless without issues. Near instant response to jumping to a different position in a song. Initializes 64GB of music fairly quickly, displays by album, artist, song. etc. I have not tried importing playlists.

The speakers and overall sonic experience are not great. Very far from audiophile. You will likely need to replace the speakers if you end up with the base audio system.

No one gets great playback from XM radio. Make sure you bring some music on USB if you plan to audition the stereo system. XM radio is highly compressed, I think about a 32K bit rate which is worse than a low quality rip from CD.

The XM user experience on XM in the Odyssey is excellent. The head unit or XM receiver buffers several songs per channel, so you can repeat the last song or even switch channels, like the song and go back to the start. I find that as I drive through windy roads I can lose XM once or twice each trip.
 
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