B&O upgrade path

[sQ5inSD]

The block diagram below shows a basic plan for upgrading the factory B&O system. The plan is to retain the factory amplifier and initially all of the factory drivers. The rear door and D pillar speakers are mostly fill for front seat occupants and other people rarely sit in the back seats anyway as I have few friends. Audio Control makes decent single-chassis DSP amplifiers so their D-4.800 will be used to drive the front door woofers, tweeters and side dash mids. The factory amplifier will drive the center channel. An outboard mono amplifier will drive a single 10" or 12" subwoofer and the factory 6.5" spare tire sub will be removed.
AUDI_SYSTEM.jpg



The reason for installing the D-4.800 is to use its built in DSP and RTA to measure the output of the factory amplifier before its signals are sent to the front speakers. Testing and research has found the B&O system is actually 10 channels of amplification driving 14 individual speakers. The front and rear door tweeters are not separately driven, they are wired in parallel with the front dash side mids and the rear door woofers. Future upgrades may involve disconnecting the front door tweeters and adding passive or active filtering/amplification. The table below shows the pinouts and color codes for the factory 32 pin connector into the B&O amplifier. Of the eight speaker level output wires needed to connect the D-4.800 to the B&O system one color code in the vehicle did not match the factory wiring diagram. The right front door woofer in the vehicle was Brown/Yellow but the factory diagram shows this as Brown/Blue.
PINOUTS.jpg
Using the D-4.800 to measure the output of the factory amplifier will allow for changes to the bandwidth, filtering, phase, etc. so that a summed full-range signal will be available to send out to the front speakers. This will allow the amplified response of the B&O system to be measured and to determine the capability of the factory speakers. In the future the front factory speakers may be upgraded. After the D-4.800 is installed and set up stay tuned for Before/After plots to show the system response. The reason for this post is to take personal bias out of what an audio upgrade really means and to show what the factory B&O system is capable of.

[A2andres]

The block diagram below shows a basic plan for upgrading the factory B&O system. The plan is to retain the factory amplifier and initially all of the factory drivers. The rear door and D pillar speakers are mostly fill for front seat occupants and other people rarely sit in the back seats anyway as I have few friends. Audio Control makes decent single-chassis DSP amplifiers so their D-4.800 will be used to drive the front door woofers, tweeters and side dash mids. The factory amplifier will drive the center channel. An outboard mono amplifier will drive a single 10" or 12" subwoofer and the factory 6.5" spare tire sub will be removed.
AUDI_SYSTEM.jpg



The reason for installing the D-4.800 is to use its built in DSP and RTA to measure the output of the factory amplifier before its signals are sent to the front speakers. Testing and research has found the B&O system is actually 10 channels of amplification driving 14 individual speakers. The front and rear door tweeters are not separately driven, they are wired in parallel with the front dash side mids and the rear door woofers. Future upgrades may involve disconnecting the front door tweeters and adding passive or active filtering/amplification. The table below shows the pinouts and color codes for the factory 32 pin connector into the B&O amplifier. Of the eight speaker level output wires needed to connect the D-4.800 to the B&O system one color code in the vehicle did not match the factory wiring diagram. The right front door woofer in the vehicle was Brown/Yellow but the factory diagram shows this as Brown/Blue.
PINOUTS.jpg
Using the D-4.800 to measure the output of the factory amplifier will allow for changes to the bandwidth, filtering, phase, etc. so that a summed full-range signal will be available to send out to the front speakers. This will allow the amplified response of the B&O system to be measured and to determine the capability of the factory speakers. In the future the front factory speakers may be upgraded. After the D-4.800 is installed and set up stay tuned for Before/After plots to show the system response. The reason for this post is to take personal bias out of what an audio upgrade really means and to show what the factory B&O system is capable of.

Well, I'm here for ALL of this.... I have had several upgraded sound systems in the past but they always involved completely removing the stock system from the Head unit on back..... I am highly interested in being able to upgrade amplification and sound via aftermarket amp and speakers while still maintaining the stock MMI/Display etc...

Would something like RSNAV make this process easier or harder?

[sQ5inSD]

Well as an engineer my answers usually involve "that depends" but I think the source unit is not a limiting factor here. The main obstacle is the data transfer by optical cable IMO. The factory system is "closed" in the sense that unless you remove all of the source side components the only other way to get inside the loop between the factory amplifier and the factory "head unit" is by using an outboard optical processor. These are not common and $$$. And then what is the real benefit in keeping the factory amplifier for all ten channels? I am not saying my plan is the only and best way, it is not the least cost either.

After removing the factory sub and adding a separate mono amplifier, driving a better brand name 12" woofer, last year, I had a chance to push the B&O speakers much further. I do not have hard data measurements but most folks would agree the stock sub is not really robust. Its output is essentially matched to the rest of the stock system. Once the sub is "upgraded" it tends to overpower the remaining speakers. That is part of the reason for doing this entire upgrade "backwards" in a sense. I have seen many upgrades that began with replacing head units and speakers first. I too want to retain the stock MMI and as much of the rest of the original system - unless there is a measurable improvement I usually do not replace a component.

Once the D-4.800 is set up I expect to find out exactly what the stock B&O speakers can do. I intend to measure and plot the stock system response before and after. Audio Control has a long history in the industry for making useful devices that help installers "see" what audio systems are really doing. I would rather post useful hard data than just my opinion The front door and dash speakers will probably end up getting upgraded but taking good measurements first is a critical step to know how and what to improve.

Here are the plots of the RTA measurements of the Before/After:

FRONT MID SIDE DASH + DOOR TWT RTA.jpg

FRONT MID SIDE DASH + DOOR TWT RTA OUTPUT.jpg

FRONT DOOR WOOFER RTA.jpg

FRONT DOOR WOOFER RTA OUTPUT.jpg

More to follow...

[sQ5inSD]

Added RTA plots to show the measured response of the factory amplifier front door and side dash output Before/After applying DSP summation and filtering. This is a WIP and more info will be posted, for now the main observations are as follows:

1. Factory dash side mids are reduced by about 3dB at 13Hz and the door woofers are increased by about 3dB at 60Hz
2. Factory amplifier is sending low frequency signals to the door woofers below 80Hz

The initial RTA measurements show the side dash mids and the parallel wired door tweeters are capable of producing more. The door woofer measurements show a significant amount of output in the sub-bass range from 20-80Hz.

After filtering the factory amplifier output and sending this to the D-4.800 amplifier channels the RTA plots labeled Filtered output show a much flatter side dash mid + tweeter response and a higher pass band on the door woofers. The DSP and discrete 4-channel amplification in the D-4.800 allowed the output of the mids to be increased and the woofers to be sent a more narrow pass band.

Subjectively speaking this reduced the door woofer resonance and distortion significantly while dramatically lifting up and more clearly defining the front center stage image. Is this info useful to anyone on this forum?

[sQ5inSD]

228 views but no discussion...

[A2andres]

I think this level of analysis is beyond what most of us are doing with our Qs.

From what I’ve gathered the most things people do are;

1. Update to an RSMAV type “head unit” for ability to mimic the newer cars multi media capabilities.

2. Add amp/sub or a self amped subwoofer.

3. Some have upgraded the front stage speakers with a plug and play set up offered by a member of this forum.

I haven’t seen any posts at all that discuss changing the other speakers in the car or adding an aftermarket amp(s) to drive them.

I’m definitely getting a lot out of what your throwing out there but I’m not at the point where I plan on investing $ in audio upgrades outside of:

RSNAV
Cerwin Vega self amped spare tire subwoofer.

Keep doing what your doing as I have bookmarked this thread for when I do get into upgrading the sound system beyond what I listed above.

I’d love to be able to blend in aftermarket speakers and amp for the Mids for sure.


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[sQ5inSD]

Still working on the upgrade path - next steps: EQ the front end speakers to eliminate a few peaks, post the Before/After and then begin the laborious process of measuring the individual driver AC impedance and in-cabin response separate from any factory amplification or signal processing. This is a crucial step in determining what if any benefit there may be from replacing the stock door woofers, tweeters and dash mids. As my posts before have shown I will use measured data to demonstrate what the factory speakers can or cannot do. Then I will show what the benefit is for replacing individual drivers - which tweeter/mid/woofer is better and why...

[A2andres]

Well, I’m excited to see if you can blend in some aftermarket options for the “big” speakers. On top of integrating a separate amp to power them and making it all work with the stock amp and MMi in place.

Especially if you can identify specific speakers and amp. I’m following your lead.


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[lees7]

I don’t intend to do a ton to the q as my wife primarily drives it and isn’t too huge into audio, so just upgraded the bottom end. However, I did do a much larger build in my s7, and the architecture of the systems is somewhat similar. If you’re after performance, I’d strongly suggest using a most adaptor to take the fiber signal from the mmi. No matter what you do with a processor for de-eq, it won’t ever get all the way flat, and you won’t remove the phasing oddities that are on the output side of the oem amp’s processing. I dealt with this in my s7 initially until getting the nav-tv zen-v for the most150 system in there. I’d also dealt with it in several of my previous BMW’s as well (those were most50 so couldn’t reuse the old adaptor ). The mmi with a most adaptor is an excellent source unit. Depending what year you have, you may have most50 or most150. The most50 adaptors are much less expensive. Interestingly, most150 is AVB based, for anyone in the higher end audio world (I work in the industry).

[lees7]

IMG_0850.JPG
My s7 system if you’re interested

[sQ5inSD]

Interesting upgrades lees7 - I did look into the option to "break into" the optical signal path of the factory system between the stock MMI head unit and the remainder of the B&O system but I chose not to follow that path. The estimated cost was simply too high. Anyway, esoteric equipment like the Audison Bit DMI or the NAV-TV ZenV simply did not make sense to me since these devices essentially force you to completely eliminate the factory amplification channels. I wanted to retain the rear half of the stock B&O system speakers and of course the MMI front end. Feel free to look at my first post system diagram, it crudely shows how I plan to make only the upgrades that work for me. I encourage anyone to comment on this plan...

As for the potential need to further correct the factory amplifier output for phase, time delay, etc. I totally understand these are real issues and can potentially ruin any high performance audio system. For me at some point my own old ears cannot tell the difference! Since you work in the industry I would welcome any other suggestions or advice.

BTW - we have the same JL sub

[lees7]

You will positively be able to hear the processing from the B&o/Bose - it’s a matter of some odd missing things in tracks you know etc. The other major consideration in your plan would be the fact that the part of the system left on the B&o amp won’t have the processing delay incurred from your audio processor for the other channels.

[sQ5inSD]

This is were it gets interesting for me (maybe not so much for other members of this forum) in knowing exactly what is "missing" when making upgrades. I firmly believe in trying as much as possible to eliminate individual personal bias by taking measurements. I do not do audio as a professional but I do hold a degree in electrical engineering and I have worked with other legit audio industry professionals. I have a solid background in electromechanical theory and a decent grasp of the so-called psychoacoustic impact reproduced audio has on we humans...

Honestly, I do not even need the rear door or back surround speakers. Decades ago before any type of mobile DSP was available I learned how good a 5 driver system can sound: a pair of tweeters, a pair of woofers and one sub. Call it a personal preference or basic philosophy. I have tried adjusting the stock MMI fader such that I can go full front and that sounds to me just as good as dialing it to dead center. Currently I have the fader set to about mid center console armrest on the GUI display.

My question then is how would you measure the potential benefit from "better" processing? To do even a basic standard audio industry A/B comparison boggles the mind. Let's be practical here and mindful of the forum members expectations. I do not disagree with your claims, it is just the matter of how would you demonstrate the improvement?

[lees7]

I’ve not used rear speakers in any of my builds, totally agree a good sub-sat setup in a car can do amazing things (I tend to do 3 way front stages based on midbass dispersion and placement limitations, but I’ve heard some great 2 way setups too).

When I say missing things, I’m not talking about “air” or “sparkle” . I’m talking about missing /muted instruments or vocalists that the processing is essentially muting out of phase in an attempt to steer audio locations and increase sound stage width. I’ve been around long enough to remember when dolby prologic first came out and you could adjust the width , center focus and rear. They were just mixing opposite channel out of phase to push the width, and boosting the summed mono to increase the center, and the out of phase (l-r) was the rear channel (with same channel bias steering). When you mix opposite channel out of phase info to increase apparent stage width, you also end up with some of those phase issues (mixes are rly purely right & left, producers are already introducing things). Polk SDa did it back in the day too, just without a center channel and via additional drivers. That’s the same thing the B&o and Bose processors are doing (and hk in Bmw), and that’s what can be pretty audible depending on the track.

[spijun]

Testing and research has found the B&O system is actually 10 channels of amplification driving 14 individual speakers. .

You didn't have to test, everything was published in the documents

[sQ5inSD]

You didn't have to test, everything was published in the documents

What is your point? Sorry, I typically ignore marketing materials and focus on hard data from actual testing. Do you have anything positive to add to this discussion?

Can you explain how the various amplifier channels are wired to the individual speakers?

[spijun]

What is your point? Sorry, I typically ignore marketing materials and focus on hard data from actual testing. Do you have anything positive to add to this discussion?

Can you explain how the various amplifier channels are wired to the individual speakers?

This is not marketing materials but technical data, until recently you could find out on the website of the manufacturer Bang & Olufsen, they removed Q5 MY 2009-2017 and now it exists for the new model Q5 MY 2018
https://corporate.bang-olufsen.com/e...motive/audi/q5

I only wrote a fact that is known from the technical data, you did not reveal any secret but what is known
Enjoy life without stress


PS: By the way let me give you information B&O system was delivered with models without 3G + or 3GP system and did not have an optical connection

[sQ5inSD]

Sorry but at best the link you provided is for "soft" technical data, it contains no frequency response plots, no RTA plots - nothing that would help you, me or anyone trying to upgrade their own vehicle system. Please add some useful info or leave my post alone. Start you own post if you need to show the forum glossy corporate pics of their products!

[spijun]

This is a public and free forum , if you do not want someone to comment on your posts create your forum and lock comments
I was just commenting on what you wrote: "Testing and research has found the B&O system is actually....."

I have proved that you have not discovered anything that was not previously known and publicly published

I not commented on the rest of your post and your work
Learn to read what is written and what my comment refers to

PS: If you don't like my comment it's your problem and not mine, if you think I wrote something bad report me to the administrator


If you need any help with factory installations feel free to ask

[stapan]

As an audiophile who has always done custom audio installs and competed in IASCA SQ, etc. I love your efforts here and am curious to see where this goes.

That said, I am skeptical that you will be able to significantly improve on the B&O system without changing the speakers or placement/install. These OEM premium systems are the result of slightly more expensive drivers (e.g. $8 each instead of $3 each lol) but really the biggest value add is a lot of expert testing and processing/tuning. So you are taking a system with mediocre drivers forced into the poor factory placement with really good OEM processing/tuning and then focusing on improving the processing/tuning? IMO gut it all or not worth messing with.

[sQ5inSD]

This is a public and free forum , if you do not want someone to comment on your posts create your forum and lock comments
I was just commenting on what you wrote: "Testing and research has found the B&O system is actually....."

I have proved that you have not discovered anything that was not previously known and publicly published

I not commented on the rest of your post and your work
Learn to read what is written and what my comment refers to

PS: If you don't like my comment it's your problem and not mine, if you think I wrote something bad report me to the administrator


If you need any help with factory installations feel free to ask

Ya know what dude I will address your tedious points one by one this last time and then politely ask you to leave my post alone unless you have something to offer other than backhanded lame-ass criticism.

1. Regarding "Testing and research..." this was only my own effort, what exactly is wrong with this statement?

2. Regarding your self-proclaimed "proof" that I have not discovered anything that was not previously known: Show the members of this forum another post with RTA measured data of any Before/After frequency plots.

3. Regarding my need for any help from you: Absolutely Not!

Why did you bother to post OE wiring diagrams when I did not ask nor did anyone replying to this post? Your agenda is obvious so please cut it out. People like you make the effort that goes into posting not worth it...

[stapan]

The thing to watch for with RTA measurements is the positioning.

The factory tuning is trying to optimize for all seating positions which is inherently a huge compromise. IIRC you can choose seating position though which might be less compromised.

It sounds like you are trying to optimize for the driver seat only which the more I think about it is interesting and promising.

I personally am impressed with your post quality and what you are experimenting with here. I wish there were more technically advanced threads like what you have done in this one.

The key with RTA is to measure several spots around the target listening position and average the plots. There can be peaks/valleys caused by reflections that vary even with small changes in position (inches). Also the old adage of reduce the peaks but do not try to increase the dips!

In the IASCA days I had great luck with autotunes done by the JBL MS8 as well as the Alpine Audyssey processor. I tried a pro audio rta/equalizer approach and could not quite achieve the same level of sound quality as either of those two.

[sQ5inSD]

The thing to watch for with RTA measurements is the positioning.

The factory tuning is trying to optimize for all seating positions which is inherently a huge compromise. IIRC you can choose seating position though which might be less compromised.

It sounds like you are trying to optimize for the driver seat only which the more I think about it is interesting and promising.

I personally am impressed with your post quality and what you are experimenting with here. I wish there were more technically advanced threads like what you have done in this one.

The key with RTA is to measure several spots around the target listening position and average the plots. There can be peaks/valleys caused by reflections that vary even with small changes in position (inches). Also the old adage of reduce the peaks but do not try to increase the dips!

In the IASCA days I had great luck with autotunes done by the JBL MS8 as well as the Alpine Audyssey processor. I tried a pro audio rta/equalizer approach and could not quite achieve the same level of sound quality as either of those two.

We are on the same page - I do have a decent RTA set up that I have used for about 15 years building speakers so I am well versed in mic placement. And yes, RTA in a vehicle is way more complicated than a typical box loudspeaker system. To be clear I have not yet done a "proper" RTA of the stock B&O system for practical reasons, it is just too time consuming. I do plan to take a full set of response measurements of the individual stock drivers before making any upgrades. My original post is of the built-in RTA of the input/output signals from the stock amplifier. The posted plots are the aggregate of multiple amplified channels. Of course this is not a "true" RTA of the vehicle but I found it very useful for learning what the B&O system is trying to do.

[Rising_sun]

Thank you sQ5inSD! The B&O sound system has easily been the most challenging to upgrade! Your research has answered many of the frustrations I have encountered with my build. Is there a good 12v switched tap for a remote lead from my amplifier?

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[sQ5inSD]

Thank you sQ5inSD! The B&O sound system has easily been the most challenging to upgrade! Your research has answered many of the frustrations I have encountered with my build. Is there a good 12v switched tap for a remote lead from my amplifier?

Sent from my SM-A716U using Audizine Forum mobile app

Could you be more specific - where do you want to install the amplifier? If it is in the rear boot area then you have a couple of options: just use the 12V port located in the passenger side tire well (this is what I did) or if you are planning to remove the driver side trim to access the factory amplifier you could tap into the trigger lead in its wiring harness. I do not have a specific location in the 32 pin harness connector that goes into the factory unit (J525 in the Audi wiring diagrams on page No. 17/5) but you could easily find its trigger with a VOM. I only mapped the pin outs for the speaker wiring that I needed for my upgrade so you could inspect the table in my original post to at least see which wires Not to tap... Hope this helps!