N4n, many are prolly listening to 192kb MP3 via BT. Shiz inn shiz out. Especially if you’re streaming Spotyfy, XM/Sirius. HD radio, for the most part, is also compressed.
MP3 is band limited and compressed format and BT is compressed.
I agree with you on Bluetooth. It is a very lossy stream, and since it is done real time on very limited hardware, the quality suffers a lot.
I am going to FUNDAMENTALLY disagree with you when it comes to mp3 though. Mp3 quality issues are a complete urban legend at this point. I recently typed this in another thread, but let me add it here too:
In the early days of mp3, when CPU’s were slower and it took a lot of time to encode mp3 files, there were many really ****ty mp3 encoders which took shortcuts to compress the files faster, and produce absolutely terrible audio quality. the Xing MP3 encoder was probably the most notorious of these.
In the last 15 years though this just hasn’t been the case, unless someone who has no idea what they are doing has done the encode.
A good 10-15 years ago, some forum members on Hydrogenaudio.org (a popular Audiophile forum at the time) did a thorough double blinded study. They coded an A/B tester application which people on the forum could download and test on their own high end audiophile equipment.
It played a few snippets of different styles of music, side by side. One was the direct WAV file (uncompressed identical to CD) rip. The other was a Lame (high end mp3 encoder) encoded mp3 file using the “–alt-preset standard” setting*.
*(The command line settings for Lame presets have changed since then, but –alt-preset standard, was essentially a middle of the road stereo VBR encode producing VBR mp3 files that tended to average ~160 bitrate files)
I can’t remember the details, but I think there was a rock, jazz, vocal and classical sample. Something like that.
Volunteers (all of which used their own “audiophile grade” equipment could switch back and forth listening to the two samples of each music clip as many times as they wanted, before selecting the one they thought was the mp3 sample. Their selection was recorded, and submitted to the database.
The result?
Even audiophiles on high end equipment only got it right 50% of the time. Or in other words, no better than chance, picking one of the samples randomly.
So, while – yes – there have been a lot of terrible compressed files over the years, some of them sounding absolutely awful, mp3 can also sound very good indistinguishable from the source, if you use the right settings when encoding, and these settings don’t even have to be the highest ones, a good set of medium bitrate VBR settings can accomplish this goal.
This is why, in conclusion, it is utterly pointless waste for even a high end audiophile to subscribe to TIDAL, or cling to their CD’s or lossless FLAC encodes even bother with HD CD’s, DVD audio or DSD formats. Neither God nor man can tell the difference, and it has been scientifically proven. Any perceived difference is 100% placebo effect.
Personally, in my home, I listen to my music using a high end Schiit Multibit DAC fed into a Parasound Halo class amplifier, using RBH;s top end tower speakers and a set of 1.5KW rms active SVS tube subs, most of which I acknowledge are total overkill, and I am totally happy with Spotify’s “very high” quality encodes (320kbit, OGG eoncodes) Even the “very high” setting is probably overkill.
People just need to stop suffering from Audio Nervosa, and realize that most things we experience in life are plagued by bias and the placebo effect.
The stock sound in the ’18 S90 Volvo is pretty damn good on the low end. It’s a little harsh in the upper middle; I have mine dipped a bit at 1K and 3K.
Maybe they changed the sound from 2017 to 2018?
Because mine is just plain awful. The sound is very forward, a bit harsh and completely lacking in mids and bass. Coming from the base sound in my 2009 S80 T6 this is a leap backwards. The only thing I can listen to it and not be annoyed is the news. No music of any style sounds good in this car at all, IMHO.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a bass-head at all, and I never listen to hip-hop or club techno crap.
I prefer a balanced neutral sound. The sound system in my 2017 is completely incapable of delivering it.
I have never had a subwoofer in any car I’ve owned, and never opted for anything above the base sound system. This is the first time I have been so thoroughly disappointed.