I've been trying for a while now to set up a custom sound profile in my car (Burmester High-End 4D Surround Sound System), but I still can't quite achieve the "perfect" audio quality I'm after. For testing, I use Dolby Atmos tracks via the MBUX Apple Music app—songs I’ve heard many times in a studio setting, so I know exactly how they should sound. What I’ve noticed is that something is missing, especially when it comes to accurately reproducing mid-to-low frequencies. With my current settings, the sound is decent, but still not on par with what I expect. I even consulted a sound engineer, but unfortunately, he didn't have a portable calibration system to properly measure and fine-tune the car’s setup. Has anyone here managed to unlock the full potential of the audio system? Any tips, tricks, or recommended settings for optimizing mid-to-low frequencies would be much appreciated!
I think "perfection" will never be achieved and sound quality is very much a personal preference. I like more of a punching base without a lot of reverb or prolonged vibration. I find that what works great for one music track will not be ideal for another. Rather than fiddle with it for different songs I try to find a happy compromise for my personal taste. I also use my own music source rather than Apple Music although I have Apple Music for now as a trial. I'm not big on streaming and prefer to buy music one time and listen to it from my own media source which is USB in most cases. I have about 17 Atmos DVD's ripped into FLAC files and it sounds incredible to me in the car. I do think that some albums such as Fleetwood Mac Rumours and the Beetles 1+ album are a little too much bass and I either have to turn the volume down or drop the bass when listening to those. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Animals along with Rush 2112, Moving Pictures, and Signals all sound amazing. I don't have images readily available of my settings but after going through my own sound personalization I keep my Base to "Punch", the graphic eq about two ticks to the left of where you have it, and the surround & 3D are both maxed out. The basic equalizer all set to zero or flat. I have the 4D sound set to 4 on each seat. I do feel that some Atmos tracks such as Moving Pictures sounds a little muddy at low volumes but once you turn it up a bit, not crazy loud, it sounds much better. If I crank the volume up too high, it can start to hurt physically while still sounding perfectly clear. I think my own ears start to distort before the car audio does. I don't typically turn it up that high unless I'm giving someone a demo of the system. Everyone has the same reaction. WOW! My only suggestion for improvement would be to have multiple sound profiles that can be either switched to easily or better yet, setup for a given song or track so that when that song plays, it uses the specific sound profile assigned to it. That and the volume control is a bit of a challenge to do fine adjustments up or down.
Full disclosure - I am not an audiophile and don't claim to be able to pick out minute variations in sound quality. I do like high quality and clear music though and have some mildly high end systems at home. My car sounds better than any of them to me.
I think I have mine set at one notch over to the left and one notch up with the bass set at warm. The bass can still be pretty strong on some tracks.
My 73 year old ears aren’t what they used to be based on loud guitars, loud pipes on my Harleys and gun sports so I think I miss a lot of the highs nowadays but this is still the best sound system I’ve ever encountered.
Being able to correlate sound settings with a specific track would be amazing, but would be time consuming to set up and manage for an entire music library. I currently have a library subset of 3k tracks in the car on a mSD card. Even a handful of music profile settings to cover various genres and styles would be a huge advance.
Being able to correlate sound settings with a specific track would be amazing, but would be time consuming to set up and manage for an entire music library. I currently have a library subset of 3k tracks in the car on a mSD card. Even a handful of music profile settings to cover various genres and styles would be a huge advance.
It could get very complicated, but it would be awesome to have. I have 5605 tracks (and forever growing) in my collection with many of them duplicated due to having a studio version and often multiple live versions of a given song. Then for any Atmos or 5.1 HD tracks I like to keep the stereo version as well, but in that case the album name has an "HD" suffix to it. For example I have Rush 2112 and 2112 - HD as separate albums.
I had this problem with the S class. I'd set up the sound profile to what sounded good to me. And eventually I'd get to a certain song and there'd either be way too much bass or ear aching treble. There was never a middle ground.
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