Upgraded radio 2007 SL 550
 

The audio technology in your COMAND is not outdated and remains state of the art. In fact, I presume it would be difficult to replicate.

Where else are you going to find seven channels of power amplification with equalisation customized to the acoustics of an R230? And while you may look at a door and believe there exists a two-way speaker, there are in fact two electrically-independent speakers sharing a common chassis with no external crossover to divide the audio frequency band between them.

You'll likely ignore it, but my advice is to leave COMAND alone. If it helps, do a search on "ABC" and frighten yourself into saving that $1500 toward paying for a hideously expensive suspension repair that may lie in your future.
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State of the art audio? Since I presume that is the question asked, I'll give the off-topic reply.

The home audio system I have now was put together in 2007. The speakers are c. 35 years old, the pair of stereo amplifiers which power them are c. 40 years old. I don't believe I could upgrade my system on a budget of less than perhaps $50,000.

The big advancement in amplification came in the early '70s with the advent of reliable "PNP" power transistors. This made possible "fully complementary" amplifier circuits. Around that time other circuit innovations became common such as "differential amplifiers", "current mirroring", "active loading of voltage amplification stages", and "cascoding".

A chap named Douglas Self has published several editions of his audio amplifier design handbook. It's available in print and also downloadable for free from the Web. When I looked at the latest edition two years ago I saw nothing has advanced the state of the art with respect to amplification in the past four decades.

COMAND has got features made possible with modern Digital Signal Processing (DSP) that did not exist in 1975. As I believe I alluded to earlier those are custom to the R230 and would be (prohibitively?) difficult to replicate.

I have two earlier versions of COMAND than yours, and I think they are both very difficult to see in bright light. Possibly what you perceive as a faded screen is normal for your COMAND? If not, you could probably buy a used unit for just a few hundred dollars to have a good screen.

There are rear speakers wired to one of the seven amplification channels (they are not stereo), and possibly they play only when certain DSP options are selected from the audio menu -- I do not know. Note that you also have a speaker in the center of the dash.

If I were tasked with engineering an aftermarket radio installation I have no idea how I would derive audio signals to power the center and rear speakers. This is the primary reason why I've regarded every aftermarket installation I've seen as a significant downgrade in quality of the vehicle audio.

hi brothers
a little hello from France

I changed my command for a chinese model with :
- new gps
- user friendly interface
- steering wheels controls
- built in bluetooth
under 800 euros including custom duties and fees
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...90cf888b1e.jpg

It has a CD / DVD with all that he is able to play DVDs, DIVX, MP3 and photos .
The BLUETOOTH lets you communicate hands-free with your mobile phone safely.
Its GPS module running on a Windows CE 6.0 platform (stored on an SD card)
---> have a look here :

easy to install even if you have sound amplifier and fiber optic

the only problem is that you can not set the clock of the car (with the command you could adjust the clock of the car)... forced to disconnect / reconnect the battery at noon

With SDS, you can code the instrument cluster for "COMAND PRESENT = NO" and it will then have clock setting available on its the menus.

Regarding "state of the art", I won't argue with Bobterry or anyone about audio quality as my hearing is not the best thanks to too many rock concerts and loud engines. I think what most people mean when they say "state of the art" in car audio is not sound quality but "features". Things like Bluetooth phone integration with speakerphone calling, text-to-speech and speech-to-text, satellite radio, HD radio, music streaming, and even Android Auto or Apple Carplay is what they want. Those are nice things to have, and some can be retrofitted to exiting COMAND units. My wife's Cadillac has Android Auto/Apple Carplay and I have used that with my Android phone and it's quite nice, but I am fairly satisfied with what I have in the SL with it's COMAND NTG 2.5. I think the only thing I am going to do is get a Bluetooth streaming dongle to plug into the iPod 30-pin connector and then get rid of my Sirius radio subscription. I really don't drive it that much to justify paying $100/year for Sirius when I can just stream it from my phone (I have other radios subscribed so I can use the app fro "free").

Now, if I had to old original pre-MY2005 COMAND, yeah, I'd probably swap that out. I'd go with a decent name-brand aftermarket system. I'd rather have a quality unit that looks "aftermarket" rather than a no-name Chinese unit that sort of looks factory matched. Once you understand how to wire in an aftermarket system with its own amps and such, it's not that big of a job. Of course the challenge in the SL is a lack of space. The factory sub is designed to fit in the passenger footwell, and there's not a lot of room in the trunk for amps if tou actually need to carry any cargo.

An aftermarket install which incorporates an optical interface which permits retention of the original amp and speakers should sound great with no loss of sound quality. As far as I know there is no such interface for an '04 or older car, and the best available solution is to substitute an '05 or newer amplifier.

If my COMAND ever quits I suppose I may go with one of the Chinese aftermarket products and an '05 or newer amp. One caveat is the dodgy quality of many goods sourced from China, and that includes Star Diagnosis clones and COMAND substitutes.

Duckmoore
actually the product comes from Hongkong
I purchased it 1 year ago and for me it's a good one

you have other similar products on the ebay store

The R230 does not have front/rear speakers. It has left/right speakers, plus "surround". Check your balance/fader setting and you'll find only balance. The surround speakers are used only for certain sound sources, like CD's, iPod, Sirius, etc. that will have some surround encoding that Logic7 can decode.

As for going full aftermarket, you have to run some analog speaker (or pre-amp) wiring from the dash to the trunk. On the factory setup, audio is carried digitally over the fiber from the head unit to the amp in the trunk, and only there will you find analog speaker wiring. For separate amp(s), you'd need to run pre-amp wiring from the new head unit in the dash to new amp(s) in the trunk. Then, disconnect the speaker wiring at the factory amp and tie it into the new amp(s). If you are not going to use separate amps, but use the head unit's built-in amp, then run speaker wire from the dash to the trunk, and then tie into the speaker wire there (after disconnecting from the factory amp).

Because the factory radio uses CAN bus signaling to switch it on with the ignition and control illumination, those signals are not available on the vehicle's wiring harness. All it has is constant +12v. There are two ways to switched +12v and illumination. One is to tie into the cigarette lighter for both of them. The other is to get a CAN bus interface. In fact, if you get an interface so your steering wheel volume and channel control buttons will work, those often have these signals decoded for you.

Here's some pics from my fully active 3 way aftermarket upgrade...

Still have the spare under this and the rack is fully removable
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1749/...1e9d4dbe64.jpg

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1757/...628b1fa588.jpg

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1727/...13b07ca0a6.jpg

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1732/...276acb4504.jpg

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/970/2...9f8eef856a.jpg

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/967/2...4cc043c71d.jpg

and what came out...
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/969/2...8d28f7fa42.jpg

Sound quality is unbelievable over original and definitely no regrets from doing the upgrade. Also have removed the dreaded consumer battery drain by taking out the old audio components which were not allowing the CAN bus to shut the car down completely.

Wow - what did you do about the stock rear speakers?

A shop may have quoted you a high price, but you needn't pay a lot. This $97 interface reportedly works with the SL, though it does not explicitly say so: https://avinusa.com/most-fiber-optic...edes-benz.html

Rears were left in situ and disconnected so don't interfere with front stage.

And what about the center speaker?

I'm inclined to believe anyone who thinks they've heard great audio in a car has never listened to a really good home system like the one pictured. Maybe they equate loud to quality.

No car system can fool my mind into believing a live musical performance is before me, but a quality home system can. But maybe it's just me.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mbw...8b77089beb.jpg

Ditto with centre speaker, left in place but disconnected.

Tbh, I'd struggle to fit that home system into the confines of an SL! ;-)

Agree that no car system is going to deliver the same experience as a live performance but that doesn't mean that you can't greatly improve quality (which of course doesn't equate to increased volume!) over the stock SL system.

All about personal preferences....