I just picked up my car and it has the B&O stereo with it. It def seems that the rear speakers are not working. Does anyone have a pic of all the locations of the speakers. The grills where the parktronic sensors are for the rear is there speakers on top like I think there is cause nothing comes out of there. Has anyone else felt like there is only speakers in the front? Bringing it back this week but wanted to see what someone thought that has the stereo first. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

It is my understanding that those speakers in the rear only work when you are playing 5.1 stereo sound. My car came with a couple of sample DVDs (from Mercedes) that had discs encoded for 5.1. Properly encoded sound for that (is it DTS?) sounds awesome coming through them. Definitely a different sound stage. Unfortunately the standard never caught on.

 

have B&O as well, most unimpressive stereo IMO, rear speakers don't seem to work either, sounds comes from the front for the most part, makes no sense to me at all, system also lacks adequate base

 

Is there anyway to get the rear speakers to be louder or work in general. No matter what I have tried there is nothing that makes the rear speakers work at all.

 

not that I know of

 

Wouldn't the rear speaker work if surround sound is enabled? Wether it's simulated or encoded, this should at least tell you if it's broken...

 

z

 

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The lack of an active rear speaker has been the single largest disappointment for me on the SL550 - Otherwise very Happy.

 

I agree

do you have B&O or HK?

would be nice to find a bypass and activate that rear speaker

 

I have HK and my buddy has the Bang - neither one of us have gotten the rear to work and haven't found any balance control to adjust the distribution front to rear which leads me to think we are all SOL on this issue.

 

The audio dvd included with the car plays music also through the rear speaker. The sound quality was surprisingly good...

 

did you compare the HK to the B&O?


why would MB make a system with a rear speaker that only works with a special dvd?

btw I tried the surround sound setting, but rear speaker did not work

 

MB does not make a system with a rear speaker that only works with a special dvd. Rather it makes a system that can play a special high end audio format called DVD Audio. DVD Audio discs are the only discs that can play through those rear speakers. I have half a dozen DVD Audio discs - by Diana Krall, The Who, Beach Boys amongst others. It is a spectacular level of audio that was highly promoted a few years ago but never really caught on and went mainstream. Perhaps because the discs are expensive and buying music on discs is a way of "consuming" music that is losing popularity.

 

understood, thanks, all the same it's disappointing to spend so much money on a system that only sounds good with a special dvd, which in itself is an outdated format

 

No argument there. When the SL550 was in development I bet MB wanted to be ahead of the audio curve so to speak and put the latest greatest audio format in their car. So, the car's specs are "baked in" at least a year or two before it is first released. Then the audio format DVD Audio never really catches on - and we are stuck with old unusable technology until a new model. Car companies are the least agile business out there. Old, old business models. BTW, the audio stage and sound quality really is spectacular for DVD Audio.

 

thanks John, I'm going to purchase a DVD Audio disc

 

I have to say that even though I have what is considered the SL550's little brother, the HK system in my SLK is the best sounding factory installed system I've ever had and among the best sounding audio systems I've had in any vehicle.

 

so I finally got around to playing the DVD audio disc, I actually found it in the glove box with the other stuff that came with the car......

WOW what a difference! the sound is AMAZING !!

the rear speaker works!

I cannot believe one must play this specific disc to hear this stereo perform! B & O was a $6100 option and only sounds good with this type of disc! Is that pathetic or what?

There must be a way to unlock this stereo to sound like this all the time? No?

Maybe I should take it to a high end audio stereo shop?

 

That is because the DVD that comes with the car is based upon a format called DVD audio. And, a disk must be formatted and have the audio programmed accordingly to take advantage of those sounds in the back-to get those speakers to come alive. It was a cutting edge format when the SL 550 came out but quickly died because of lack of interest in the very expensive DVD. You cannot take regular audio CDs or compressed format audio and have it work through those rear speakers. There are other commercially DVDs available in the DVD audio format that will take advantage of those rear speakers and the great sound available. I have a number of them. But they are quite expensive and the format never took off.

 

I'm reading online about a way to burn DVD-Audio discs using a home computer, from digital downloads, know anything about it?

 

so, apparently, one can burn a DVD-Audio disc from an Apple computer with OS X, I'll give it a try and let you know

 

I've read good things about Burn(Mac OS X) , http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html , but I have not tried it myself.

 

Just a re-bump....

has anyone had any actual success burning audio, say MP3 files (I know i know crappy MP3, but an MP3 on all the speakers is better than an MP3 on just the frint speakers or "not the music you actually want") for the DVD Audio format such that it correctly plays back in our B&O systems?

A step by step howto would be soooo helpful ;-)

 

problem fixed:

https://mbworld.org/forums/sl-class-...em-solved.html