My buddy has the E55 and the Harmon Kardon stereo system I have the SL55 with the Bose. Which is a better system?

 

HK, by 46 to 6 in this poll:

[url]https://mbworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=44518
Jim

 

Bose is known to have great, pounding bass and a mediocre clarity of sound.

HK, on the other hand, is like having a live orchestra playing in the car... that's how clear and clean the sound is. Could use much more bass, if you ask me.

 

both are terrible

 

Bose is not very good quality. They spend all their "research" money on marketting and attorneys. I think their is a website describing how Bose really works. Their cones are made of very cheap paper. MAYBE the Wave is half ok quality cuz they have had 10 years to perfect the same thing. But as the old saying goes....No highs, no lows, no Bose.

T

 

Seriously man.

Bose is just a bunch of lying crap.
HK is just a bunch of poor quality crap.

They really need to take some of the few grand the spend on the Bose crap, and invest it towards a decent optimized system with a good headunit, and some really nice speakers.

It's sad when my old 1994 LS400 had better bass response, clarity, definition, you name it, than a top of the line Mercedes.

 

Of course within reason.

 

No highs...No lows...... Must be Bose.

HK at best is fair.

 

Both are horrible, look into speakers from Focal, MBquart, or Alpine (top of the line only), after listening to those any stock system will be virtually obsolete.

 

I know both companies well and have listened to systems in both cars. Neither is very good, but if I had to choose one, I would choose the H/K. This is my line of work, my company does very high-end home audio/video installations... Bose is a joke in the industry. The general public is not aware of how poor their equipment really is because of Bose's heavy advertising budget and their 40 lawyers on staff. They think they know best and do everything their own way, nevermind what any acoustics engineer has said in the past 50 years. People often ask me "isn't Bose the best?"... honestly Bose is the worst.

They do do a few things well. They make a good user interface. They know their clientele... they have excellent customer service... but the product itself blows. Everyone in the industry knows Bose Blows.

I hear all sorts of problems with my factory Bose system, and this is in a $137,000 CL600. Like Ricky, I prefer the system in my 10 year old Lexus. The problem with the Bose is that it is also very difficult to upgrade... at least the HK system lives by some standard industry rules and you can do something with it.

The best factory system I know is in Aston Martin. All made by Linn. It is quite impressive. The second best is Lexus, with the Levinson system. Levinson mind you, is owned by Harman International that also makes H/K. And the only thing Levinson actually has to do with the Lexus systems, is that they let them use the name. It is designed wholly by Harman.

Overall this is something Mercedes really needs to work on. A $30,000 Japanese car like an Infiniti G35 or an Acura TL has better sound systems.

I really don't understand why some factory sound systems are so bad. There are tons of well qualified car stereo installers all around the country that could design a better system in the car that what these big time manufacturers like Bose and HK get paid to do, yet they come out with a mediocre product.

Keep the woofers and tweeters close to each other, equalize pathlengths, put in some decent power, put in a dedicated subwoofer, pay attention to the enclosures... this is not rocket science.... If done right it is not expensive... I don't know how they can get it wrong so often, so many times. I am just baffled by this.

 

By the way guys... if I owned an SL, which I may soon enough, and I used it with the top down, I would install a tactile bass system that allows you to feel the bass using the car's chassis rather than building a big subwoofer box and taking up precious space in my SL (nevermind all the dead weight). This company is soon releasing a car version of their home theater unit... we have installed hundreds and they work as advertised... its a great way to improve the factory system. It just needs to be installed right.

Once your butt is in the seat, the bass transmits right through you and you feel all this deep bass. Step out, and there is no annoying boom to distract others. We use them for late night movie watching, outdoors, jaccuzis, etc.

No info is on the site about the car unit yet but it is coming.

www.thebuttkicker.com

 

There's not a whole lot to brag about by comparing the 2 systems. They seem to be overrated and overpriced. To choose between the two, I guess HK by a slight margin.

 

I have the Bose....my sister has the H/K.

I think her's sounds like crap; not that the Bose is the end-all be-all,

... but I also have to admit that I don't try to move people's homes
with the amount of volume or bass that I'm trying to push out.

 

Buy some Bamg & Olufsen, or B&O as its called. Audi use it, it should be the best car audio ever. Its made at the same way like B&O's AudiWreck system to a price like 16.000. But i guess that the car audio is a bit cheaper:P They say that it's the only audio, in a car that you dosen't get tired in your head of, after 8 hours. http://www.beoworld.co.uk/car1.htm
BUT...i don't know about B&O deliver it for other cars than Audi
But they are danish:P

 

If I simply wanted to take out the two front speakers and upgrade them what would you use??

 

I have the Harmon Kardon system in my E46 M3 and it sucks I would love it if BMW would offer Bose systems.

 

Forget it if you have the Bose system. You can't do that withour replacing a lot of other stuff. The speakers have built-in amp/eq's I am 90% sure of that. Thats how Bose does all their stuff. Honestly I am not sure you'd have big gains either if you only did that.

 

I have Bose in both my SL55 and my 911 and the 911 system is distinctly better but neither is good. I don't know why the car manufacturers continue to go with Bose There's just so much hype when they don't even get the fundamentals right, like low distortion amplifiers, speakers with cones which don't break up the sound, decent wiring. Plus of course, it's so integrated into the rest of the car that upgrading is difficult.

Sounds to me like Mercedes, Porsche and others have fallen for the Bose sales pitch. Come on Alpine, what are you DOING?

 

The Bose sucks, but the speaker placement in our SL's make it suck even more... The sound from my Bose system in my E55 is 10x better than in my SL55. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

~ Ian

 

Its like an afterthought.... like some German engineer runs into the factory last minute and screams "Scheibe!!! wir foget da radio!"

 

Let me tell you guys a story. We sell certain european loudspeakers, when you take them apart, the wires are soldered to the drivers with silver solder. one step down, you get no solder, but a quality connector. Another step down and you get some zip cord for wire and a tin connector. With Bose, you don't even get a connector. They simply wrap the wire around the terminal like 4 times. I mean why spend an extra penny when you don't have to. It is incredible.... I am astounded that someone like Mercedes Benz cannot find a more qualified audio company to do this work.

Has anyone ever noticed when you go into any store that sells speakers that all manufacturers are in one section and the Bose stuff is always in a different section totally on its own? making direct comparisons near impossible?

This is not by accident. This is Bose requirement before anyone can carry the line.

 

Actually from what Steve (MBenzNL) told me the Bose amp can be modded to act as preamp. You'd then be able to buy a decent amp and speakers and keep the factory look. I went another way with my non Bose setup and installed an AudioControl LC6 line level converter, then installed an existing ADS amp I had along with some Boston Z-6s plus a DQT equaliser.

 

The bose preamp is EQ'd. They install crap for speakers then EQ it to get it to sound decent. That's what makes changing the speakers or adding an amp so difficult. But not impossible. There is a company that I know "de-EQ's" that EQ. And gives a fairly flat signal out which can then go to a standard amplifier and speakers. Its just a lot of work... that's all.... the Bose system is very difficult to work with.

 

http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html

 

Guess who wrote that.
A Lexus owner.