snagitseven

Could be the sub woofer is located in the rear door like the Q7 as shown on the B&O web site?

~pino~

I have seen this on Volvo station wagons, and I believe the Q7 has it there as well. It is a round subwoofer that fits inside the spare tire itself.

A4Audi4Fun

Symphony II+ head unit with Bose.

I have a tweeter and main speaker in each of the four doors, 1 in the centre dash area and a subwoofer in the right rear hatch area(passenger side for North America) behind a felt panel.

Matches the 10 speaker count from the brochure specs. Perhaps non-Bose didn't include the tweeters.

Dirt

Put your eggs in the wrong place and you could scramble them in their shells by the time you get home!

BMWBig6

I wrote B&O and promptly received a response to my inquiry. They claim that their acoustic team spends an average of 300 hours tuning a car's audio system by ear. They also confirmed that the "surround" speakers (located in the parcel shelf in the sedan) are located on the D-pillars in the Avant, and that the subwoofer in the Avant is slightly smaller and located within the excess space in the spare tire cavity.

Here are the technical specs for each car's system (note they are slightly different):


<u><b>Sedan Technical specifications</b></u>

<b>Front door &amp; Front/Centre loudspeaker: </b>
Two 25 mm tweeters
70mm full-range (centre)
80mm mid-range +200mm woofers

<b>Rear Door &amp; Parcel shelf:</b>
25mm tweeters + 168mm woofers
Two 80mm full-range + <font color="red"><b>200mm</b> "free-air" subwoofer that uses the parcel shelf as a baffle (like the A5)</font>


<u><b>Avant Technical specifications</b></u>

<b>Front door &amp; Front/Centre loudspeaker:</b>
Two 25 mm tweeters
70mm full-range (centre)
80mm mid-range +200mm woofers

<b>Rear door and <font color="red">"D" pillar:</font></b>
25mm tweeters + 165mm woofers
Two 80mm full-range

<b>Luggage compartment:</b>
<font color="red">A <b>165 mm</b> subwoofer in an 11L bass reflex ported cabinet placed within the excess space of the spare tyre.</font>


<u><b>Amplifiers (for both Sedan and Avant):</b></u>
Five 25 watt Class-A/B amplifiers for tweeters, mid-range and centre driver
Two 40 watt Class A/B amplifiers for rear woofers
Two 75 watt Class D amplifiers for front bass drivers
One 150 watt Class D amplifier for the subwoofer

Blake P

Thanks for the update! Lots of great info.

BMWBig6

You're welcome! I wonder how different the 2 cars sound considering subwoofer variances.

BMWBig6

Specifically regarding the subwoofer differences:

<i>
The Limo (sedan) has a 'free-air' subwoofer that uses the parcel shelf as a baffle. The A5 uses the same principle.

The Avant does not have a parcel shelf so we opted for a subwoofer in a ported cabinet. The only difference in performance is below 30Hz where the subwoofer port starts to roll off. This will make little difference to the listening experience for 2 reasons : 1. Most music contains very little information below 30 Hz. 2. This frequency area is masked by background noise while driving. The Q5 uses the same principle.

Of course it is possible to put a subwoofer in a sealed cabinet but the loudspeaker itself needs to be very large (as in the A8 / Q7). A ported cabinet can achieve good SPL at low frequency with a relatively smaller loudspeaker.
</i>

Furthermore, B&amp;O also told me that:

<i>
Both cars are tuned individually as each car is unique. Further there are usually two tunings per car as a car with fabric seats and no sunroof will differ from one with leather and sunroof.
</i>

Bargamon

bottom line: how does it sound?

BMWBig6

Sounds really good, after some fine tuning of settings. I like it in "Driver" listening mode best.