Is there a way to calibrate that in the tech menu (dont know the nomenclature or meanings of the information)of the NAV or is it simply the nature of the 2 stereo systems? I sat in my friends non-NAV A3 and the music was so munch punchier and the sound was less tinney. Thanks!

Although when you start turning the volume up, that's when the bose system starts to take the lead. Either way, I intend on putting in a more powerful sub in the future.

You can adjust simple stuff like bass,treble and balance levels of course, but no actual calibration.

I do remember a loaner A4 I drove for a few days and noticed the bass in the standard system in that car was much much deeper and more responsive. Sounded pretty good actually. I wish we could get the Mark Levinson systems like in the Lexus cars.

that the sound is better. I haven't heard either system, but sometimes cheaper systems are set up differently and have bass bumps at around 70Hz or so that make you think your system has really good bass and this tends to make it sound really punchy. Often times the better (more acurate) system is actually less impressive and less punchy, depending on the material. If anything, "punchiness" is often a sign of a system with uneven frequency response, and usually peaks in the mid-bass range. That is, of course, only if they didn't engineer it that way to begin with.

Just food for thought. Like I said, I haven't heard the systems in the A3 line.

environment and ambient noise levels?

or the bass-mid-bass controls that we do. But the "tone" controls on the front aren't even close to being precise enough to counter a cabin or a system with frequency humps. You could have a peak at 70Hz that's about 10Hz wide and 5db high, a dip at 55 that's about 6Hz wide and 3db low, etc. No "bass" control is going to help those minute issues and sometimes they pre-program these things to have those humps and peaks so that people think that sound is "pumping" or whatever. Often times, less accurate sound is more impressive, but if you do an analytical comparison, you might notice that the bass is pumping but that the mids (where all the vocals sit) aren't as audible, etc. It gets kind of complicated... and some of it is intentional because there's a psychology to it. I'm not saying they're tricking us, but simply that it takes a critical listening with several pieces of music to determine what sounds better to each person. Different songs might sound better to a given person on different systems depending on how the song's sound profile lines up with the system's profile and the listener's preferences.

psycho-acoustic studies at Bose for audiophiles that have the "golden ear" or perfect pitch. The EQ is just a set of band-pass filters that passively filter the sound in various frequency bins. Sometimes DSP equalizers have pre-programmed configurations to mimic the acoustics of a particular environments such as a concert hall, or a mobile vehicle with lots of background noise and makes it easier to fine tune.

I'm not familiar with the component layout but couldn't someone install an EQ inline? Unfortunatly the interface would not be integrated into the stereo head unit (maybe the CAN bus could be hacked?) but it would still give greater control to suite an individuals specific taste.

But then you get into the frequency dynamics of the speakers, their range, output, etc. I use to love this stuff when I was younger, now, I prefer that intelligent electronics do the work for me.........

The A8 system being designed by B&O sounds like the answer and will probably be available in a couple of years in all Audi's.