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Stereophile used to run some car audio reviews and such. WP might have some thoughts on the Levinson stuff as he was the contributor doing the columns.
I went and listened. I wasn't very impressed... Here are my impressions I posted in another thread. The thread is about the cars I am deciding on possibly buying with a trade in of my E55, which has a Harmon Kardon setup that sounds better than the Lexus Levinson system IMO.
I know there is a heavy bias against Bose out there in the audiophile community, but the system gestalt sounded more like a HiFi on the Bose system, and the Logic 7.1 system by Harmon Kardon in my E55 had the spectrum equalization quality of the Bose system and the clarity of the Levinson system without being too forward or bright. I'm not sure what speakers Harmon uses in the Mercedes, but will have to put an effort into finding out for my own comparison's sake.
BTW, here is the Bang Olufsen site link.
Bang Olufsen site link redundancy...
Monty, the last car audio review I recall in Stereophile was written by Michael Fremer. I wrote accusing him of being a car nut trying to have his cake and eat it too - or words to that effect. The upshot was a pleasant exchange of e-mails, and I wound up with a little more insight into my favorite analog reviewer. My opinion, then and now, is that automobiles - all of them - are places where one listens to music at ordinary-fi levels, and any investments aimed at audiophile level sound are silly. Adding Levinson goodies to a Lexus may be fun, but that's all.
Yeah, it wasn't impressive all around, but I was surprised that the Bose system sounded better than the Levinson system. The car dealers were telling me that the automobile manufacturers do most of the acoustics research themselves then outsource the info to the audio manufacturer. This might explain why the more expensive cars have better sounding systems, they spent more on their research of the interior acoustics before outsourcing the info somewhere else. They didn't sound terrible, but it didn't aproach my home system by a long shot, but I didn't expect that it would either. I was hoping to find a better sound, and funny enough, found out I already had it in my Mercedes when all the comparisons were said and done. Too bad I need a AWD vehicle so I don't get killed by oncoming traffic this next winter. Perhaps I will try the snow tires and see if I can make it through this next winter. Of course those directional pop-out-of the cashboard B&O speakers seem like a well thought out design, I want to hear that system...