Bose Sound Quality

[drfoto]

I specifically got the option package with the Bose sound system so I could rock my music in the Bolt. I'd enjoyed premium sound in my BMW i3 and wanted the same in my new car. Music streamed from the phone or via SIrius XM the sound quality was not what I had hoped.

Last night I grabbed a physically small USB flash drive and copied a directory of mp3 files (in folders by artist) to the stick. I plugged it into one of the two USB ports in the front center console and waited for it to be recognized. As soon as I chose it as the media Source, the car read the mp3 files without issue, skipping randomly from folder to folder and song to song. The quality of the sound improved DRAMATICALLY over what I had listening to over the past several days via Sirius XM and my phone stream.

If music is an important part of your driving experience, I encourage you to try using a loaded flash drive of mp3 files as your media source.
BIG difference to my ears.

 

[SmokingRubber]

I've done the same. I had a 64gb stick in my FJ loaded with my music. Last weekend I moved the stick to the Bolt. I also noticed an improved sound quality at higher volumes. On Cyber Monday I ordered a low profile 64 gb Sandisk stick for the Bolt. See below. It should be here today.

My other stick is not at all low-profile, it's retractable which makes it even longer. This wasn't a problem in the FJ since it was attached to an extension cable and lived in the glove box. I'm afraid I'll bump it or something in the Bolt and snap the head right off.

 

[LeftieBiker]

The Bose system tends to be set up a bit too blandly by default. You can go in via menu (in the Leaf at least) and adjust Bass, Treble, balance, to get better sound.

 

[dandrewk]

The problem isn't with your Bose system. You're usage of a USB stick playing songs you recorded should prove that. The issue is entirely with Sirius/XM. When those satellite services first started, the audio quality was more than acceptable. Between mergers and attempts to jam their limited bandwidth with more content (to attract more subscribers), the compression has made Sirius/XM virtually un-listenable. It's far worse than FM radio, and for talk radio AM sounds a lot better.

I was one of the very early adopters of XM. But I dumped them about four years ago and haven't looked back. When I got the Bolt, I listened a bit to XM during the free 30 day trial. It hurt my ears. Free or not, I didn't listed to it again.

If audio quality matters to you, and it sounds(!) like it does, you don't want to be listening to the noise generated by Sirius/XM. Best to stick with your own library or listen to Pandora/Spotify/Apple Music etc.

 

[NeilBlanchard]

If sound quality is what you want, then you should use 320k MP3's.

I suspect that the Bose system is running some sort of DSP on all sources, and it is not ideal. The sound quality with the same source (my iPod) on our e-Golf is much better than our Bolt.

 

[dandrewk]

The point is, if audio quality is important, ditch Sirius/XM. It will sound terrible on the best sound system in the world.

 

[LeftieBiker]

The point is, if audio quality is important, ditch Sirius/XM. It will sound terrible on the best sound system in the world.

I'm not an audiophile, but I DO have a certain sensitivity to tinny music - it bothers me. After adjusting my Bose/XM system via the system's audio menu I find it quite acceptable for car use.

 

[dandrewk]

The point is, if audio quality is important, ditch Sirius/XM. It will sound terrible on the best sound system in the world.

I'm not an audiophile, but I DO have a certain sensitivity to tinny music - it bothers me. After adjusting my Bose/XM system via the system's audio menu I find it quite acceptable for car use.

Agreed it's all a matter of taste and how our ears hear differently. There are objective measurements that can determine true audio fidelity, but that doesn't necessarily translate to "sounds great!".

To be sure, there's not much acoustic engineers can do to make a small interior like the Bolt's sound great. But with a decent sound source and the right amount of tweaking, it's more than acceptable.

Except of satellite radio. I don't hear "tinny" but I do hear lots of compression. Some channels, in particular the talk radio stations, sound worse than telephone fidelity. In these situations, having a good sound system actually works against you, as you can hear the imperfections more clearly. YMMV.

 

[LeftieBiker]

I never listen to talk radio. I'll wait until I get to hell for that.

 

[HotPotato]

Sirius streams at 64 Kbps and up. Pandora, at your choice of 150 or 300. Apple (iTunes) at 256. Google Play, 320. Amazon Music Unlimited, 256 average up to 500. Spotify, your choice of 96, 160 or 320.

Low bitrate sounds bad. And, direct wired connection sounds better than Bluetooth.

I thought my car stereo sucked. Then I switched Spotify's bitrate up from the default of 96 to 320. Ta-da, much better! Then I connected my phone's audio by USB instead of Bluetooth audio. Ta-da, much better still!

I think that a lot of people, like me, didn't have the ability to stream digital music or use Bluetooth audio in their old car, and when they try those features in the new one, they make the mistake of assuming it will sound as good as a CD, and hence mistakenly assume the stereo sucks. Upping the source bitrate and plugging in directly can restore the sound to something more like CD quality.

 

[dandrewk]

Sirius streams at 64 Kbps and up. Pandora, at your choice of 150 or 300. Apple (iTunes) at 256. Google Play, 320. Amazon Music Unlimited, 256 average up to 500. Spotify, your choice of 96, 160 or 320.

Low bitrate sounds bad. And, direct wired connection sounds better than Bluetooth.

Totally agree, except the part of wired audio necessarily sounding better.

If you have a current streaming device with the latest Bluetooth radio and standard. there should be no difference in audio quality between Bluetooth and wired. Both are digital, so the bit stream is either complete or it isn't complete. There are no "gray areas" that would cause audio quality to diminish. If the Bluetooth connection is marginal, you may get sporadic dropouts, but those should be obvious and won't affect the actual quality of the sound.

Note - in some instances, particularly with older gear, the device manufacturers deliberately "dumbed down" the audio stream for BT audio in order to achieve and maintain the signal. In my experience though, you'd need ideal circumstances to notice. I

 

[NeilBlanchard]

I asked a friend who does car audio for a living, and he confirms that the Bose system does a lot of digital signal processing (DSP). The midrange is cut, and the bass is boosted at low volumes, but cut (a lot!) at higher volumes. I also thing they are adding reverb, and compressing the dynamics quite a bit.

And the volume control and the DSP are all handled in the amplifier. The best solution he said is available at the moment, is a pre-processor than can be installed between the head control unit and the amp.

Which is not very satisfactory, frankly. Adding in EQ, to try and offset the EQ in the amp is only (probably) going to muddy the waters.

I hope that we can replace the amp with a "straight" unprocessed unit, and replace the drivers with units that can take the full volume from the amp, without EQ fiddling.

This hopefully can happen, sooner rather than later.

 

[user 1485]

I have always had a problem with Bose equipment in the house or in cars. I think they mess with the sound too much, with all sorts of equalization bent to meet their own standards. I like to start with a system that has a basically flat equalization, and then mess with it from there. Accordingly, to my ears the Bose sound is not that good in the Bolt EV. Its muddy in the middle somewhere, and lacking at the top end. The base is fine, but then I am not a fan of chest beating. I do find that my ten year old iPod, with mostly low bitrates, gives reasonably good sound using a USB port. I tend to prefer listening to it rather than music over bluetooth, whether its Pandora, or directly from my iPad, or whatever I try to use. I tend to feel that there is something a bit harsh about a bluetooth connection no matter what the bitrate.

 

[BlueBoltEV]

I have a new 2020 Bolt Premier with software 46.1.6 and this is my first post. Thanks to all on the forum that I've learned from so far. I wanted to post this in the thread named "USB Stick Music" but it is locked. At least this thread started out about music on flash drives.

I found that the Bolt infotainment system will not see or play audio files ripped from CDs or bought using iTunes (or elsewhere) that have the filename extension .m4a These are MPEG-4 audio files with AAC encoding, which the 2020 Bolt Owners Manual says the car will play. I found that all you have to do is rename the filename extension to one that the car will see and then it will list and play the files.

I renamed my .m4a files to .aac and now they work fine. You do not have to convert or transcode them to MP3 and you do not have to re-rip or re-buy them as MP3. Renaming them to .mp4 works, but that confuses them with video files. Renaming them to .mp3 works but that confuses them with actual MP3 files.

Also, in the Owners Manual's description of this type of file it makes no mention of supporting Variable Bit Rate (VBR), but my files have VBR of 256 or 320 kbps and they play fine and sound great, and much better than the satellite radio.

In Windows, you can change the extension of many files in many folders at once with Microsoft's PowerRename utility (in Microsoft's PowerToys) or a third-party utility such as Bulk Extension Changer or Advanced Renamer. On a Mac you can change the extension of many files in one folder using the Finder.

Because I have about 6000 files, which exceeds the Bolt's limit of 5000 per flash drive, I split them into two flash drives of about 3000 each with room to expand. Each drive is a Samsung 64 GB FIT Plus, USB 3.1, Model MUF-64AB/AM.

This flash drive came from the factory formatted as exFAT, which the Bolt will not recognize. I reformatted it using the free guiformat.exe from Ridgecrop to FAT32 with an allocation unit size of 32768. Formatting it to NTFS (Windows) or HFS+ (Mac) is also OK according to the Owners Manual.

Previously I had all the files on a single 64 GB Samsung FIT USB 3.0 drive that we used in a 2014 Prius Plug-In. It had no problem with the .mp4 filename extensions and it showed album artwork.

 

[marspilgrim]

Names like Bose are really meant to sell a premium option than actually sound better. savagegeese YouTube channel often tests the sound in their car reviews and most are not that great when analyzed. Although the interior of a car is about the worst sound field you could make. But then my ears hear no difference with Bose, Beats, etc. in the best conditions.