Was reading Car & Driver today at the gym, and the monthly Comparo was the BMW X3 vs the Audi A5 vs the Rover Evoque.
Some, or many of us, may have also taken a look at these when we were deciding on our RDXs (would have been interesting if the RDX was included in this comparison, but the others have more influence with car mags, IMO). Anyway, I noticed they measured the decibel levels at idle, and at other ranges. Now, having downloaded Sound Meter on my smartphone, i decided to compare. At idle it went like this: Audi: 36 dBA; X3 37 dBA; Rover 40 dBA....RDX was 27dBA. Now we had heard that one of the focus points of the redesign of the RDX was sound deadening, and this would seem to validate. I welcome other smartphone owners to download decibel apps (free, btw) to compare....

Not to pooh pooh your test but you should remember that you are using a cell phone for measurement and these mags use some pretty sophisticated microphones and equipment. Edmunds did a full test of the RDX and came back with these decibel counts.

Idle 42.6
Full Throttle 73.5
70mph cruise 66.2

The test they did on the Audi Q5 2.0T resulted as follows:
Idle 43.4
Full Throttle 70.3
70mph cruise 61.7

Seems to be a major difference between your 27.5 decibels at idle and the Edmunds 42.6.

Hey, whatever, it is certainly quiet enough for me but just wanted to let you know that your testing is probably not all that accurate.

Hey, just wondering where you found this info on the Edmunds site? Do you have a link? I see the RDX review and road test but not the decibel ratings or anything that detailed.

Thanks!

Actually it was kind of a pain in the ass to find. I remembered they did this full test on the new RDX but couldn't find it either. I ended up doing a google search on 2013 RDX full test I believe and it showed up in the search results. Sorry I don't have the link. I had to do the same with the Audi test. Edmunds recently did some rearranging of their website and not for the better IMO.

Noise level has been my main complaint with every Honda/Acura I've owned since 1991!

I saw the same article and I think they just included Luxo SUVs with I-4 turbo. Besides, the RDX ends where the Audi, BMW and Jag begins in pricing. From reading the article, the testers didn’t seem to enthusiastic about all three of the choices. It seems the luxo SUV market leans more toward "comfy/mpgs" compared to "sporty/handling".

http://www.caranddriver.com/comparis...omparison-test