Being an early 30s technology affluent male and self proclaimed audio snob, here are my observations:

-Tech is pretty good, slightly silly in certain areas - namely I shouldn't have to record names to be able to voice dial people.

-"Caller ID" only showing the phone number of people calling is almost useless. A scrolling name of the contact would be a lot better...

-iPod integration has a decent UI, but it's slow and I am definitely wishing I had the 2011 ipod voice feature.

-Why doesn't the A2DP supporting bluetooth have a pause button on the steering wheel? Does anyone else find this odd? The only way to pause ipod/bluetooth playback is to power off the audio system?

-Sound system: I am one of those jerks who spends over a grand on headphones and I think the ELS system is pretty good, but it does have one fairly major issue: the thing has a pretty hot treble boost somewhere in the upper frequencies. The tweeters are tweetin a bit harshly. This causes very quick listening fatigue which means I turn it up to get that full sound, but shortly thereafter have to turn it back down. It has a Grado sound if you are familiar with headphones.

P.S. Does everyone keep the Dolby on?

 

Thank you for the review, and welcome to the forum. I had an '09 w/ Tech, and now I'm on an '11 w/ Tech, and can certainly agree with some of your points.

I did find it odd that there was no pause button. After awhile, I got used to powering off the entire system. It starts up pretty fast so it pretty much works like a pause button. I listen mostly to MP3s on a USB drive.

I can also relate regarding the "hot treble". I do find myself changing volume on occasion, and I do get listening fatigue. Not being a sound guy myself, I wouldn't have been able to describe it in that way, but that is what it is.

I generally keep the Dolby on, but I've found that that "weakens" the sound a little bit. There's definitely less bass. So, when I listen to rap or Sega Genesis, I turn the Dolby off.

Again, welcome!

 

great review, welcome to azine

 

Welcome!

And I too tend to listen to music louder at the beginning then fiddling with the volume control one down, one up, on down......repeat.
I do this when I listen to audio via my USB, but don't do it when I listen to the radio.... can't rationalize why.

I leave Dolby on.

I do wish that Acura had designed it so that when you turn the volume all the way down, it pauses the track, but I found out first hand it was not true. Like MrO said, good thing the volume off/on works very very quickly.

 

i'm glad that an audiophile finds the ELS system good. one of the major points of wanting the tech package. loved sitting in acuras at the auto show just so i could really test out the ELS system.

 

Yes I do think it is good. I don't review stock car audio systems for a living but the audio clarity is definitely higher than the average bear. The damn treble was annoying me again today though, I'm getting some serious sibilance on certain vocal tracks.

 

FM radio is compressed quite heavily. Part of effects of this compression is a roll off of high and low frequencies. It's quite probable that the treble spike isn't nearly as sharp on radio tunes because of the quality loss in the source.

 

Sorta offtopic, but something that bugs me about the audio system is that you have all those controls for stuff on the wheel, but there's no button to scroll through stations whether it be XM or FM. Never thought of it as an issue till recently, having to drive one handed and all.

But hell, my last car had zero steering wheel controls, nor XM or even a display screen so I can't complain too much. I love the speakers in there, a little weary about blowing them though. Hate testing the boundaries of how loud I can turn it up before I have to worry about something going out.

 

Doesn't channel up/down on the steering wheel do this?

 

I know it'll scroll through presets, don't know about seeking though.

 

One touch on the up/down scrolls through presets. Hold the up/down in and it will go to the next XM channel regardless of the presets. So if you have preset 21, 25, 104 and you're listening to 21 - one longer push will take you to 22.

Hope that helps...

 

^^

Also holding up/down for radio will become the <tune> action for the radio frequencies.

 

This was helpful, thank you. Still wish there was a sort of designated seek, channel up and down button though. I'll try that next time I'm in the car but I just feel it'd be a great feature if you could navigate channels with as much ease to scroll through them as it does with the large channel selector on the dash.

 

The ELS system was one of the major reasons that drove me to purchase this car, I didn't want to mess around with aftermarket, and after hearing Linkin Park ReAnimation DVD-A I was completely blown away. And after a while, so were the speakers. Unfortunately for me, I am on my 6th Pair of Front Speakers, 2nd subwoofer, and I think had the rear door and rear shelf repalced once. This is the only car I've ever owned that has blown a speaker. On a side note, I had a loaner when they were replacing the left door speaker a week ago, brand new 2012 with 350 miles on it, both front speakers were completely blown, not just at higher volume but way down low it was horrible actually. Acura still hasn't figured it out, or I should say Panasonic hasn't figured it out. Someone on here actually tested the sound and found massive amounts of clipping, which would explain the speaker issues, but nobody at Acura/Panasonic seems to be thinking it's the Amplifiers Dirty sound. They just keep throwing speaker after speaker at it. Hope you don't have these issues but I'm going to hate it once the warranty runs out.

 

I've had to have a total of 6 speakers replaced, my XM module went bad and had to be replaced, and I have had some really weird things happen soon after I bought the car (back up camera would occasionally not come on, issues with the BT, etc.) but these bugs have not popped back up recently, thankfully.

I also had to have my rear brakes replaced last year, and some of this was reimbursed via the Honda settlement (truth be told I was very disappointed that the brakes had crapped out so early in the game, though).

All in all it's a good car and I do enjoy driving it, but if I were to buy another TSX, I am not sure I would do the Tech package again. The features are nice, but the novelty quickly wore off for me and there is too much that can go wrong, it seems. My warranty runs out next year and with all of the bugs I have encountered thus far, I am seriously considering either getting rid of the car or at the very least, buying an extended warranty.