I had a test drive of the new 2014 MDX yesterday. I am a big fun of surround sound, and compatibility of the new ELS Studio Surround system was a significant factor for me when evaluating the new model. I took with me a sample DVD-Audio disk (the standard demo disk from Acura) and I can tell you with confidence that - just as RLX - the new system does not play DVD-Audios. A call to Acura Client Relations confirmed that indeed, neither Tech nor Entertainment packages are compatible with DVD-Audio.

While the new MDX has many good new features, this is definitely a step back. Lexus supports DVD-A, why not Acura?

I can understand that one can't get DVD-Audios at Costco, there is a very limited selection (if anything at all) at big box retailers, but there are plenty of them available through internet sources and E-Bay. Those of us who experienced DVD-Audio would really miss it. I can go as far as saying that ELS Surround which supports only DTS-CD and does not support high resolution audio is a joke.

We need to tell Acura that it was a mistake. We need to tell them that many loyal Acura customers like and want this feature. We need to tell them that they should bring DVD-A compatibility back, and perhaps even add SACD support. The best way to do it is to spend 15 min and write them a letter. Not e-mail which is easy to delete. A plain old letter works better these days because there are fewer of them.

I did this today, and I ask other surround sound funs to to the same. If they get one letter, they will ignore it. If they get a hundred, they might listen. If they get a thousand, they will listen.

The address of Acura Client Relations is on the acura web site, or you can just copy it from here:


Acura ClientRelations
1919 Torrance Blvd.
M/S 500-2N7E
Torrance, CA 90501-2746


Thank you all for supporting this!

 

I hate to say it, but DVD-A is dead, I am sure there is some minimal cost to implementing it that Acura felt was not worth it. Truly sad as the ELS is a perfect showcase for such high quality audio.

 

You say that you are a surround "fun", I not sure what one of those is but you then you ask us to speak to other funs. What do they look like?

 

Can you play DVD-R? like record your MP3s in a DVD and play?
I think that I have to agree with Keith, DVD-A is a dead format, while I enjoy playing the Demo disc, and I agree that the sound quality is amazing, I am not about to spend three times the cost of an itunes album to buy a DVD-A disc, much less when the selection is soooo limited.

 

I love DVD-audio discs, I enjoy them in my TSX and I'd love to see it in future Acuras. Unfortunately economics dictate the situation. I doubt most Acura customers ever buy or use them.

 

I completely agree with the OP and I urge everyone that even remotely cares to join in and write a letter. DVD-A is FAR from a dead format. Some of the best artists of all time have been releasing music in that format recently, and if you haven't heard a hi-res 5.1 surround disc in Acura's ELS system, you have no idea what you're missing.

I appreciate my last two Acura TL's as automobiles, but the thing that has kept me loyal to the brand is the DVD-A capability. Without it, there is nothing keeping me from looking elsewhere. But if they bring it back, I would never stray. It's that important to me.

Writing my letter now...

 

Care to share any sources for finding DVD-A discs? Any good prices or large selections to choose from? I've checked e-Bay and several large electronics stores (Best Buy, Fryes, etc) but haven't found any good deals.

 

eBay is always your best bet for older titles. But King Crimson, Rush, Porcupine Tree, Talking Heads and several others have titles in print that should be readily available from Amazon.

 

E-Bay on average has about 10,000 listings of used and new DVD-Audios, most of them priced between $9 and $16. It is much less than 3 times of the cost of the iTunes album, and it is 100 times the quality if it is lossless stereo and day and night if it is MP3. AIX records sells everything they ever released through their web site - and they have glorious recordings of jazz, country, and a few decent classical albums. ArchivMusic site sells a number of hard to find items. And of course there are plenty of other sources on internet. Seek and you shall find

Have I said that it is possible to convert good stereo into great sounding surround - which sounds a lot better in the car than the original? I did a lot of such conversions, too.

Yes, there is a HUGE difference between how ELS Surround sounds in the stereo mode and in the surround mode. Acura could have also added Super Audio CD format compatibility which is quite often used these days for releasing high definition material, both in Surround and in Stereo.

But the key is - if you care - to tell Acura about it. They do not read these forums, but they do read letters which are sent to them.

 

I've had my 2012 Tech for nearly a year and just stumbled upon the Acura ELS DVD-A sampler in my glove box last weekend. I played it through and was fairly impressed with it's sound quality over CD.

However, my audio source typically originates from my iPhone (i.e.: Pandora, Netflix, etc,...) via BT audio.

DVD-A is great but it won't in any way be a factor in whether or not I swap out my 12 Tech for a 15 Tech.

 

Thanks for the info on where to find some of the DVD-A discs. I'll see what I can find and if there are any good prices.

 

Sadly, I agree. BT Audio convenience outweighs fidelity for me. Virtually all my listening in the car is podcasts or audiobooks these days. Ironic since I used to be in the audio/video/car audio retail business. I still have them, but unused, Magneplanars, Quicksilver amps, Conrad-Johnson pre amp, Studer Revox cassette (yes, I have a $2300 tape deck). All sitting around. Same for my old car audio gear, I have a Nakamichi PA-304 sitting in a box somewhere, one TD-500 and other misc. junk just taking up space.

 

I think it's a horrible mistake as well, since Acura has spent years promoting DVD-A in its vehicles; as a result, it's reasonable to conclude that many of their existing customers have such discs.

I was particularly surprised they didn't build DVD-A compatibility into their entertainment system DVD player; that would have been a great compromise that would have added very little cost.

Does anyone know if DVD-A playback can be added to a DVD player via a firmware update, or is it hardware-based?

 

Cliffbig, DVD-Audio requires a special software to decode MLP encoded tracks. It is the same DVD-ROM as DVD-Video. Yes, it is a firmware kind of thing.

 

I've done a search on eBay, Amazon, and the AIX site. There may well be over 10000 listings on eBay, but even under the DVD-A or DVD-Audio search most of the listings are for CD audio plus a DVD.

Really a poor search result and I haven't figured out how to find just DVD-A listings. Aix has listings also, but they have many dual sided discs or Blu Ray discs. I don't think those are what play in the MDX.

Any links on JUST DVD-A results without having to comb through and check what format the discs really are?

 

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I only discovered multichannel DVD audio because I bought an Acura. Now I am totally hooked. I can burn my own DVD audios (Cirlinca software). Many of my favorite artists are releasing multichannel mixes of their catalog (Rush, Doors, Jethro Tull). It is a great way to experience your favorite music all over again, in high resolution surround sound.

I will write to Acura as the OP suggested. My wife keeps telling me to shop higher end vehicles (Lexus, Mercedes, etc) and I keep telling her that Acura still makes the best vehicles bang for buck and their sounds systems are usually better than those near six figure cars. But alas, I've started to shop around as the loss of DVD-A was the straw that broke the camel's back.

BTW, test drove the 2014 last weekend and loved everything else about the car.

 

I saw the disc in my glove box too, now gotta try it out!

 

Since I discovered that DVD-A wasn't supported in the 2014 MDX, I researched how to get the most out of the great ELS system (they won't support it no matter how many letters they receive). I started another thread (search for ELS) where I shared my observations in the many other options we have.

Here I will add that although DVD-A is not supported, CD 5.1 DTS Surround is supported. Discs can be found on Amazon and EBay but are typically too pricey for my tastes and I really enjoy having a huge music selection readily available (Spotify Premium for me with extreme (320 kbts) for both downloads and streaming (thank you LTE!).

I did find another resource for DTS original CDs as well as upmixed CDs (to 5.1 DTS). The website is www.dtsbyj4j.com. I purchased a Police CD and the guy threw in another cd with a couple of added songs. He responds quickly to questions you may have and told me that the majority of his customers are Acura owners. I think the Police original sounds good but not great. The standout was the 2nd CD that included Steely Dan's Josie. I played that track for a couple of friends sitting in the 2nd row and they both said they thought they were in a music hall. It sounded amazing.

For those who don't know, ELS was developed by Elliot Scheiner who was the audio engineer for several Steely Dan albums so I thought it appropriate to have some of his work to show off the system.

There are also sites that sell high quality downloads that also sound great like HD Tracks. iPhone users can use ALAC format. Just a heads up that the music only sounds as good as the original recording and I have found that is all over the map. I tried a couple of free samples that sound great but still on the fence on making a purchase (again I love my variety). I also found a site that had 5.1 downloads and tried a couple samples but both were all static so not sure what that was about (Other than obvious format incompatibility).

Please share any other high quality resources! It would be a shame for ELS owners to not experience the superb sound of the system!

 

Don't the 2014 MDXs with entertainment package have DVD players? Do those DVDs play through the central ELS audio system? If so, I guess you could get some concert DVDs and play those through the system. It's not the same as DVD-A, of course, but not bad.

 

All 99% of people want is to be able to play from their iPhone, thru bluetooth or usb.

 

Good thing we have forums that the 1% can share useful ideas to go beyond a Bluetooth/USB connection!

 

Just had to wiki read what the hell is DVD Audio. Now I get it. Have never used it and will in all probability never use it. I guess I am in with the 99%.

 

Some people like nice cars, some people like nice audio but some other people like both.

 

That's life.

If no one embraces a technology, it will just fade out of the market. There is no point hanging on an obsolete technology that no DVD publisher is willing to support any more.

 

I just got the 2014 MDX Nav and have a large collection of DVD-A discs as well. After a week of testing and trying different things I have finally created the perfect way to rip your DVD-A's and convert them to DTS-CD's that will play 5.1 surround in the MDX. Saved me a ton on my DVD-A investment : > I'll gladly walk you through it if you are interested. I'm using a mac computer. Quality is great, not as full bodied as a DVD-a but at least you'll be able to see the names of the tracks now too.

 

If you can send me those instrucitons, I'd be most grateful. If you don't want to post them here, you can email them to me at cliffbig at mac.com (replace the word at with the appropriate symbol, of course).

 

QUOTE=leefarber;14543786]I completely agree with the OP and I urge everyone that even remotely cares to join in and write a letter. DVD-A is FAR from a dead format. Some of the best artists of all time have been releasing music in that format recently, and if you haven't heard a hi-res 5.1 surround disc in Acura's ELS system, you have no idea what you're missing.

I appreciate my last two Acura TL's as automobiles, but the thing that has kept me loyal to the brand is the DVD-A capability. Without it, there is nothing keeping me from looking elsewhere. But if they bring it back, I would never stray. It's that important to me.

Writing my letter now...[/QUOTE]

Write all you want......
SACD: DEAD
DVDA: DEAD
DOLBY True HD: Dying (losing out to DTS HD)
BTW the last 2 use meridian lossless audio.
Although high definition audio seems to be always on the horizon, the fact is that the crappy MP3 owns the market by millions to one. We're lucky CD is still around. Hopefully the industry will some day congregate around DTS HD as the default high definition standard but I doubt it. Lets face it, most of the music is crap anyway, to listen to autotuned songs, Miley Cyrus, rap and Daft Punk, MP3 is more than adequate. Market volumes for classical, jazz or any music for which fidelity is important are in an inexorable decline

 

That's why Im buying an RLX sport hybrid with Krell audio

 

Excellent choice.

 

Unfortunately, due to limited availability, the hybrid RLX will not be heavily discounted like the regular RLX sedans that are jamming up dealership storage yards.

 

I suspect you're right
Maybe given the fact that Acura is considered a less "prestigious marque" they'll be slow sellers too. Once you get to the 60k market a lot of buyers are more concerned with cachet rather than anything else. I'm ready to pay full price for a car that is going to be a bargain compared to its competitors, something that can't be said of the FWD version. As far as I know, the hybrid version of the GS, Q, or 5 series are not hot sellers either.

 

wait, people still use discs?

 

Hey you need them to use the radio hard drive!

 

can you do it with USB or do they make you rip from the disc?

 

You need a disc. Its a copy protection thing common to all car audio hard drives.

 

I can rip from an SD disc to my HDD in an my A6.

 

Neither my ford nor Acura

 

I agree with the OP.

DVD-A is great, and if you're going to put a disc player in a car, why not leave the DVD-A capability in there for those who enjoy it? Sure they are not coming out in droves, but if you look you can find them. Recent releases include 5.1 discs by YES including 'The Yes Album', 'Close to the Edge', and 'Relayer' - all available on Amazon or at other retailer. They are out there, you just have to look.

I never use the hard drive in my car, but I am not going to campaign to remove it. Some like it, some don't.

 

The capacity to play audio-DVDs is the major reason I bought my 2013 TSX. I was ready to become a lifelong Acura owner, looking forward to a 2016 TLS, because the sonic experience of the A-DVD cannot be surpassed unless automotive companies begin to install Blu-Ray players, which can play A-DVDs. Now that Acura has regressed to a CD player in their 40K+ vehicle, I will look to different make in the future.

In the world of computers and TVs, we appreciate that monitors continuously improve the visual experience - more colors, better resolution, better motion, life-like viewing. Removing the A-DVD player from the Acura, while keeping the ELS speaker system is the sonic equivalent of Samsung or Sony telling its customers that it will revert to standard definition monitor with hundreds of colors but still sell the 55 inch screen. ELS speakers in the Acura, as big as they sound, cannot compensate for the vast amount of sonic information lost from the disc by limiting customers to CD instead of A-DVD.

I actually thought Acura "got it" with their A-DVD player. I thought they understood there are customers in a niche market who want superb audio in their 40K+ vehicle, because the combo of A-DVD+ELS is truly spectacular. For this reason I thought Acura would be the brand I own for the rest of my life. Yet the excuse I seem to hear for removing it in 2015 is that commercial A-DVDs did not catch on commercially, which is true for complex marketing reasons, and are out of print, and therefore an A-DVD player is really out of date.

Where Acura really screwed up is failing to realize that customers who value and get the most out of the A-DVD system choose to download and burn their own A-DVDs from thousands of titles (lossless FLAC files) available from online companies like HDTracks, using A-DVD burning software from companies, e.g., Cirlinca, using a simple Windows platform. An audio-DVD, averaging a couple gigabytes for an album, can contain up to 7 times the information of a commercial CD, with a sample rate of 24Hz. By analogy this translates sonically to the listener in the same fashion that millions of colors and high resolution do for a computer monitor. Many Acura drivers don't care about this, but for those of us that do (did) and use the commute to and from work as our primary listening time, the staging and transparency of the music that is achievable with A-DVD is incomparable.

What turns disappointment to anger is that Acura doesn't even offer the A-DVD player as an option in 2015 models. Because A-DVDs cannot be played on a CD, the money and time spent to build a collection of nearly 100 classical, jazz and contemporary A-DVDs in my case, almost all of them downloaded and burned from HDTracks and Linn Records for playback in my Acura 2013, are now squandered. Rather than accommodate its audiophile customers with an optional A-DVD player, which can also play conventional CDs, they've subbed in a CD player incapable of playing A-DVDs.

At a time when Acura sales have not exactly been leading the pack, one wonders how well their corporate leadership studied their customers and simply did their homework before making the myopic decision of dumbing down their audio system.

 

Tony,

You are 100% correct. I sent an email to Acura Customer Support complaining about the loss of DVD-A, and mentioned that the Honda equivalent of most Acura's currently have more advanced electronics in them for less money, but the 5.1 capability of the ELS system kept me going back to Acura time and time again.

All I received was a form letter response.

While it is true that the disc player is disappearing from many cars as most people have iPods and phones with their music on them (as do I), there is nothing that compares to a HiRez DVD-A in surround in an Acura, and if you are going to maintain a disc player and have a 10 year history of support for a format that has been adopted (at great expense) to many Acura owners, you should at least have the consideration to maintain the format.

Sure, someone is going to post that 90% of the owners don't even know what a DVD-A is, and that's true. But the cost associated with adding the DVD-A capability is a drop in the hat to the $2000 or so that we are paying for the Tech Package.