I work in the AV field and came across my partners sound level meter, so just for fun I took it home to test out the sound in the 09' TL tech ELS sound system since I never get to use it in the field. The test instrument is the Extech type 2 SLM and displays a digital DB level, such as 36.5db. In an attempt to compare fairly, the same source was used with the DVD-A, CD, iPhone, iPod, and USB stick. The file was Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y." since it's the only song that I have on 5.1 DVD-A from the 3G TL demo dvd, and commercial CD.

Please note, this is extremely amateurish and experimental and tough to be exact. Now the hard part was making sure all the media was recorded at the same level or at least close. I used the Mac application called Wave burner to monitor the levels and got them pretty close. For the iPhone and iPod, I also used AIFF files at 44.1/16-bit as you lose quality with MP3's. The USB stick was a MP3 at highest possible quality and 320kbps. Please note that I have all the TL Audio settings at default levels 0, and the Dolby Pro Logic II setting on, all windows up, roof closed and shade closed, in my garage which is pretty quiet.

Without getting too technical here's my results, playing all sources at sound setting 20:

DVD-Audio was +0.7db louder than all sources
CD was +0.65db louder than iPhone & iPod using the USB data port
Iphone and iPod were +0.25db louder than the USB stick
USB stick and auxiliary jack were identical, but I used the iPhone AIFF file compared to the USB stick 320kbps file.

Well, Acura did a great job managing the media sources and source levels. There's a lot of factors in consideration here, but I kind of remastered each file to make sure each type of media wasn't louder than the other. Actually the DVD-Audio file once extracted was the lowest register out of all of them due to the AC-3 file format, I had to bump it up 3DB to match the meters that the other sources were hitting. The hard part was keeping it unmuxed so no quality would be lost and retain the original 5.1

*By the way, Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y" has very little low end or sub frequencies. In fact most of Steely Dan or Donald Fagen tracks are lacking in low end, but I think that's intentional. I've heard stories from engineers over the years on how anal those guys are in the studio, sub bass wasn't in there vision.

 

Interesting! I'll be following this thread to see what people have to say about your testing methods, as well as, about the results of your testing. I think that the system sounds really fantastic. I know exactly what you mean about Steely Dan/Donald Fagen recordings lacking sub-bass. I have been listening to the only DVD-A disc that I own (other than the Acura demonstration disc...), Donald Fagen's "Morph The Cat." It has some pretty good sub-bass in there. I would love to read your evaluation of it.

 

Oh, no question the later stuff started to register a bit lower, but still no sub-sonic frequencies, just good clean bass. I didn't get into the later stuff, well actually I liked "Janie Runaway" two albums ago. I'll check out Morph the Cat CD soon. I think I remember the first track, Morph the Cat right?, it's got a phenomenal smooth flow with a childish hook with horns and xylophones?

 

Do us a favor while you have the sound level meter....put it on the passengers seat and with all accessories off and windows up, record the noise level while driving down the road at 60-65ish.
I'd like to know what the noise level is.
Don't put the meter on peak hold or anything, just more or less take an average noise measurement.
Also take note of what weighting factor you use to make the measurements. Use the one
that is what our ear hears. Cant remember if that's A,B, or C
Somewhere here I have some measurements from a 2007 basejust gotta find them again

 

I didn't have time today as I woke up late, plus it's raining here in LA, so that might add a few db to the testing. I'm going to purchase my own Sound Level meter soon, so I'll revisit this post and do some driving around.

 

bmode, thanks for doing this...very cool evaluation. I know what you're saying about Fagen. But I tell you what, you can't beat Steely Dan and/or Donald Fageon for sound quality and separation on a DVD Audio disc. Morph the Cat is a great disc.

 

Clearly! The guys were just sick engineers in the studio. I've heard stories about them putting t-shirts over snare drums, flooding the kick drum with pillows, special mics for different instruments.

Just another fact about my amateurish attempt to measure the DB's on the TL sound system, 1db is not really that audible to the common ear, so kudos again to Acura for this great sound system. I just wish they gave mid-range adjustments as I think the car is too bright at 1.5khz, but that's just my anal ear. The sub is rather weak too for a 440-watt system IMO.

 

not sure how you managed to get your other sources at the same reference level of the DVD-A disc. The DVd-A disc is likely not mastered at the same level as the CD. In fact, I've measured the same CD mastered by two different engineers to be mastered at completely different levels. Many re-mastered CD's are actually worse that the originals b/c the trend these days is to bump the recording levels up into hyper compression so they play loud on the radio.

The problem I've seen with the ELS system, aside from the sucky center channel, is they didn't correctly match the subwoofer output for DVD-A. This is why many of the DVD-A discs sound thin in the bass department. I believe they also screwed up the PLII implementation and likely used the Cinema and NOT the Music version.

Overall its a decent system as far as car audio is concerned, but I would have done some things differently...At least they didn't use Bose

 

Thank god they didn't use Bose, we don't care for Bose.

The difference between the Dolby's 3 setting of Music, Cinema and Game is mostly just EQ and levels right? At least that what Denon says but I'm not sure? I found that the music setting on my Denon AVR-3806 was the most complimentary to all the sources, even movies which were too bright with dialogue? Thank god everything is mixed in Dolby Digital because the DPLII is really thin and "phasey" for my tastes, it just seems so simulated, but in the TL it's not as dramatic as my theatre settings, but as you said something weird happens to the sub, I agree completely.

Regarding the levels during my test, that was the tricky part. For some reason, when I rip a DVD's audio, the AC-3 file format is so low during 2 channel playback? But in true dolby digital it's strong? So I had to bump it up to match the other 2 channels sources for the comparison.

About compression, it's a viscous war out there to get loud levels. During a few mastering sessions, the engineer and I would laugh because everything that we were doing was going to get smashed by each radio station out there, they all have there own compression and EQ. It's just crazy?

 

Bmode;

No there are bigger differences between the different PLII settings other than EQ. There are some articles about that on the Audioholics.com website. PLIIx Music Mode is simply stunning for 2CH audio sources but PLIIx Cinema mode sounds terrible for music. The same goes with ordinary PLII modes.

The reason the bass levels are encoded 10dB lower than the other channels for DVD-A / Blu-ray if the codecs are decoded by the receiver, the LFE automatically boosts 10 db to compensate for this. If the codec is decoded in a Blu-ray / DVD-A player and then sent via analog cables to the receiver, it is not boosted by the player. So you have to take that into account when comparing levels at least for the sub channel.

You will also find that high quality DVD-A discs and SACD discs aren't abusing the recording levels leaving a lot of headroom for better sound.

I recommend reading:
http://www.audioholics.com/news/edit...-down-of-audio

 

A great read. Gene pretty much sums up what I've been trying to tell a few folks here on the forum, of course he's Italian! LOL. My biggest pet peeve is most people don't care to listen to music in it's full glory as it was originally recorded and mixed. The dumbing down of audio is a perfect title, it's my life quest to do the opposite, which also spurs me to keep my 4500 pieces of vinyl.

I'm not sure I understand "You will also find that high quality DVD-A discs and SACD discs aren't abusing the recording levels leaving a lot of headroom for better sound"? A-Bus to me is an audio distribution system, how does that apply to the mastering process? I'm with ya on the headroom, but some tracks are recorded clean you can push them, it's the ones that are not clean that when pushed sound awful.

 

Gene, I'm with bmode...excellent read. You have an AWESOME website (www.audioholics.com). I wish more people would understand what they are doing to their music when they squish it down to MP3 mode for their iPods. It's a travesty. Everyone thinks it's so cool to have 2000 songs on their portable music player. NO ONE CARES ABOUT SOUND QUALITY ANYMORE...and they should. Their Acura will play music in the great quality it's meant to be heard in.

 

Another note, technology has found a way to make HD's so small with such a huge capacity, that we don't have to rely on MP3 compression for everything. So let's start the trend of moving towards uncompressed music, at least for two channel listening. Of course, Acura didn't give us an option for the HDD, shame on them for that oversight, but I do believe that they were thinking of the masses, not use music aficionados.