CPR

Anyone who questions the quality, clarity, & dynamic range, of the ELS system, the following 2 discs are my bragging rite, demo discs
Steely Dan/Gaucho
The Eagles/Hell Freezes Over
BOTH are phenomenal, & great demonstration material; even if you don't care for the music!

spoiler900

I often use Earth Wind and Fire's September when I am demonstrating the ELS system to customers (I sell Acuras). The system is great! For fun, sync your phone, go on youtube, and search "surround sound test." Lots of cool sound tracks pop up including a dinosaur and you can hear with the surround sound stereo where the dinosaur is walking and eating the food it is really neat!

mapleloaf

Sounds amazing. I am mystified how some folks find serious fault with the ELS on the TLX. I have concluded that there is a definite correlation, not exclusively so, of people who don't like the car (mainly 15 3.5 owners who have issues with the tranny) and often find fault with the ELS. This isn't all that surprising given our tendency to find fault with related things. I also would speculate that people put too much stock in the sound system in their 3rd and 4th gen TLs, and create a significant quality gap between the cars and their respective systems. In general, these previous generation cars tend to become bigger than life, as do other memories of days gone by.

I am not suggesting that the ELS in the TLX is the best system out there. However, to say it sucks is pure hyperbole, IMHO.

IntegraVT

iTrader: (1)

The only fault I found was that the ELS on the TLX no longer plays DVDs.

Dead format or not, it was Acura that pushed the envelope on mobile multi-channel audio. Now they've left the DVD-A crowd to either downmix to DTS-CD or go to the competition which still plays their libraries. (Audi, Lexus, Hyundai/Genesis still support the format.)

haydentj22

To IntegraVT's point, this has been my biggest point of frustration lately. I agree that the ELS system is phenomenal with the demo disc in, but switch to Pandora, CDs or any other media format and the system is quite normal. Nothing real special to speak of. While not totally surprising since DVD-A format is obviously superior to streaming or CD's, what is surprising is that not one sales person, nor Acura themselves, have been able to steer me toward a place to buy audio equivalent to that of DVD-A. The DVD-A market is of course limited at best since the format is essentially dead.

The sales reps pointed me to Acura, and Acura pointed me to the sales reps. I'm on here now hoping smarter people than myself have found a solution. It's frustrating to be upsold on their flagship audio system and pay thousands extra, only to later find out there are seemingly no media options available to replicate the demo disc's results.

Has anyone found a decent media source and place to buy (if not obvious)?

spulliam2000

I have just downloaded a new music streaming app on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 called Tidal. For $19.95 a month you can stream uncompressed FLAC files which sound phenomenal. I am away from my 4G TL with ELS but will report on results when I return from this business trip next week. I can't wait to hear how this music sounds on the ELS system!

Sigwill24

How do you get your hands on these albums. They seem hard to find.

ogiewon

I have bought a few DTS CDs on eBay. They do sound amazing.

spulliam2000

I've been using Tidal streaming music in my new (to me) 2014 TL with ELS. It's not quite up to the quality of a DVD-A but it's good enough for me. Strangely, connecting with a patch cord creates annoying hum in the system but the Bluetooth connection works well. Nothing displays on the screen as it would with an iPod but the Skip rocker button functions and Bluetooth connects automatically and starts playing if Tidal is open on my phone. All in all, I'm very pleased with the sound. I've installed a 256Gb micro SD Card in the phone and currently have about 200 albums downloaded. The $20 a month subscription fee wouldn't put a dent in any kind of DVD-A collection. I bought 7 albums at HD tracks and burned some discs but the 7 albums cost me almost $100 and that's not including the disc authoring software which I used as a trial. Too expensive for my budget!