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HSoichiro
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I wonder if anyone had a chance to compare the sound quality of the audio system in Touring Elite to that in Touring. Does the Elite audio system sound much better? Thanks in advance.
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6SPDTL
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ITs got a lot more goodies but, sound quality-wise, they are similar, very good for an OEM system but not spectacular, the sound quality from the hard drive is very good. The main stupidity is that the hard drive is only for CD music, you cant use the USB connection to download music to the hard drive. A very stupid arrangement but I'm certain it has to do with copyright issues. At least the CD's are copied quite quickly (a few minutes) plus you can listen to them at the same time as they are ripped unto the HDD. Music on a flashdrive connected by USB is played with the usual mix of good to crappy characteristics of I tunes downloads. Personally I preffer to stream music through bluetooth from my EVO, the sound quality is very good, and it appears that music downloaded from amazon is of much more reliable quality than stuff the that is downloaded from I tunes which can range form excellent to absolute crap.
As far as video is concerned, the surround sound of the RES in the Elite is a lot better, its as good as an average home setup. The screen is the part that reminds you that this is a car setup, its not high def and has the usual middling contrast of car quality kit. The wide screen is neat but its resoultion is the same as the smaller screen. Of course, it does allow you to have 2 different programs at once ie one from the DVD and one from the rear HDMI input. I still have to try it with a bluray player or one of my cameras. You have a variety of wide modes to choose from, only the "narrowest" of the wide modes looks natural, the others look too "fat.
As you can see its without a doubt the most versatile entertainment system ever put into a car, you have a wide variety of inputs CD,DVD, bluetooth, flash drive, HDD, HDMI they covered the whole alphabet soup. The sound is pretty darned good (for a car), the surround in the rear is superb and the video is OK. Personally, if the additional cost of the Elite is not going to break the bank, I think its worth it.
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6SPDTL
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BTW, the blindspot warning system is worth every penny. The HIDs are also a very good extra.
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JeffX
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6SPDTL wrote:
ITs got a lot more goodies but, sound quality-wise, they are similar, very good for an OEM system but not spectacular, the sound quality from the hard drive is very good. The main stupidity is that the hard drive is only for CD music, you cant use the USB connection to download music to the hard drive. A very stupid arrangement but I'm certain it has to do with copyright issues. At least the CD's are copied quite quickly (a few minutes) plus you can listen to them at the same time as they are ripped unto the HDD. Music on a flashdrive connected by USB is played with the usual mix of good to crappy characteristics of I tunes downloads. Personally I preffer to stream music through bluetooth from my EVO, the sound quality is very good, and it appears that music downloaded from amazon is of much more reliable quality than stuff the that is downloaded from I tunes which can range form excellent to absolute crap.
As far as video is concerned, the surround sound of the RES in the Elite is a lot better, its as good as an average home setup. The screen is the part that reminds you that this is a car setup, its not high def and has the usual middling contrast of car quality kit. The wide screen is neat but its resoultion is the same as the smaller screen. Of course, it does allow you to have 2 different programs at once ie one from the DVD and one from the rear HDMI input. I still have to try it with a bluray player or one of my cameras. You have a variety of wide modes to choose from, only the "narrowest" of the wide modes looks natural, the others look too "fat.
As you can see its without a doubt the most versatile entertainment system ever put into a car, you have a wide variety of inputs CD,DVD, bluetooth, flash drive, HDD, HDMI they covered the whole alphabet soup. The sound is pretty darned good (for a car), the surround in the rear is superb and the video is OK. Personally, if the additional cost of the Elite is not going to break the bank, I think its worth it.
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It's interesting that you say that about iTunes. I despise iTunes so when I buy music online, I only purchase it via Amazon.com when they have it at a special price (like $5 for an album). BUT, my kids own an arsenal of iPhones and iPod Touches and nanos and what not, so they use iTunes (far too often, IMO) and I have been absolutely stunned by how awful the some of the iTunes encodes they've purchased have been. I heard one that was so bad I thought my kids were using a bootleg download site but they showed me it was legitimately purchased through iTunes. I would have demanded a refund.
So far the mp3s I've purchased on Amazon.com have been excellent in quality and Amazon crushes iTunes' lousy pricing. Plus, the Amazon MP3s are pretty much universally compatible with any playback device.
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Longhorn
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Jeff wrote:
6SPDTL wrote:
ITs got a lot more goodies but, sound quality-wise, they are similar, very good for an OEM system but not spectacular, the sound quality from the hard drive is very good. The main stupidity is that the hard drive is only for CD music, you cant use the USB connection to download music to the hard drive. A very stupid arrangement but I'm certain it has to do with copyright issues. At least the CD's are copied quite quickly (a few minutes) plus you can listen to them at the same time as they are ripped unto the HDD. Music on a flashdrive connected by USB is played with the usual mix of good to crappy characteristics of I tunes downloads. Personally I preffer to stream music through bluetooth from my EVO, the sound quality is very good, and it appears that music downloaded from amazon is of much more reliable quality than stuff the that is downloaded from I tunes which can range form excellent to absolute crap.
As far as video is concerned, the surround sound of the RES in the Elite is a lot better, its as good as an average home setup. The screen is the part that reminds you that this is a car setup, its not high def and has the usual middling contrast of car quality kit. The wide screen is neat but its resoultion is the same as the smaller screen. Of course, it does allow you to have 2 different programs at once ie one from the DVD and one from the rear HDMI input. I still have to try it with a bluray player or one of my cameras. You have a variety of wide modes to choose from, only the "narrowest" of the wide modes looks natural, the others look too "fat.
As you can see its without a doubt the most versatile entertainment system ever put into a car, you have a wide variety of inputs CD,DVD, bluetooth, flash drive, HDD, HDMI they covered the whole alphabet soup. The sound is pretty darned good (for a car), the surround in the rear is superb and the video is OK. Personally, if the additional cost of the Elite is not going to break the bank, I think its worth it.
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It's interesting that you say that about iTunes. I despise iTunes so when I buy music online, I only purchase it via Amazon.com when they have it at a special price (like $5 for an album). BUT, my kids own an arsenal of iPhones and iPod Touches and nanos and what not, so they use iTunes (far too often, IMO) and I have been absolutely stunned by how awful the some of the iTunes encodes they've purchased have been. I heard one that was so bad I thought my kids were using a bootleg download site but they showed me it was legitimately purchased through iTunes. I would have demanded a refund.
So far the mp3s I've purchased on Amazon.com have been excellent in quality and Amazon crushes iTunes' lousy pricing. Plus, the Amazon MP3s are pretty much universally compatible with any playback device.
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Alot depends on what Itune setting they are using. I use AAC, and get pretty good results. Any more compressed than that and every piece of music sounds like bad 80s/90s compressed recordings.
To the thread: Kudos to Honda for upping their OEM Audio offerings. Without using the marketing of a high end speaker company as a third party.
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6SPDTL
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Longhorn you are absolutely right, but even using the highest bit rate, some of the recordings are just plain bad its kind of a crapshoot with Itunes. One example is an Ella collection I downloaded from Itunes, its spectacularly good almost like a master recording. On the other hand, most of the popular music is crap regarless of settings, the most common sin is ridiculously overboosted bass. This is probably on purpose to compensate for headphones. Amazon's seem to be of a more uniform quality though they do have some less than pristine stuff too. If you are a classic music fan, Deutsche Grammophon has excellent MP3 material for download.
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A77
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I would have thought the problem with the HDD downloading uSB material is not just copyright - it would be compressing files that are probably already compressed - who has CDA format on a USB?
I was looking at some of the innards of an Odyssey Touring (Elite in USA) - the sub has a solid, nicely moulded, front ported enclosure. It's the best system ever in a Honda.
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HSoichiro
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Thank you very much for your detailed answer!
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Frogger
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Someone either here or at Odyclub speculated that this may be a modified Eliot Schiner system from the Acuras, de-badged to protect Acura IP, don't know if there is any validity to that, but would probably save Honda a little money to share those parts rather than design an all new system.
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6SPDTL
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I hadn't thought about that, sounds reasonable too. Only Honda knows :)
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Longhorn
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Frogger wrote:
Someone either here or at Odyclub speculated that this may be a modified Eliot Schiner system from the Acuras, de-badged to protect Acura IP, don't know if there is any validity to that, but would probably save Honda a little money to share those parts rather than design an all new system.
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It makes sense,Panasonic has a factory in the midwest and have stated they want more OEM business. Panasonic is the brains behind the new VW "Fender" (as in guitar fame) branded soundsystem.
Car Audio Mag did an article on the guy who works behind the scenes at Pansonic Automotive, he is a former IASCA soundoff winner. Needles to say, he knows what a good system should sound like. Its amazing with the quality control standards these OEMs must meet (much higher than the aftermarket meet except for a few makers), weight and cost restrictions that their sound systems are as good as they are.
http://caraudiomag.com/articles/sound-passion
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JeffX
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Longhorn wrote:
Frogger wrote:
Someone either here or at Odyclub speculated that this may be a modified Eliot Schiner system from the Acuras, de-badged to protect Acura IP, don't know if there is any validity to that, but would probably save Honda a little money to share those parts rather than design an all new system.
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It makes sense,Panasonic has a factory in the midwest and have stated they want more OEM business. Panasonic is the brains behind the new VW "Fender" (as in guitar fame) branded soundsystem.
Car Audio Mag did an article on the guy who works behind the scenes at Pansonic Automotive, he is a former IASCA soundoff winner. Needles to say, he knows what a good system should sound like. Its amazing with the quality control standards these OEMs must meet (much higher than the aftermarket meet except for a few makers), weight and cost restrictions that their sound systems are as good as they are.
http://caraudiomag.com/articles/sound-passion
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Actually, as I recall, much of Panasonic's OEM engineering takes place in the Atlanta area. I'm pretty sure I met the guy you're referencing - the Panasonic team was at the '09 TL press launch. Well, they are at most launches where the audio system is a big feature.
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JeffX
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Jeff wrote:
Longhorn wrote:
Frogger wrote:
Someone either here or at Odyclub speculated that this may be a modified Eliot Schiner system from the Acuras, de-badged to protect Acura IP, don't know if there is any validity to that, but would probably save Honda a little money to share those parts rather than design an all new system.
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It makes sense,Panasonic has a factory in the midwest and have stated they want more OEM business. Panasonic is the brains behind the new VW "Fender" (as in guitar fame) branded soundsystem.
Car Audio Mag did an article on the guy who works behind the scenes at Pansonic Automotive, he is a former IASCA soundoff winner. Needles to say, he knows what a good system should sound like. Its amazing with the quality control standards these OEMs must meet (much higher than the aftermarket meet except for a few makers), weight and cost restrictions that their sound systems are as good as they are.
http://caraudiomag.com/articles/sound-passion
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Actually, as I recall, much of Panasonic's OEM engineering takes place in the Atlanta area. I'm pretty sure I met the guy you're referencing - the Panasonic team was at the '09 TL press launch. Well, they are at most launches where the audio system is a big feature.
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Ok I should have read the article at that link you pasted first. That's not the guy I met at the '09 TL event. Maybe it was a different team that handled the '09 TL audio development.
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