Harman Kardon - worthwhile upgrade?

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I have had upgraded Audio system in most of my cars over the past few years and to my ears the HK system in the W211 was much better than the Bose in the Cayenne, which in turn is much better than the Bose in the Audi was.

My brother had HK in his old C-class Coupe and he found it much better than the Bose in his current 911.

The acoustic properties of all cars will vary, so I guess like for like comparisons are always going to be hard.
 
I love a decent sound in a car or anywhere else for that matter..
But I think there is one obvious point that some of you are missing..
Have you noticed on this thread that some say "Fabulous sound and well worth it" .. Others say "Very disappointing" etc, etc
The fact is the SOME car body styles lend themselves to superior acoustics and some definitely do not..
For example I know of someone with a SL500 with the full factory fitted BOSE system and to be honest it sounds OK but nothing like as good as I would have hoped...

To date the best sound I have heard in any car I HAVE OWNED was my 211 E Class (Facelift)..
It only had the standard audio 20 setup but the acoustics of the car and the sheer silence when it was on the move meant it was punching way above its weight in the sounds department..
I would say its that aspect of the car that I miss more than any other.

In my opinion the "smaller" type of cars (SLK, SL or any other 2 door sports car) hasn't got the interior volume to create such a rich and resonant type of sound..
If you think about it, Larger speakers are more full bodied than small bookshelf speakers..
 
The Harman Kardon system in my last 2012 C350 was superb but the version in my new E400 Cabriolet is markedly worse. No where near as clear, bass is "woolly" and distorts at volumes that would never have done so in the C-Class.
 
The HK in our new E63 is totally sh!te. The HK in the S211 is marvellous.
 
The HK in our new E63 is totally sh!te. The HK in the S211 is marvellous.

I love my music and I LOVE the HK in my S211. Five years on and I'm still slightly in awe of it.
 
iTunes songs are 256Kb/s.

Apple Music is also 256Kb/s. Spotify is 320Kb/s if premium account and "high quality" turned on.

As John E Boy said there's not a great deal of difference between 320Kb/s and lossless on anything but very high end hifi gear, so 256Kb/s isn't far off.
 
I've got a W203 C180K that used to have the standard Audio 10 stereo fitted, however i changed this for a Dynavin unit which looks exactly the same as the Mercedes Command unit but also has Sat Nav, DVD, freeview Television, USB, DAB Radio, AM/FM Radio, CD 2x Memory Card Slots, Reversing Camera, Aux Inputs for Sound and Video, as well as outputs for additional screens for the rear etc and is a touch screen unit that uses Windows CE^ as the operating system and Sygic Mapping Software, and to be honest i would highly recomend these units i paid around £1000 for the entire system including the TV Tuner pack, Mapping Software and Rear Camera
 
I have the HK in my '13 E63. The performance of the system is slightly above average, but easily bettered by offerings from BMW and Audi. The headunit is OK, and I play mp3 recorded at 320 off datastick. I will be replacing the speakers (JL), and amp, and adding a sound processor. This equipment in my last MB cost £2k 2.5 years ago, it will cost about £300 to retro-fit to my current 63.
 
Hi folks,

Just adding my voice to the "disappointed" section of this thread's audience!...

I have a MY2014 E250 estate. The audio system is the Harman Kardon variety but, in my view, it is very lacklustre in terms of sound quality. The treble end of the spectrum is handled reasonably well but the bass is rather "muddy" and poorly defined ("woolly" as a previous poster suggested), while the midrange simply has no "guts" at all.

The small, 20-year-old speakers I use with my PC do a better job.

Now I appreciate that a car is not the best environment for audiophile levels of sound reproduction - and, admittedly most of the music tracks I play are in mp3 format (but all at 256kbps ) - but they sound far, far better in my old V70 estate which just has Volvo's stock ICE system. I think what (partially) makes the difference is that the Volvo has a graphic equaliser.

On the MB, I've tried CDs as well - particularly well-engineered albums such as "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by The Alan Parsons Project - but they don't sound any better than their mp3-ripped equivalents.

I do find that if I crank the volume up, the midrange then sounds more impressive... but not until the music becomes uncomfortably loud.

Obviously I've tried experimenting with the (very basic) bass and treble settings but to no avail.

I don't think there's an actual fault anywhere - rather that the system in the MB just isn't very good. But is it the amplifier that's the problem? Or the loudspeakers? A combination of both?

This is an old thread now, so I was wondering whether anyone had ever found a satisfying way to upgrade the system while still retaining all of its functionality?
 
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^ Many thanks for the recommendation! It looks like a set of Morel midrange speakers are the way to go! :rock:

It will be a while before I can try them out but I shall report back once done.
 
I love my HK
 

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