The Bose in my 2000 Audi A6 had dual Subwoofers. Bose specific ported and tuned that had like a 6" driver in them. That was engineering that should still exist in our setup.

 

You also had a sedan with more interior room...that is more than likely why it had dual subs. With that said, I agree they could have done better and provided a system with a little more punch in the coupe. I am gonna look into shallow mount subs and upgrade the rear deck and highs in the front. I have 2 12" Diamond audio subs that I will have to sell now damn it! LoL. I also have a set of MB Quart 6x9 coaxials and 6 1/2" MB Quart component speakers I could use. Although 6x9's may get deep 6'd as well

 

Yes the sedan had a huge trunk but a quick google image search of the audi bose bass unit will show you they used two 6" speakers and a tuned and ported structure to create bass. No 10 no 12 and something kike this 14 year old tech would have fit in the coupe almost unnoticed.
my point here is that Bose CAN make bass ...in our cars they chose Not to
And I know a 6x9 could hit and hit deep and hard for rock when properly set up...

(Kick horse)

So...what are we going to do about it??

 

LOL^^^ Well my plan is to replace the amps (I already have some) and see what speakers should be upgraded. Look into selling my 12" subs and see about those 10" shallow mounts from JL Audio. I am trying not to spend a hell of a lot of money but we'll see how it goes

 

where are you going to put your new 10" shallows?

 

I was thinking of replacing the doors. If there are 10" woofers there I am thinking replace those with subs. I still have to look through the car to see what is where though. I don't know the ins and outs of this car like I did with my last

 

Huh??? That makes no sense!

Recording media, and storage media have nothing to do with audio quality!!
With digital, its all about sampling rate, and bit rate, and not using compression.

I cut records in my day, and yes it was better than any 44.1K/16 bit CD, but today recording at 192K/24 bit sampling rate, its just as good. The Nyquist filter jumps to 96KHz, far above any analog recording.

No car radio, nor any for that matter can shine playing an MP3, or Sirius XM radio.

Play a true uncompressed 48K 24 bit PCM recording from your thumb drive into our cars player, you'll see (hear) what the Bose can do.

 

How can you do that? On my car (2013 with Bose and Nav), only mp3 files play from thumb drives. WAV files at 16/44.1 don't even show up on the file list.

 

Im curious to as I was thinking Id have to rerip all my music Lossless and triple the file size and change format only to maybe not have the system see it :/

 

I tried a thumb drive with a mixture of mp3s and WAVs, and the Bose system didn't "see" any of the WAVs. MP3s ripped at 320 kbps sound pretty good within the limits of the system. I can play WAVs from my iPhone into the USB connector, and these do appear on the car's screen, but it should be noted that in that situation, the phone is decoding them to analog. The car's DAC seems to ignore 16/44.1 WAVs. After I found that out, I didn't bother trying with higher-rez music files.

Speaking of sound quality, I didn't bother renewing my Sirius subscription after the free period ended. The compression and the phasing effects (which sound like the music is being played with a wah-wah mute) are disastrous to the music I like (classical, opera). This I don't blame on the car--it's because of the compression used by Sirius.

 

So given the variety of mp3 compression settings available..is CD our best recorded quality input to the current Bose system?

 

All music on my iPhone was ripped from CD at 44.1/16, the Bose sees it. I need to try a thumb drive again.
Going through USB is still digital, not analog. Same with Bluetooth.
The car's DAC is digital to line level analog for the amp only. Maybe rip it open, and install Burr-Brown DACs!!

Dont get me started on Sirius!!! Their data compression makes it worse than an MP3!!

 

Storage is not that much of an issue anymore!

 

A 32gig thumb drive can store a shoebox full of CD quality files. The trick is GETTING the high quality files without purchasing the actual CD's. Not that I'm a big proponent of piracy.

 

49 CDs ...............