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Rate the new Bang & Olson 18 Speaker stereo.

Gulfstream

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I was out with my wife this morning. I usually listen with the volume at 6 - 8. Due to this post I turned it up to 15. We could not hear each other. Even at 10 you cannot carry on a conversation. This was with USB drive as as source. XM is the same level.
Making myself a mental note to keep volume at 10 or higher when the wife is with me :cool:
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Di2

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I have the "leashed" B&O, and it sounds ok to me. Not home audio, but fine for driving. A definite step up from my 2012 F150 and my 2012 Challenger. CarPlay for me. Sounds great. I might have gone for the "unleashed" if ordering the truck, but it was on the lot. I'm satisfied with the set-up.
 

jcaspar

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I am 60, I drove around yesterday with it @ 30 listening to some of my favs, it was NOT painful in the least. Normal with wife beside me is 10-14, with us being able to talk.
Are you using an iPhone? I had this problem first, then realized the iPhone had "Sound Check" turned on which tries to make all songs be of similar volume. It significantly reduced the volume of most songs. Turned it off and MUCH louder now!
 

Lowandslow

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I just received my truck with the b&o unleashed sound system. I don’t think my headrest speakers are working, I don’t hear anything coming out of them…
 

jcaspar

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I just received my truck with the b&o unleashed sound system. I don’t think my headrest speakers are working, I don’t hear anything coming out of them…
The speakers are for fill and you shouldn't hear them individually normally. To test, put your ear up against the headrest while on surround sound. You should hear them.
 

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Lowandslow

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The speakers are for fill and you shouldn't hear them individually normally. To test, put your ear up against the headrest while on surround sound. You should hear them.
I did that and i dont hear anything...
 

Trukbed

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I have the 8 speaker b and o in the Lariat.

Sounds excellent to me. Deep lows. Clear highs. And I like tunes.

Come from Bose's all my life, as well as most recently a superb Alpine in the 2019 Ram Longhorn.

If you are trying to listen to Sirius or AM FM in the BO, I'd say it's the sources. Sirius sucks.

Try an iTunes song you love, select Lossless, also select stream in HD. Them do the inner settings of the unit in the truck.

Then, go into actual phone settings, sound, and select the options in there to better the sound the phone itself shoots out. My guess is 90% of people never go into the actual phone settings for sound.
 

JeffC57

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I did that and i dont hear anything...
Try rebooting the radio. With the truck running, press and hold the radio power and skip forward buttons for about 5 seconds. Until I did that, I couldn't hear anything out of them either. Once you can hear them, try shifting the fader to the back a bit to tame the center speaker.
 

RyanStroeder

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I give the Unleashed system 2.5/5

The low end is really lacking clean bass. There's roominess in the mid-bass region and the soundstage is poor in general. I was really stoked for it, but regret getting it now.
 
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Been playing electric/acoustic guitar since 1977 and am very picky about tone. The B&O Unleashed was a big factor in choosing the F-150 (actually tested with my own USB on a friend's Platinum, so I knew what it was before ordering). Had it less than a week and will give it:

4.5/5.0

Was surprised finding with my original test and with mine that the Surround setting sounds better than the Stereo setting - usually I stay away from any DSP - but they have done it well.

Absolute key to this or any other system is to use material with Lossless compression (e.g. FLAC, WAV (CD quality is 1411 kbs), or maybe high bitrate mp3 - meaning 320 kbs ). Do complain about any system that you expect to have quality sound if you are using less than this. Bluetooth based systems or Satellite are probably not going to help the system shine.

Only slightly weak point is the bass response, I wish it was tighter. I will probably look into upgrading that eventually, but there IS a technique to optimize it:

Reduce the Bass in the EQ down to about 25%!

Also want to manually adjust the Balance/Fade point. It was weird when moved behind the front passenger headrests. Adjust to taste.

I find anything above that can get flubbly. Doing that made the system work well even on well recorded heavy bass and drum material (opening of Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came up on my 64GB mini USB on shuffle and was very good).

I also adjust the volume manually by song and section of song depending on how dense the material is (like running a board in the studio - for me it fun and that is the best way to get the best sound for each song). A great remaster of Buddy Holly's True Love Ways was detailed and stunning when CRANKED!

Had great success with a range of hard and prog rock and old/90s County as well. Metal (say, Pantera) will benefit most from the tighter low end.

Still need to to do the speaker beep test and see if the reboot thing that some have mentioned. Will update...
 

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Photonicc

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There was another thread on this in the past, apparently this system has amazing potential with the right settings and using better quality files. I believe if you use Spotify and you turn sound normalization off and a couple of other settings, then this system will be extremely loud. Bass is amazing, and it sounds very clear. My only downside is that most of the sound seems to come from center middle, but I believe there is a fix for that as well on another thread, but I havent got the chance to try it.
 

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I started a 30 day trial for the $19.99/mo Tidal HiFi Plus service yesterday. Granted I've only been able to test it on a quick trip to the grocery today, but it's a night and day difference compared to Amazon Music Unlimited "Ultra HD" files. Both apps have the normalization setting turned off and highest quality files downloaded to my phone. Seems like the headrest speakers really opened up as well for the song I tested between the two apps. I'll try to download different quality settings from Tidal to see if there's a difference. Maybe the HiFi Plus isn't needed.

If you think the system is lacking, try out Tidal's trial. Maybe it'll open it up the system for you.
 
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Sean80

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After reading this thread I've messed around with settings etc and have managed to increase the volume I get out of the standard 8 speaker B&O.

I use spotify, so I switched audio quality settings to "very high" in spotify. Spotify also has a "loud" setting which I turned on.

I reset the screen in the truck by holding power and skip forward buttons.

Surround mode on, and fader places right behind front seats.

Music seems to have more volume than I could get before.
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