Update on the GT2 Harman/Kardon sound system.

[GenesisG70]

Today I discovered that when you listen to music through Google music through Android Auto all of a sudden the sound quality of the HK sound system becomes crisp and awesome, I am no audiophile but have degree in music and let me tell ya I thought that the HK in our cars sucks but when I changed my music source from Spotify to Google music the sound system is amazing almost as good as the Bang and Olufsen I have on my V10 Plus R8, trust me I am really impressed with the HK in our cars. Cheers!

 

[Bigjohnb20]

Does anyone e know the bit rate that Google music uses? I might have to give it a try and see. Do you have the spotify app set to "high quality" or whatever er gives you the highest bit rate? Thought I read you can get up to 328kbps out of spotify.

I know when I had the Sirius trial it sounded noticeably worse than pandora that I usually use

 

[Revvdmedia]

I believe Spotify can stream and download both at 320kbps, but that's not to say that will output that bitrate over Bluetooth. Maybe over Android Auto it will, but unsure. Dang, to think that I'm actually relatively happy with the HK system, to think it could sound better, intriguing.

 

[GenesisG70]

Does anyone e know the bit rate that Google music uses? I might have to give it a try and see. Do you have the spotify app set to "high quality" or whatever er gives you the highest bit rate? Thought I read you can get up to 328kbps out of spotify.

I know when I had the Sirius trial it sounded noticeably worse than pandora that I usually use

Good point don't know the setting on Spotify will check, thanks

 

[app_master]

Yes agreed the bitrate setting seems makes a decent difference in sound quality. I too think Google Music via android auto sounds better ... but my family is spotify addicted so I don't have paid subscription for both (only spotify). The spotify "very high" setting is pretty good though. I have loaded my own (from back in the ol days of ripping you're own music library) mp3 files into Google Music and it allows playback of them, and they sound great too. I can switch between either in the AA music menu.

Discussed a bit here too;
Thanks Kia, now I have to pay for music, but which?

 

[Doel]

I tried playing music through Pandora and Spotify, Spotify was a bit better. Then I tried playing the same downloaded song on Spotify and Apple Music, there was a significant jump in quality when I switched over to Apple Music. May have something to do with Apple Carplay, I don't know, Apple does sleazy stuff like that. What I ended up doing is paying for Apple Music where I download all the music I want, and use free Pandora when on wifi to help me "discover" new music that I download on Apple Music.

 

[Bothor]

Make sure you have the "normalise volume" option turned off in Spotify. It makes everything sound dull and is on by default in the Android app.

 

[DTE]

The USB input supports FLAC files surprisingly enough. If you want to hear the difference, that's the way to go.

Still don't know why HD radio and xm sounds so off, though. Sounds like it's down sampled or something compared to the bang and Olsen setup I had in my old Audi.

 

[Chark]

If you're playing music through your iPhone, there is an equalizer setting, but the presets are genre-specific and not really a multi-band EQ. There used to be an amazing audio plug-in for iTunes called Volume Logic. VL would tweak the music on the fly and the difference was incredible. It was discontinued several years ago, but the developer released a similar product for Windows called Breakaway. There's a free trial and some might be able to remaster their music to their preferences. That might help some who are not happy with how their music sounds.

Breakaway Audio Enhancer - Claesson Edwards