Poor Audio Quality After Update to S22A

2700 Views 29 Replies 9 Participants Last post by Alexjansen, 9 d ago

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · 5 mo ago

2

Hello!

I'm new here, car is amazing for a million reasons I won't go into and that you all already know.

tl:dr - On my car, S22A update makes music played through CarPlay sound terrible

I've had my CPO 2019 S for a few months and I'm now a veteran of the low-voltage-system-bricks-the-car problem, which was handled expertly by the dealer here in LA. The dealer did some software updates as part of the repair. A short while after picking the car up, I accepted a SOTA update prompt and got the infotainment set to version S22A. it took a few hours and a few starts for the CarPlay navigation to work right, and I had to toggle between 12hr and 24hr clock a few times before the center display caught on, but the big problem is sound processing, especially using Apple Music over CarPlay.

What I'm hearing (and didn't hear before the update) is a massive amount of dynamic compression. Source material that's already brick walled (in the audio mastering sense) sounds a little more crushed than it should, but older stuff with more dynamic range in the mastering is almost unlistenable. Everything is super pumpy, with guitar fret squeaks and cymbals flying all over the place and then entire mixes being swallowed up in black holes of bass when the limiters really kick in. It's a mess.

I don't notice the problem as much over radio (including Sirius), but those signals are usually compressed (dynamically) anyway.

I haven't spoken to the shop or to Jaguar about this yet, so when I do I may be a lot more knowledgable. But here are my theories:

1. There's a mismatch between the software running in my car and the system. I don't have access to any surround parameters, just EQ and balance. Maybe the software is trying to run some gimmicky surround stuff on a system where the hardware doesn't support it, and it's in error.

2. There's no mismatch, and Jaguar/Meridian decided to include a new, poorly-considered DSP module beyond the reach of the consumer, and are waiting for me to thank them.

3. There's some deep-level menu that I'm too dumb to find where I can turn this "feature" off. It smacks of something I found in the literature known as Dynamic Volume Control, but I don't think my car has that. And if it does, I wish it didn't.

I don't think this is some golden-ears problem, and I don't have especially high expectations for this audio system. I found it to be acceptably clean and straightforward before, and reasonably responsive to my mild EQ adjustments.

If anybody else is hearing what I'm hearing on their own systems, let me know. Meanwhile, I'll keep the group posted when I talk to the techs about it.

Okay bye!

Paul

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Slam08

· #2 · 5 mo ago

I assume that you checked the audio setting like the meridian surround sound?

I haven’t seen this reported elsewhere. Is it with all formats, like even songs you have downloaded on your device? I’m wondering if it could be an internet bandwidth streaming issue?

Another option would be some malfunctioning speakers.

Just throwing out ideas. You sound like you know 100x more about car audio than I do!

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #3 · 5 mo ago

Ha! Not really a car audio guy, just a lot of years recording music. The Meridian surround stuff is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to cause this if it weren't quite working right, but my system has never shown me any settings for this. Mine's an S and I don't think it has the fancy system.

It doesn't sound like a data bandwidth issue to me, although it's more noticeable with my phone as the source than it is with either terrestrial or satellite radio...I think it's because with my own music collection, I'm more aware of what the material is supposed to sound like, and I also expect a certain amount of dynamic flattening with radio broadcasts. On the other hand, I'm not hearing the problem when I use my phone through CarPlay in my wife's car.

Malfunctioning speakers...maybe the system has a limiter designed to protect the speakers, and it's kicking in way before it should (I should add that the problem exists at all listening levels).

Any thoughts are welcome! Thank you!

P

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pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #4 · 4 mo ago

UPDATE

Spoiler alert: Not much to report.

The dealer in Los Angeles (excellent service by the way) found an update to the amplifier control software, which is separate from the SOTA software for the infotainment system overall, and installed it. Unfortunately, that failed to correct the problem. The dealer is going to to more research before I take the car back in. Next step for me is to see if I can open a channel to Jaguar or Meridian.

Stay tuned!

P

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pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #5 · 4 mo ago

UPDATE

Nothing technical to report. I filled out a web form at Meridian, though, and got a reply along with a referral of the issue to Jaguar UK and then to the executive office of Jaguar Land Rover North America, all within a couple of days. There's a case number now. This is pretty exceptional responsiveness, in my experience, so I wanted to post it here to give credit where credit is due.

More to come.

P

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #6 · 4 mo ago

I have received an answer from JLR, and the answer is "everything is fine, whatever you're hearing is what is intended."

I've pressed the rep for something more specific and I'll report in next week. In the meantime, I'd love to know if anybody else is experiencing anything similar. It's most noticeable with material that has a lot of dynamic range, like older masters or classical music.

Thanks!

P

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #7 · 4 mo ago

Here's another update. I created a couple of test files containing white noise and sine pulses at various levels and frequencies (in the case of the sine pulses), copied them in three lossless formats and played them through the system directly via USB stick. I now have a better grip on what jackassery the system is applying to the signal, along with conclusive evidence that it has nothing to do with CarPlay or the iPhone.

Stop here if you don't want nerd spattered on you.

On the top end (dynamically speaking), there is a lot of aggressive compression and/or peak limiting happening above about -10dB (on the digital scale), such that successive bursts of white noise at -10dB and then -5dB sound almost the same. I think the entire spectrum is being attenuated (i.e it's not multi-band), because with steady white noise overlayed with sine pulses, you can hear the uppermost frequencies of the white noise dipping with each pulse irrespective of the frequency of the pulse (I did octaves from 1kHz down to 62.5 Hz). It does, however, seem to be running this process on the left and right channels separately. There's a section of the test where the pulses alternate left and right, and you can hear the white noise pan back and forth 180 degrees opposed (there may be some psychoacoustics going on here, but I doubt it could be that much). More obviously, there's a slow boost that gets applied any time the signal remains below about -35dB for more than a second or two, such that over the course of say six seconds, steady white noise printed at such levels gradually doubles in apparent loudness.

I have to figure that this behavior is too complex to be the result of something broken. I'm guessing it's the same SOTA package getting pushed across the entire eligible product line, with the expectation that certain feature sets will be available or unavailable depending on the vehicle, and that "obnoxiously aggressive dynamic range reduction" is a button you can push on some other car, but I got stuck with it in the "on" position on a system that's too dumb to reveal it as an addressable parameter. If I'm being especially cranky about it, I'm figuring that Jaguar thinks anybody with the base-level stereo doesn't care what it sounds like, and didn't bother thinking through how the update would behave in such systems.

If I'm the only one who cares about this, so be it, but if anybody else has noticed something similar and thinks they might be crazy, well you're not alone!

Okay bye for now

P

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sciencegeek

· #8 · 4 mo ago

Wow that's some impressive detective work. Is there any way to find a car with a pre-22A software version to run that same set of tests? Sounds like (pun intended) that your dealer is pretty good, what if you ask them nicely to check a pre-update car? Just as a sanity check.

Can you think of any scenario where that type of behavior is preferable, like at highway speeds with wind noise or something? Or is it just a bad thing regardless of other noises?

I'm not enough of an audiophile to really know but I have noticed that some songs at certain speeds sound terrible (yes I'm on 22A) and much better at other speeds.

Not sure what to do beyond that if you've already gotten the expected response from corporate ...

jsimon7777

· #9 · 4 mo ago

Did you try another source/phone?

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #10 · 4 mo ago

I can definitely imagine scenarios where this behavior would be preferable, just like you've suggested, when there's excessive ambient noise and the user/driver gets tired of turning up the quiet parts. It's just irritating that Jaguar decided that in certain configurations there would be no way to turn this *off," and it's hardly a transparent effect.

Yes, I'm sure the dealer would set up an A/B comparison for me, as a way of bolstering what I'm pretty sure I already know. I'm not finished with my conversation with corporate, so we'll se what becomes necessary.

P

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pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #11 · 4 mo ago

Today's test result was the same, iPhone vs. USB stick, multiple formats of the file. I haven't connected somebody else's iPhone via CarPlay, which I should probably do just to add evidence to evidence, but the USB test pretty well rules out the possibility that the source is the problem

Brendon

· #12 · 4 mo ago

I'm convinced that my 2020 I-Pace has some sort of signal or compression issue that's resulting in the music feeling rather flat. I had the same Meridien system in my XE, and the difference between the two is stark. I loved it in my XE, and am totally underwhelmed by the system in my I-Pace. This has persisted ever since I bought it, across many ICTP updates. It's not source dependent, and the EQ doesn't help. Unfortunately the dealer never has I-Paces in stock for me do go down and compare the system to another vehicle.

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #13 · 4 mo ago

Very plausible that we're describing the same thing here. I did find out that the update that happened last December was the only update that my car got since 2019 (I bought it CPO in November), so the oddness could have started anywhere along the way. There's no specific fix forthcoming, so I'm just hoping they'll consider correcting this with the next update. I guess for that to happen, it would be good if more people complained about it.

P

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #14 · 4 mo ago

Who on here knows about SDD/CCF? I have a hypothesis that if I could take a look under the digital hood (or talk my dealer into doing it), I might be able to either identify some kind of configuration mismatch that's causing my audio to sound bad, OR trick the car into giving me access to a few extra sliders and checkboxes that my system currently lacks. Advice?

Tcasmarcus

· #15 · 3 mo ago

I heard the same as you.. i was really surprised. Was listening to Rammstein, and there is a part that is very explosive with the drums, and it all just shrunk together and all the power disappeared. Switched to stereo and it was okay. All the other options had very high compressed sound that kills all dynamics. I have a 19 HSE with the top stereo option

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pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #16 · 3 mo ago

Exactly!

It's interesting to me that in stereo mode the problem seemed to go away. On the 380w I only have stereo so I'm wondering if for some reason the software got delivered stuck in surround mode, even though my system doesn't support it. I'm going to keep putting the word out and collecting reports from other owners to see if we can eventually get a response on this.

Thank you!

P

Tcasmarcus said:
I heard the same as you.. i was really surprised. Was listening to Rammstein, and there is a part that is very explosive with the drums, and it all just shrunk together and all the power disappeared. Switched to stereo and it was okay. All the other options had very high compressed sound that kills all dynamics. I have a 19 HSE with the top stereo option

sciencegeek

· #17 · 3 mo ago

hey pb, is there a "protocol" that you might want some of us to try, to see if we can reproduce your observations (without the careful analysis and measuring you've done, because that's outside of the capabilities of most here)? E.g., a specific song, specific settings to try in the audio, etc?

pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #18 · 3 mo ago

There's a section of the test file I made where the behavior is very obvious. I'll make a smaller file of just that section and post it with instructions.

If you just want to listen to some music, pick something that has a mix of loud and quiet parts. If it sounds like there's not enough difference between the two, then you have the problem I have. Something familiar from the classical pops repertoire, like 1812 Overture maybe, should reveal this.

The song "Synchronicity I" by the Police seems to drive the limiters especially crazy, but my ear might be sensitive to it. You could listen to that song, and if it sounds like the vocals and cymbals are dancing around instead of coming at you at a consistent volume and position in the sound stage, then you have the problem I have.

I have the 380w system, so the only settings I have are bass, treble, sub, and fader/balance. If you can reproduce this on a system with more options, or on a PIVI system, I'd be interested in knowing what "advanced" settings seem to correct it.

Thanks! I'll post a new test file tomorrow.

P

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pbmusic

Discussion Starter · #19 · 3 mo ago

www.dropbox.com

Jaguar Test 3.m4a

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Here's a test file for anybody who's curious. The file consists of two different sequences, and each one plays twice in succession. Copy it to a USB stick and play from there. Read on for detailed descriptions of what's printed in the file and what to listen for.

For simplicity, I'll refer to the unwanted processing that my system is applying as "Suck-pression."

The first sequence starts with 8 seconds of white noise at a steady -15dB. Although the problem occurs at all listening levels, for reference, you can set the volume to "comfortably loud" during this initial tone. After 8 seconds, there are 8 more seconds of white noise at -3dB. Without Suck-pression, this section should be much, much louder than the previous section, probably fairly uncomfortable. With Suck-pression, it will sound just a bit louder than the previous section, because Suck-pression is automatically attenuating the level. The third section is 8 seconds of white noise at a steady -40dB. You'll hear the level drop by a huge amount, but then Suck-pression will gradually raise the volume across the 8 seconds, subjectively to about double the initial volume. Remember that this section is recorded at a steady -40dB with no change in level.

That sequence repeats, then a similar sequence starts. This time, each section of white noise is printed about 5dB lower than before (so -20dB, -8dB, and -45dB respectively). That's to give headroom for an added layer, which is a 1kHz test tone printed at -15dB. This will help to clarify that the second white noise section is being attenuated, because while the test tone is printed at an unwavering level for the remainder of the file, it will sound like it dips much lower when the second white noise burst comes in. That's Suck-pression in action.

If enough people complain about this, I'm hoping Jaguar will include a button in the next release for Suck-pression hi, lo, and OFF in our cars. Such a button might even exist in other JLR cars with different infotainment systems. There are conditions where Suck-pression might be desirable for some listeners. Personally, I hate it with fire. In less technical terms than the above, it sucks the life out of everything, introduces lots of fluttery inconsistency, messes up the frequency balance, destroys fade-outs, etc etc. The whole thing is maddening, because the base Meridian 380w system was actually quite good before this problem started. In other words, it's not just sucky, it's needlessly sucky.

Happy to answer other questions. I'll geek out with anybody for as long as it takes.

Enjoy!

P

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kkemp

· #20 · 3 mo ago

Thanks for all your effort on this. I'm not the target audience to go test it, but I appreciate the work you put into this to try to make the ownership experience better for everyone.

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