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EviL Ras
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Post by EviL Ras »

Single best upgrade for us as been the surround cameras! Make driving the car in a car park and tight spaces a breeze! We'd definately struggle without it!

All the other suggestions echo our feelings too!
Carmine and Partial Garnet GTS Delivered Jan 17' www.porsche-code.com/PHE2IGH7
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bigbaldybloke
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Location: Lincolnshire

Post by bigbaldybloke »

To help you spend more money, my only regrets on speccing my Macan are not having the led headlights, I don't find the bi xenons that good compared to those on my previous car, and for me and my wife the 18 way seats are the most comfortable car seats we have ever sat in, but that's a very personal choice, do try them before you finally decide.
Macan S http://www.porsche-code.com/PH8LE871
Macan GTS http://www.porsche-code.com/PMPNV5P9
Lotus Elan +2
Mitsubishi Shogun
Mini Cooper S Electric
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JohnP
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Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2016 4:04 pm
Location: Stroud

Post by JohnP »

Single best upgrade for us as been the surround cameras! Make driving the car in a car park and tight spaces a breeze! We'd definately struggle without it!

All the other suggestions echo our feelings too!


+1 on the surround view! I know I'd have clobbered the wheels by now without it..
Dolomite Silver Macan GTS Gen 2 (www.porsche-code.com/PLBT3XT5)
Rhodium Silver Macan GTS (sold)
Col Lamb
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Location: Lancashire

Post by Col Lamb »

Regarding your doubts about the Bose upgrade.

It came as standard in my Macan and I really like it, prior to my current Turbo I had an SD that also had Bose but as it turns out both are different in sound quality with the newer version being much better.

It is the same with the standard audio which went through a change last year and despite the newer version having less speakers the wuality of the electronics have improved. The tonal quality of the standard audio is very good and for most owners the standard will be more than good enough.

Please excuse what follows as it is rather lengthy write up I did a short while ago on the audio with our cars.

Do take note of the comparison test and I would suggest that you physically test out both standard and Bose systems at your dealer, simply put a few if your favourite tracks on an SD card and go to your OPC and listen to the tracks on both systems.
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MACAN AUDIO

Options
Standard, Bose or Burmeister
Listen to them all if considering upgrading for the base system fitted to your Macan variant. Take anSD card or USB stick with a few of your favourite music tracks and to get the best out of your listening encode the MP3 files from a CD at a high data rate such as 320 kBps. You may want to obtain a FLAC music file and recreate the test as I explain later.

Preparing your music for in car listening
This depends upon your listening preferences:-
Music can be placed on a USB memory stick or SD cards (2slots currently available)
Music can be transferred into the inbuilt 10Gb Jukebox
Music can be streamed from mobile telephone
iPod or similar will connect up directly to the PCM

If your music is already digital then it is simply a case of copying the music albums/tracks onto the memory device and inserting the device into the car.

If your music is on CD then you can rip the discs to folders on your PC or Mac.
iTunes is a free download and you can use this to rip your CDs to a specific folder, do change the standard encoding format and data rate to MP3 and 320kBps for the highest quality. Once you have ripped the CDs copy the whole Music folder which contains all the ripped albums to the memory device and you are good to go.

If your digital music is oldish rips them you may wish to download MP3TAG and use this freeware to check the data that there is on each album and that it is consistent between the tracks, t may well be that it needs editing and this software will do that. Generally if album art is not being displayed in car then the PCM will use the Data SIM to go online to Gracenote and it will download the artwork. The software will also enable you to download album art (800x800 max) that Gracenote does not find and place the jpg file in the album folder and link each track to the jpg file. Once you have checked the albums copy all the music onto the memory device.

If you use Playlists or would like to within iTunes you can create your own Playlists. Once you have created one you can export it as an M3U file into the root of your Music folder as a belt and braces situation as the iTunes Playlist will be in the iTunes sub-folder within your Music folder and also within this sub-folder iTunes will have placed copies of the album artwork that it has found. iTunes also has a Genius mode, enable it in Preferences, select a specific favourite track and select Create Genius Playlist, it uses your selected track to add other similar style tracks, or at least that is the theory.

Do note that other CD ripping software is available and many do a better job than iTunes, I only suggest this as its free easy and certainly compatible with the PCM.

CD audio is sampled at 44.1kHz/s 16 bit stereo therefore if considering re-encoding it to a Lossless file if you try to increase the sampling rate it will not produce the quality of file you expect, you would be better advised downloading a new FLAC file at the sampling rate that you desire.

Playing your Music in Car
Insert the memory device in the appropriate slot, select media source and you are good to go. Once you have your music playing spend some time adjusting the balance, fade, base, trebble etc to get the quality of audio that suits your taste. With a Bose system do also check the Surround mode or uncheck it to see which is best for you.

You also have the option of transferring the music to the Jukebox, but remember it is only 10Gb and can take quite a few attempts to get the music all transferred. I would only initiate the transfer once all the album art has been correctly assigned and that the PCM is accurately displaying the albums/artists, do not that compilation albums may cause issues if you have not checked and corrected the data with MP3TAG.

Porsche Communication Management (PCM)
Technical data: Audio and video files from MY17 manual

Supported media

SD cards up to 128 GB

DVD drive Audio CDs up to 80 min., CD ROMs up to 700 MB, DVD±R/RW, Standard Video DVD, Video DVD compatible DVD Audio

Portable players MTP Player, USB 2.0 devices of "USB Device Subclass 1 and 6" such as, for example, USB sticks, USB MP3 players without special driver software, external USB Flash memory and hard drives

DVD changers Audio CDs up to 80 min., standard video DVDs, video DVD-compatible DVD Audio

File system

SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC memory cards

USB mass storage exFAT, FAT or FAT32, NTFS file systems with a maximum of 4 partitions

DVD drive ISO9660, Joliet, UDF

Format

MPEG 1/2 Layer 3; Windows Media Audio 9 and 10; MPEG 2/4; FLAC, MPEG 1/2; ISO-MPEG4; DivX 3, 4 and 5; Xvid; ISO-MPEG4 H.264 (MPEG4 AVC); Windows Media Video 9

File extension

.mp3 (does not apply to DVD changer); .wma; .asf; .m4a; .m4b; .aac; .flac; .mpg; .mpeg; .avi; .mp4; .m4v; .mov; .wmv

Playlists

.M3U; .PLS; .WPL; .M3U8; .ASX

Characteristics

max. 320 kbit/s and 48 kHz sampling frequency; max. 2,000 kbit/s and 720x576 px. at max. 25 fps

Number of files

DVD drive max. 1,000 files DVD

Jukebox (max. 10 GB storage space) max. 3,000 files can be copied

USB mass storage and memory cards max. 10,000 files per medium

Metadata

Album covers up to 800 x 800 pixels; GIF, JPG and PNG formats or via Gracenote database

Video DVD region codes

Code 1: USA, Canada and US Colonies

Code 2: Europe, Greenland, South Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, Japan

Code 3: Southeast Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong

Audio Comparison Test
I took one of my FLAC audio files and put it into one of my Audio editing programmes (Adobe Audition for those interested) and converted it into mp3 files with various encoding bitrates, and as a matter of interest I encoded the FLAC as AIFF and WAV to see what file size they produced

Source as a FLAC of file size 85,444kB

MP3 encoding data rate ----- File size in kB
96 ---- 2,264
160 --- 5,435
320 ---- 10,863

As a matter of interest I encoded the source into a WAV file and it was 208,394

Also being fully lossless the AIFF encoding gave a file size 208,394

With another forum member we sat in my Bose equipped Macan and listened to the FLAC and mp3 files.

FLAC was a clear winner with rich tones and a clarity of the brass instruments that the mp3's failed to come near.

MP3 at 320 gave a perfectly listenable file for most music but even at the high data rate there was a lack of clarity in the tonal quality and a slight edge to the brass.

As the MP3 data rate was lowered the audio quality got worst as expected, with the 96 file listenable but not something you would want to do regularly on a £800 Macan extra, you would certainly want the hi
gher quality media files.

Whist it was certainly not to lab standard of testing it was an interesting exercise to actually be able to hear the difference and for me and my old ears I was pleasantly surprised that I could discern as much difference as I did.

Col
Macan Turbo
Air, 20” wheels, ACC, Pano, SurCam, 14w, LEDs, PS+, Int Light Pack, Heated seats and Steering, spare wheel, SC, Privacy glass, PDK gear, SD mirrors, Met Black, rear airbags
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VanB
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Post by VanB »

I must admit that I find the Bose to be rather good compared to my previous Porsche with Bose. However, I haven't listened to the standard audio so can't compare the two. Probably isn't worth £800 in all honesty but then there are a lot of options that aren't worth what Porsche charge for them!

The two best options I specced are the LED lights which are simply awesome and the air suspension which gives a degree of comfort I've never experienced in a car before.
Current - 991.2 GTS C4 GT Silver
Previous: Macan GTS Night Blue
Previous: 981 Cayman S Agate
Thamaturge
Posts: 27
Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2016 6:51 pm

Post by Thamaturge »

Hi

I've had Bose in several car models and it can sound very good - particularly if you like to feel the bass notes. I did um and ah about having Bose in my SD but I did not feel that the cost to me was good value so I decided to listen to the the standard system and its better than not bad. Indeed, its rather good and will continue to sound good until I hear something much better in a Macan. I'm glad that I opted to stick with the standard sound system - my kids are too because it helped fund the rear seat heating that turned out to be a great hit among family members. For information, I have a pretty good home hifi (all Linn stuff) so I believe I know what good sound reproduction should sound like. Perhaps the starting point should be having a good listen and play with the stock system to see if you can live with it; if not, then upgrade to something else.
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Guy
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Post by Guy »

happy days
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Post by happy days »

Single best upgrade for us as been the surround cameras! Make driving the car in a car park and tight spaces a breeze! We'd definately struggle without it!

All the other suggestions echo our feelings too!


+1
Macan S D
718 S
AlanB
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Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2016 3:25 pm

Post by AlanB »

The Audio. The only time I get to hear my music at a sensible ( i.e. Very loud ) volume is in the car. So quality is very important.
In my 2016 my SD, I had it with standard audio as have Bose in my 997 and found it like all Bose stuff to be over hyped garbage. The Burmeister too expensive.
So I opted for after market JL Audio / Audison Bit 10 system which at £1700 all up does the job very nicely.
All my music is stored on an IPod classic as Apple Lossless which the system plays with all data and full control from the Porsche head unit.
I would recommend anyone else to go this way who is a music nut like me !! Handles phone interface as well.
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andreas
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Location: Essex

Post by andreas »

Many thanks for your considered replies. Maybe I'll ditch the Bose and spend more on surround cameras!


Macan S collected 4 Dec 2017 - Jet Black, 20" SportDesign, Agate/Pebble, 18-way, Pano roof, Bi-Xenons with PDLS, Surround View, PASM, PS+, spare wheel, towbar.
2021 Audi TT Roadster Black Edition (hers)
2011 Freelander 2 (workhorse)
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