Audi offers the Bang & Olufsen sound system as an optional upgrade on many of their cars. Bang & Olufsen is a high-end luxury Danish consumer electronics company. They design and engineer premium sound systems for cars, home, home theater, portable use, etc. They are known for producing speakers of pristine fidelity. They are like an Audi of speakers, so it's natural that Audi would partner with them.

The B&O upgrade in the 2017 Audi A4 can cost between $3,000 to over $5,000. This upgrade consists of a 755-watt, 19-speaker Bang & Olufsen 3D sound system. When you upgrade to a system like that you want, expect, and deserve pure unadulterated sound quality; just as when you purchase a new Audi vehicle you hold certain standards and expectations regarding vehicle performance.

Unfortunately, Audi engineers and/or business people did not understand the fact that the car and the sound system must function as one seamless entity. They provide you a premium luxury sound system in a car that is not engineered and equipped to handle it. Within a few months of purchasing the 2017 Audi A4, I demonstrated to my Audi dealer that various interior parts of the car rattle even when the volume was turned up around 30% to 40%. As you can imagine, the problem gets much worse as you approach the upper limits of the system. As a side note, I'm a bit of an audiohile. My understanding of audio quality isn't extraordinary, but it is certainly more substantial than your average person's understanding of it.

Audi/Bang & Olufsen put small subwoofers and/or midwoofers in the door panels and the rear deck. Doing so is fine, but doing so without using appropriate sound damping and deadening materials is fundamentally reckless and incompetent. It's such an amateur mistake that one would expect it in the cheapest of vehicles; not a modern Audi with an expensive audio upgrade. And we aren't talking 2 or 4 speakers. The Bang & Olufsen system consists of 19 speakers within a highly confined space! Even a novice car audio enthusiast would point out that such installation will cause lots of rattles. Nevertheless, I recall reading an article where an Audi engineer bragged about how they did such a wonderful job of engineering the interior that they did not have to use sound deadening material. Perhaps he spoke to soon, or perhaps it was blind hubris.

To Audi's credit, they sent a regional manager down to my local dealership so that he could take a look at the problems I was experiencing. Their customer service gets an "A for effort" from me. However, they did not listen to my requests, and ultimately chose to "fix" the problem their own way: by having an Audi mechanic apply Dynamat sound damping all over my car. I knew this was a bad idea and asked them to allow me to take the car to a local shop that specializes in car audio installations. They refused. I'm sure the Audi mechanic tried his best, and the rattles did reduce, but they were still there. Previously the car was rattling at 30% volume. Now it was rattling at 50% to 60% volume.

A car audio technician does not have expertise to repair an Audi engine. Similarly, an Audi mechanic does not have the expertise required to apply sound damping treatment in a vehicle. After several trips to the Audi dealer, my rattle issue remained. Perhaps I was being more picky than most people, but most people have no clue what good, clean audio is. They max out the highs, mids, and lows on their car audio equalizers believing that it will boost their volume, when in reality they are simply boosting distortion. When you buy an Audi and pay an extra premium for a B&O sound system, you buy the right to be a discerning critic with high expectations.

The bottom line is that giving customers a premium sound system in a car that rattles significantly when that system is used dilutes the experience and defeats the purpose of having such a system in the first place. It's akin to selling one of the world's most powerful cars that is artificially limited to a speed of 50 mph (about 80 km/h). It's silly and reckless. If you are going to provide something extraordinary, then please don't undermine your efforts by doing a half-a$$ job. Do it right. You are Audi. You ought to operate at a higher standard.