nealeb
16-05-2012, 10:54 PM
By way of balancing the "Audi are crap 'cos they don't work with my iPhone" points of view (and where's that tongue-in-cheek emoticon when you need it!) here are a couple of little items where Audi seem to have done something that they don't shout about but which improve the overall pleasure of driving. Anyone else noticed these, or spotted any other little improvements over previous models?
DAB radio. Because of the way that audio is digitised and sent for DAB, the audio always lags the "real-time" FM broadcast of the same station by, maybe, half to one second or so. If the car loses the DAB signal (not that uncommon, depending on where you are) the radio will automatically switch to an FM broadcast of the same station, if possible. In the C6, this meant that sometimes you would lose a little slice of the audio, or would hear a short slice repeated (typically a word or so), depending on which way it was switching. My C7 radio seems to delay the FM audio to match the DAB, though, so when it switches you never seem to notice the join.
ACC on bends. This is especially significant with an automatic where you can, say, hit "resume" on the ACC control at very low speed and have it take you all the way to 70. Never higher, of course, as that would be very naughty in the UK. But while the car is accelerating, if you turn the steering to take a bend it holds the speed at which you started turning the wheel, and doesn't start accelerating again until you have straightened up. This comment opens up a can of worms, of course, about using ACC while going round bends but leaving that discussion to one side for the moment, it does seem like quite a clever bit of safety-related thinking in the way that the car systems interact. ACC-equipped owners - can you try this sometime and confirm that what I notice really does happen?
DAB radio. Because of the way that audio is digitised and sent for DAB, the audio always lags the "real-time" FM broadcast of the same station by, maybe, half to one second or so. If the car loses the DAB signal (not that uncommon, depending on where you are) the radio will automatically switch to an FM broadcast of the same station, if possible. In the C6, this meant that sometimes you would lose a little slice of the audio, or would hear a short slice repeated (typically a word or so), depending on which way it was switching. My C7 radio seems to delay the FM audio to match the DAB, though, so when it switches you never seem to notice the join.
ACC on bends. This is especially significant with an automatic where you can, say, hit "resume" on the ACC control at very low speed and have it take you all the way to 70. Never higher, of course, as that would be very naughty in the UK. But while the car is accelerating, if you turn the steering to take a bend it holds the speed at which you started turning the wheel, and doesn't start accelerating again until you have straightened up. This comment opens up a can of worms, of course, about using ACC while going round bends but leaving that discussion to one side for the moment, it does seem like quite a clever bit of safety-related thinking in the way that the car systems interact. ACC-equipped owners - can you try this sometime and confirm that what I notice really does happen?