Afrosheenix

Hello everyone, New to the forum and I have a question for you Mark Levinson owners. I have a 2013 GS 350 F Sport with the ML audio package. It advertises decoding 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound. The problem is that there's just one commercial format that provides this, DVD Audio discs, and they're pretty much dead. I bought a few just to really flex the ML system and they all act wildly different. One disc plays a single frame of video with the song, so the nanny system in the DVD application stops the songs when you put the car in drive. Once you're driving it tries over and over to play the disc so it skips every 2 seconds on the same song. On another disc, it will play the songs just fine and accurately decode them, and it sounds fantastic. I got in touch with Lexus via the tech expert at my dealership, and he said, officially, DVD's aren't supported. This came from corporate. Well...that's a pretty weak thing to say if you ask me. So basically we ML owners have this phenomenal system and nothing encoded in surround audio to feed it, officially. Have any of you experienced these problems? Has anyone found a digital format that the car will play back in surround? I'm considering converting a DVD-A disc to WMA 5.1 format and testing that out but before I reinvent the wheel I wanted to see what else people have tried.

I didn't even look at Audi. Most of their platforms seem like glorified VW's (transverse 4 cylinders with front wheel drive) and the interiors were both ugly and boring. I was dead set on an Infiniti Q50 but the dealer couldn't get my car in a reasonable amount of time, so I cross shopped and fell in love. I ended up getting an F Sport with every option minus the cold weather package, and got a great lease deal on it without too much haggling. I did look around for a Volvo S60 T6 just to be open minded but the dealer here is pretty weak, either that or supply of that model is very thin, so I didn't even get to test drive one. My GS F Sport is the total package. Looks, reliability, stunning interior and the huge screen you never get tired of. Plus, some of the best seats (with ventilation) I've ever ridden in. What surprises me is how often I see people on the street staring at it. I think a black car is pretty low key and nothing is particularly gawk-worthy...until I wash it by hand and get a reminder of the F Sport darth vader bumper. The only problem is that Lexus is on the crest of making so many good cars, when my lease is up in a few years I won't know what to get next. The GS-F is coming, the RC, RC F Sport and RC-F are just around the corner, and the LF-LC (which is probably way out of my budget range) is also sneaking up. Too many good choices but I'm about halfway in love with the RC F Sport's interior already.