2011 Buick LaCrosse

[JonUrban]

A friend of mine just got a Buick Lacrosse for his wife. I told him "Cool! That will play a DVD-Audio 5.1 surround disc", so he brought the car to work one day and I created a test DVD-A for us to test it out.

We didn't have much time. I created a disc that had a solo sound, once in each speaker, so I could tell if the rears were going to be discrete or mixed into the fronts.

At first try, the rears were indeed mixed into the fronts, but we found a setting that allowed changing the audio from 2.0/.1 to 3/2.1. That did the trick, but we still had to push the fader a bit to the rear to keep the fronts from overwhelming the rears.

One thing I did notice that was surprising was that the DVD-A menu (video portion) was displayed on the NAVI screen!!! Yes, the familiar default DiscWelder Gray Screen was there on his NAVI screen, listing my test signals and the 5.1 tune I'd put on there.

We listened for a minute or two, and I told him I'd fix him up with some conversions to try later on in his car.

NEXT DAY: He told me that on his way home, he put the disc in, pulled out of the garage, and the playback STOPPED!!! It appears that the player will only play DVD-Audio discs when the car is stopped!! :yikes

I can understand how a DVD Video movie would stop playing, but an AUDIO disc?? I asked him if there's a way to turn off the display while driving, and he was not sure.

There must be a way to get these discs to play without the screen. Very strange.

Has anyone else tried one of these machines in the Buick?

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

I don't know about this machine, but I do know that one of my car systems had a wire I was supposed to connect so that the video display would only work when the parking brake was on. I didn't bother hooking it up, not because I wanted to watch dvds while driving, just because I didn't need it and didn't feel like bothering around with figuring out how to wire that in just to make sure I didn't do something stupid that I wasn't going to do anyways, so I just set it up so that the video display would always work. Perhaps there's something that can be bypassed by tweaking the wiring a bit.

 

[timbre4]

It's General Motors, it's going to be complicated

 

[Larry Geller]

A friend of mine just got a Buick Lacrosse for his wife. I told him "Cool! That will play a DVD-Audio 5.1 surround disc", so he brought the car to work one day and I created a test DVD-A for us to test it out.

We didn't have much time. I created a disc that had a solo sound, once in each speaker, so I could tell if the rears were going to be discrete or mixed into the fronts.

At first try, the rears were indeed mixed into the fronts, but we found a setting that allowed changing the audio from 2.0/.1 to 3/2.1. That did the trick, but we still had to push the fader a bit to the rear to keep the fronts from overwhelming the rears.

One thing I did notice that was surprising was that the DVD-A menu (video portion) was displayed on the NAVI screen!!! Yes, the familiar default DiscWelder Gray Screen was there on his NAVI screen, listing my test signals and the 5.1 tune I'd put on there.

We listened for a minute or two, and I told him I'd fix him up with some conversions to try later on in his car.

NEXT DAY: He told me that on his way home, he put the disc in, pulled out of the garage, and the playback STOPPED!!! It appears that the player will only play DVD-Audio discs when the car is stopped!! :yikes

I can understand how a DVD Video movie would stop playing, but an AUDIO disc?? I asked him if there's a way to turn off the display while driving, and he was not sure.

There must be a way to get these discs to play without the screen. Very strange.

Has anyone else tried one of these machines in the Buick?

Sounds like it's playing the DVD-V section, not the MLP section, viewing it as a movie, & shutting down. Try a DVD-a only conversion (like Eat A Peach) to see what's up. Bet it doesn't play. What about DTS CDs?

 

[JonUrban]

Larry,

This was a DVD-A that I made myself with Chrome. It had only an MLP layer of my test wav's and a few 4.0 converted quad tunes. There was no DVD-V layer at all.

The cool part (I thought at first) was that the Chrome DVD-A menu showed up on the NAVI screen. I guess this was actually bad, as the disc did not play right away like it does in the Acura's.

Very strange, these American cars.............. ;'

 

[Chiburb]

Larry,

This was a DVD-A that I made myself with Chrome. It had only an MLP layer of my test wav's and a few 4.0 converted quad tunes. There was no DVD-V layer at all.

The cool part (I thought at first) was that the Chrome DVD-A menu showed up on the NAVI screen. I guess this was actually bad, as the disc did not play right away like it does in the Acura's.

Very strange, these American cars.............. ;'

Why not just try a store-bought DVD-A for this experimentation?
(BTW, even if there was a DVD-V layer the audio should've kept playing regardless of motion. That's how it works in my car, yours too I'm sure.)

 

[winopener]

Second the hint given by AoQ: my AVX33 has the same "feature", which can be disabled just connecting the infamous wire directly to ground.
Any insight on the OEM producer of the car stereo?

 

[cupboy]

$27k, 182 HP and 20 MPG? Can't be that popular of a car.

 

[Philip Spinner]

I'm probably not much help here since my La Crosse is a 2010 model but it has played every dvd a disc I put in it so far including commercial and home made. A dvd a will not play automatically though. I have to wait for the unit to go through all the logos first and then when it's finished I push the play button and presto, providing the disc defaults to dvd a. None of this is visible on the screen though when driving since the screen is disabled when in drive. I usually wait about a minute after inserting the disc before hitting play. Now if a disc does not default to dvd a then the only way to hear it in hi res 5.1 is to pull the car over and use the curser to navigate the player to the 5.1. Fortunately all the dvd a discs I've tried so far do indeed default to hi res 5.1 so it's not an issue. Strange. Maybe they changed something between 2010 and 2011 models.
Phil Spinner

 

[Quadzilla]

$27k, 182 HP and 20 MPG? Can't be that popular of a car.

Here in Canada that car is sold as the Buick Allure. It seems that in French, the word "Lacrosse" means the act of pleasuring onesself. That is more than you likely want to know, but if you drive one up to Quebec and you hear a few snickers ...

 

[Chiburb]

Quick car audio question, slightly off topic:

Can your car's system handle a double-sided DVD ok? I'm assuming yes, but I don't want to invest $25 to find out this doesn't play.
http://www.aixrecords.com/catalog/palisades_chamber.html

Thx in advance!