Yeah, I wouldn't call D granny unless you have an extreme feather foot. The car will respond differently depending on the level of pressure on the throttle.
I love the way D drives in the city. But to each their own I guess...
I was referring to the paddles. Downshifting is too slow. Waiting for the trans to engage a lower gear. It's ready to engage the next higher gear, and takes too much time to engage a lower gear. God forbid you need to downshift 2 gears quickly.
It is not always ready to engage the higher gear. From what I understand the computer makes an assumption about the direction you need to shift, either up or down. When in 6th it will pre-select 5th. If you are in fifth and accelerating, it should pre-select 6th, if you are slowing down, it should pre-select 4th. It makes a best guess, based on the way you drive.
Also, the downshift even if it preselected 6th should not be much, if any slower then a standard manual gearbox.
Just found better info:
"Downshift is less impressive, because the gearbox need to wait for the throttle blip to match gearbox speed with engine speed. Change down a gear therefore takes 600ms. Changing down a few gears could be more complicated. The most complicated is from 6th to 2nd (both are controlled by the same clutch while the distance between the two gears is the longest). It needs to change to 5th (controlled by another clutch) temporarily before 2nd is selected. This takes 900ms."
I can't actually find any info on manual shifting speed, but I would guess it is not much if any faster.
Also, about.com states for the DSG: "the DSG performs double-clutch downshifts and can skip gears (i.e. downshifting from 6th directly to 4th, 3rd, etc)."