zbad007

woah , that link to the previous discussion is freaky, seems this one is now just a rehash of the old stuff. I made some enquiries today about how things might be improved for my purposes, spending about an hour with a chap who seems to be pretty expert at customising car audio. His demo CD didnt point out anything too horrible about the ML factory setup, and apparently this system is one of the better factory installs he has come across, I think he mentioned the Q7 setup as being about the best one he has seen. He suggests that rather then go overboard & swapping speakers that a simple fix should give decent results & may leave me satisfied. By treating the door internals & installing some proper deadening & diffuser pads the current speakers response should become more refined & allow better clarity, and especially add punch to the bass. So far it seems like a decent option & one that should be undertaken as the first step even if further work was eventually decided upon. I'll do some more research on the topic & if it pans out I guess this is where i will start.

I had not considered that there is a burn-in period for the speakers, maybe I should not be too hasty in assessing the sound quality. I loaded up some music DVDs, and it does seem to cope better with DD5.1 tracks, the DSP is probably using the sub track to better isolate the bass & send it where it can do some good. I would have the Eagles DTS disk somewhere around, if I can locate the right storage box. Opening the cover on the sunroof does seem to have a subtle impact too, so thats interesting to check out more. I'll still make enquiries over the weekend & see what sort of work people typically get done, I'd like to have the MP3 situation improved from what is currently a pretty mediocre experience.

thats interesting about the bass-EQ applied on CD mastering, as I probably have not bought a CD for 10 years or more, and all the samples I have in the car are likely older releases. I might have to borrow some new releases to see if they come up better. I imagine thats because of the proliferation of mini-hifi systems which dont have good low-bass & need the extra mid-bass boost to sound acceptable. Seems to be where I am at with the ML systems output, too.

All of those sound profiling steps seem to be what we are paying for in the ML signature edition package, where presumably someone has done all the hard work of EQing the car listening positions with speaker choice & settings. I have not seen a mention of the pos=ALL on my car, perhaps that appleis the other other systems? Before today I had never used the FM radio setting, but I went for a drive & checked the sound quality, and it is not too bad within the limits of FM broadcasts. The music being broadcast has already been compressed anyway so its not not vey dynamic compared to CD but the actual listening is pretty decent, probably like the BOSS effect (ie its not accurate but it sounds good, for what it is). I will be speaking t someone over the wekeend who does high end audio work & they have implied they see a lot of lexus owners who want better sounds, more in mid-bass than sub-bass , whatever that means. I am not an audiophile, but I know what I like, and hopefully something more can be achieved than the current sound

ok, it's good to know that I am not the only one that is thinking the ML system is perhaps not the greatest system ever. I am not the biggest fan of classical music but it may be worth checking a disc, if thats where the ML system shines. The suzkuki had a couple of reasonable sized subs hanging off the parcel shelf so the RF system was probably designed to be more impressive than most stock systems. I actually had to touch the parcel shelf in the is350 for a while to decide whether the speakers in back are actually doing anything at all, so they are certainly not a prominant part of the sound mix with any setting i have tried, and perhaps are not treated as subs by the system. I thought initially that maybe MP3s were lacking but perhaps the quality would improve with CD/DVD sources, but I notice the same effect there anyway. Turning of the surround option seems to detract even more from the resulting sound. I have nothing against a good surround mix, if it gets the job done. When listening to music on headphones I prefer the expansion that occurs with the dolby headphone gadget enabled, it gives a much wider spread to the music or movie soundtrack. In systems with multiple speakers (14 still seems overkill) then the only way to utilise them would be with some heavy-duty signal processing anyway.

Hi everyone, TL;DR = ML needs more bass , has anyone done anything recent with this? novella version - I am new member here with brand new is350 sports premium that I only picked up on the weekend. I have been driving the is350 for a few days now & am blown away by how great a car it is to drive. But I am becoming less happy with the audio experiance, especially the area of bass response. I traded in my Suzuki Kizashi which had a pretty satisying stock OEM Rockford Fosgate system with 10 speakers including subs, and I never had issues with the sound in that car. I was less impressed by the vehicle driving dynamics & when I decided a change was needed the lexus is350 was top of the list for consideration. I did not put much effort into checking the sound quality while I was looking at car options, and every review I read about the IS range mentioned how great the ML system was, so perhaps I came in with high expectations. I also accept that audio satisfaction is a subjective experience so perhaps nobody else will have the same opinion as myself. After a few days of being in the car & playing with the audio options I cannot arrive at any setting that leaves me satisfied. General sound quality seems fine with no distortion, even at moderate to high volumes, but I notice that tracks with a dominant bass guitar component seem to have a hole where the bass is supposed to be, and it is not adequately addressed by turning the bass upto 11 on the MFD audio controls. Eg listening to Hotel California (from CD - Best of the Eagles, I must be getting old) there is a prominent bass line in the intro before the drums kick in & the track proper gets running. That whole section seems to be a complete let down, I may as well be humming the bass as it has no kick. When the drums come in they are too loud because I turned up the volume wondering what has happened to the bass guitar? So at the moment every track I play sounds clear, but not satisfying, and I suspect the lack of enjoyable bass notes is a large part of that. I even went back to the lexus dealers this morning to chat with them & sit in a demo lexus to try that one out & see if the sound had the same characteristics, and it does. So it looks like what I experience now is as good as it gets via the lexus ML system. I did a search in this forum & notice that a few people in 2008 were playing around with custom audio installs, but mainly to get ipods working. I am hoping someone else has recently done some audio customisation & can provide advice about what they have done & who to speak to about getting something suitable in place. I am not really keen to let someone start ripping out bits of a brand new car, but it may come to that in order to get the audio satisfaction at the same level as the rest of the car. I will check around for any meets/cruises being organised around Sydney as that may be one way of finding out what options other people have pursued. In the meantime, if anyone reads the above, thanks for any advice that is offered,