I got a good chuckle on the Volvo forums when some guy who sprang for the Bang & Olufsen system complained that the bass wasn't thumping like his previous car.
95% of people don't know what quality audio means.
Not sure if BandW really doesn’t have enough bass but if so good for him. It’s ridiculous that it gets as much love as it does if it doesn’t have enough bass. Again, I doubt that, but not sure.
I've got the B&W in my Volvo, and as a self proclaimed audiophile the bass is actually too much out of the gate lol. I've got the two lower EQ bands turned down a fair bit. That being said, the sound is incredible, with lossless audio and the driver focus sound mode, its as good as a solid home system. That being said it sure does cost as much.
Sounds great to me. It shines on acoustic or singer forward tracks.
Here is a [measurement ](https://imgur.com/a/8kzPEPo)from LTT. You can see the elevated bass, and then ruler flat rest of the response.
The most underwhleming audio system I ever experienced in a new car was in the Corrolla. Mind you, this was no LE. I ponied up the extra $$$ for a fully loaded XSE two tone with the "premium" JBL audio. Cars in had 15-20 years ago had faaaar better audio.
The audio was so bad that was one of the factors that lead me to trade after just 2 months for an Insight. Honda's audio blows Toyota out of the water. Like, sure, I could upgrade the audio like I do all my cars, but thats what I thought I was doing when I purchased the $1700+ audio upgrade package.
Accord EX and HRV only come with the 160-180w systems and as few as 4 speakers in the HRV and do not have an amp or sub. The 12 speaker, 452w system that came standard in my Honda Insight is a far cry from those base systems, complete with an amp, subwoofer, and 4-8 additional speakers over that of the base audio systems.
So I won't deny those two cars' audio suck, but they get a more of a pass because they're rental/budget base models. So subpar audio is expected. Note I didn't trash the Corolla LE's worse system. Its when you pony up extra for higher end trims and options where you get to bitch about average or subpar audio quality.
4 speakers in 2023/4 is a war crime. Someone told me a couple months back online that the new Accord’s base system only comes with 4 speakers and I doubted them because there was no way, but then I googled it and was completely shocked that such a piss poor option is standard in a new car.
I haven’t heard of a single car with a 4 speaker base system since like the 90s or very early 00s. Fuck, the Camry (and my Mazda 6) have come with 6 speakers base since like 2002/2003. Yet Honda is still stuck on 4 nearly a quarter of a century later???
Your Insight system sounds sweet. Most Bose systems suck but the way you describe it yours sounds pretty good.
EDIT BEFORE POSTING: The base model Accord actually came with 6 speakers stock from 2003-2012. They cheaped out with the base 9th gen in 2013 and downgraded it to a 160w 4 speaker system for the base. It’s even fucking worse than I could’ve imagined lmao, it DID used to have a better system stock, now it doesn’t.
Speaker count doesn't automatically equate to better quality audio. The four 2-way aftermarket silk dome tweeter speakers in my Cobalt blow away the 12 speakers + sub in my Insight because I have them properly tuned with a 5 channel 2400w amp along with a 10" subwoofer. For a factory comparison, my Celica GTS came with 12 speakers but sounded worse than my Prelude did with just 6 speakers.
So, though speaker count can be an indication of sound quality, its extremely nuanced. Speaker size and amplification heavily impacts sound quality and frequency range and a car like the Accord EX might have 8 speakers, but half those speakers are only 3.5" and tweeters and not amplified. I only really brought up speaker count because the systems in the two cars you tested were not amplified. Therefore, speaker count matters far more. Amplification changes sound drastically.
I will go as far as to say that an amplified speaker system without a sub is comparable, if not better, than a non amplified factory speaker system WITH a sub. I can say that in confidence because I have replaced and experienced such a system in that order first hand.
I have a Toyota RAV4 which originally had paper speakers which sucked. I went with some aftermarket ones, amped them, sound deadening the doors and it sounds so much nicer then the JBL premium upgrade sounds.
Hard disagree. Bose has one of the worst systems I’ve ever heard in a new car. Whereas Toyota’s JBL system rocked in both vehicles I was in that had it equipped.
No highs, no lows, must be Bose.
Add in my terrible experience with their home theater system and I can’t stand them anymore.
Bose is literally what the article is talking about: cheapshit mass produced audio products for cars that suck but nobody cares because consumers are dumb.
Everyone’s ears are different but both the Honda and Mazda Bose systems are frequently reviewed as some of the best sound systems available at the price range and that matches my experience.
Toyota’s JBL systems have been mediocre across the board in my experience unless you’re just looking for bass
My Bose home theater system was utter garbage for the sole year that it did work out of my 5 years of owning it, and the Bose system in a Yukon Denali I was in was hands down the worst sound system I have ever heard in a car, no competition. The treble was trash. The mids were just there, and even at maximum bass level with bassy music playing, there was ZERO bass. The bass wasn’t trash, it literally wasn’t there. And when I say literally wasn’t there I don’t mean just very little of it was there, I mean there was genuinely NONE. So bad to the point I genuinely think it might’ve been defective.
Depending on the car you get, JBL either has glowing treble or good treble, and clarity ranges from kind of bad to genuinely great. Bass is always a heavy hitter in JBL systems, it sounds great, there’s way more of it than you should ever need, and unlike Bose systems the power doesn’t start to die off like under 80hz. I’ve had a JBL system that still played under 10hz
This is not coming from someone who’s necessarily an audiophile but I do know a lot about audio and how it works and how it SHOULD work.
That's interesting take, I had a Yukon Denali XL and for the time it was good, home theater should be okay but I went with an AVR 7.2 Klipsch system instead of bose. I had someone who has a 2024 Camry with a JBL premium sound and felt it was sub par, it felt like they only went with bass then balance which is why I went with a none JBL car and built my system from the ground up no subwoofer and the 3 way components give me perfect balance, the 6.5 gives great bass. I think for me the mark Levinson sounds great for stock but I'm not paying 60k for a car.
What year Yukon? That one I talked about was a 2023 or 2024 I believe.
In hindsight I would’ve gone with literally any brand but Bose. Fuck, even Vizio could’ve probably given me a better run for my money 😂
I heard the JBL in a last gen Camry from a very brief moment and wasn’t as nearly impressed as I was with the JBL in the new Sienna and especially the second gen Highlander. Must be something about the SUVs or cars with large cabins that lets the Toyota+JBL systems shine.
Yeah I can’t speak to those other Bose systems you mentioned but that’s definitely disappointing. You’d expect more especially for a full home theatre set up.
Perhaps they’ve improved their car systems though, as the Bose system on my 2025 Honda CRV sounds great, and second only to my Sennheiser wired headphones in terms of my favorite ways to listen to music. There is a setting they call “Bose Centerpoint” that has to be on though otherwise it sounds much flatter. Not sure if that was an option on the Denali.
I wouldn’t consider myself an audiophile but most everyone that’s listened to music in my car has been impressed with it fwiw.
I agree though the bass is nothing to write home about, even though it has a sub. It’s definitely way less powerful than the JBL on my previous car, FJ cruiser.
Right! Honestly with the new cx50 hybrid which uses the same engine as the rav4 hybrid, I'm going to 100% pick the CX50 because of the nicer interior and bose sound system. At the moment I swapped out the front with a focal 165AS3 and I'll happy with them.
I love the CX-50! Such a beautiful car inside and out, and since it’s got the same hybrid power train as the RAV4 it’s a no brainer. The Mazda Bose system is also the best of any car in that class/price range imo.
The suspension is definitely stiff compared to the RAV but it’s so much more fun to drive because of it. The RAV feels like a boat in comparison
No offense meant towards the rav! It’s a fantastic car, they just prioritize ride quality whereas Mazda prioritizes driving dynamics. As a passenger the RAV4 is definitely smoother
Agree. Our CX5 sounded so good, listening to music was actually such a treat for a car of that price! The GR Corolla with the “premium” JBL audio system, on the other hand, had a lot to be desired.
That said, a little tweaking made it better. And i listen to the exhaust mostly anyways!
The vast majority of consumers honestly can't tell the difference between a good sound system and a bad one, and don't really care.
It's a low risk area to cut coats.
I tune audio systems as a side hustle. I've seen what self-professed audio lovers run for EQ settings and listened to what they think sounds good, half of them don't have an ear for music and are tone deaf. The "quality floor" for OEM car audio systems is at the same level as custom audio was 20 years ago, especially on models that have a lot of sound deadening.
Sound deadening does a ton for improving audio quality; a huge contributor to poor sound quality is distortion caused by panels vibrating at specific frequencies. It's expensive and heavy so it's not used much in econoboxes, which is probably why people thing new car audio systems suck.
This is very true. My 90s 7-series sounds much better than any modern econobox with "premium" sound.
But it sounds like a dying puppy next to a modern luxury sedan. Lux SUVs still sound like poop to my ears, but I'm 100% sure that's my bias speaking.
Those absolutely tank the audio quality no matter how good one you get.
Casette adapters have the chance of sounding decent if you do research before buying. (Compared to actual casettes)
What kind of decoding you talking about here? I'm kind of curious what you have. My older cars will play surround audio music discs that just sound like noise if you try to play them in something else.
I ran across a few ISO copies of the very VERY limited supply of 5.1 versions of audio discs and had to copy them over as such.
Sad that it never caught on, such a neat concept but just lost to time I guess.
It's just the old "this only talks to that" because nobody could agree on a standard data format or pinout from CD player in trunk to HU in car. and hardware tech was ripping at a way faster clip than today.
Here's an email thread from 1996 talking about what's compatible. http://www.unofficialbmw.com/e34/stereo/e34_cd_changer.html
You've got to get deep into the bus structure documentation to see why. I have it printed somewhere, took ages of combing dead forums and archive pages to find breadcrumbs. If it was the 2000s I'm sure I could have just called up the company for tips.
In the maakbaas link I posted he blogged about how he reversed engineered the bus data structure and figured out how to talk to both components so he could build the interface to pass the Bluetooth data to the HU.
That's really interesting. I don't have anything close to that, I was just curious how the tech worked is all. I appreciate you sharing what you know about it with us.
That's what I use in absence of a better solution...but sounds like absolute ass. Especially mids, the female v male voice contrast in spoken word format is jarring.
Even the hyper overpowered illegal units from China don't sound good.
Maakbaas made a cool chipset that decodes the cd stream on most pre-ibus BMW HUs and lets you stream over bluetooth 4.0, but it was a pet project and my car has an additional pin that it reads for a voltage response before initializing. It was in my list of things to do, but i doubt I'll get around to soldering & programming a side-load pcb that simulates the signal it needs to get started. Otherwise this cool lil dongle is plug & play.
https://maakbaas.com/shop/bmw-bluetooth-adapter/
> I've seen what self-professed audio lovers run for EQ settings and listened to what they think sounds good, half of them don't have an ear for music and are tone deaf.
We already know this based on the consumer tech space and what is considered "good." I think the only time people have objectively picked out a sound profile correctly is when one company's EQ profile is on the extreme end.
I agree with you MOSTLY. My 17 Outback Limited system sounds great! But fuck me if my 22 WRX base model isn’t made with parts bin cardboard speakers from 30 years ago……
The base WRX speakers are a joke, I replaced mine almost immediately when I had the car, and could not believe it when I pulled out a 6" x 9" plastic housing with a 5.25" round speaker stuffed in the middle, with a driver that would be pitiful for most good tweeters.
What an awful, awful car when it came to interior cost cutting.
Can confirm. It’s also a pain to upgrade. I have heard that the big bottleneck is the Subaru head unit, though. Get that out of the way, and there’s a notable improvement
Those base Subaru systems are unbelievably bad. Wife had a 22 Outback Wilderness, and it used the base sound system despite costing nearly as much as a Touring. Worst stock system I've ever heard. Replaced every speaker and added subs and amp, still had to deal with the garbage locked factory EQ pulling bass and doing bizarre things to the higher frequencies.
Yeah we got my mother-in-law a new 2025 Crosstrek. She loves the car and doesn’t care much about music but I tried it once in her car and dear god it’s hilarious how bad it sounds.
Yikes, I can only imagine. Those door speakers had the tiniest, saddest little magnets on them. And all ferrite AFAIK, not neodymium or anything fancy. All 6 together weighed less than one stock speaker from my 1996 Nissan pickup.
Yup, first thing I did with my wife’s Outback Wilderness was replace the front tweeters. That alone made a huge improvement. Haven’t gotten around to the rest of the speakers yet and wife doesn’t care, but they are still far worse than the standard speakers that came in my F150. I love Subarus but they are laughably cheap on speakers. The base system on my mother-in-law’s Crosstrek is somehow even worse.
The WRX and STI have almost zero sound deadening because they’re enthusiast models and sound deadening is heavy.
Take out the trunk tray and foam insert that goes around spare tire in your WRX and go for a drive with the rear seats folded down. You’ll hear how much the WRX and STI rattles without it and how much of an impact sound deadening (it’s technically vibration deadening) has when it comes to certain frequencies.
>The "quality floor" for OEM car audio systems is at the same level as custom audio was 20 years ago, especially on models that have a lot of sound deadening.
If you mean this as literally as you wrote it, I hard disagree. The audio in my recent 2025 rental base Corolla was *horrible*. Significantly worse than the factory Bose in my 2010 Infiniti. I don't know if you mean custom audio to be worse than premium factory 20 (or in my case, 15), but this Corolla was hard to listen to. So funny, so thin, so cheap.
Its also probably streaming. An “ok” or average sounding system will hide a lot of the slop in low bit rate audio. If you sudenly have speakers that are responsive, precise, and can also reproduce the super high frequencies where all the noise is at suddenly your spotify or amazon music now sounds like garbage.
> I've seen what self-professed audio lovers run for EQ settings and listened to what they think sounds good, half of them don't have an ear for music and are tone deaf.
There's also just so much personal preference so it's really impossible to say what EQ is the best for everyone. People don't like hearing that though they like knowing that their expensive gear is better or that they can tell a difference when maybe they can't.
If you want to start a holy war on Reddit go to the headphone sub and tell them you don't lke Sennheiser or some other beloved headset and watch the hate pour in.
A lot of those systems are tuned by people who think the proper way to tune is by finding the clipping point and backing off slightly. I also won't tune any SPL systems (SPL = Sound Pressure Level) because there's a ton of distortion when you chase loudness, and I ain't about that life. A good modern SQL system (Sound Quality Loud) can deliver the boom boom feel you want without giving yourself tinnitus by the time you're 40.
The amount of people using subtitles for TV because they “can’t hear the dialogue” and you see that they have the TV touching the ceiling with stock audio…
People in cars just want to hear the bass, nobody ever showed off their car stereo by saying “wait until you hear the treble in my new car!”
Some of that is also the mixing is just shit in so many movies and TV shows. The dialogue gets buried behind everything else. They mix it with a surround setup in mind, or an actual movie theater in mind, and it just doesn't work when all those channels are reduced to 2 stereo speakers or one sound bar with zero sound separation by the time it gets to the couch where the listeners are. And the TV speakers are often also garbage. The ones in my mid range Vizio are horrible and make using a sound system just to watch TV necessary.
Even with a good speaker set up and as perfect as could be hearing, I still sometimes can't hear what characters are saying in some shows and movies because they don't elevate the dialogue in the mix enough for home viewing.
>But while we're here, yes, good lord I can't stand people hanging their TV above the mantle nearly up to the ceiling as if this is normal.
/r/TVTooHigh
Sorting by Top all time is pure comedy.
I can attest to everyone just wanting to hear bass. I rented cars for work for 10 years. Almost every single rental I got in had the bass turned all the way up. The EQ was either not touched at all or the bass was turned up all the way. There was literally never a middle ground.
It’s why Beats headphones were so popular. After Apple bought them, they drastically reduced the overdone bass output on Beats products, but it’s pretty clear people don’t actually want accurate-sounding audio given how successful Beats were back in the day.
The issue with TVs is the mixing is inconsistent. I have an Apple TV and soundbar set up, on YouTube TV 20 is ample, but on HBO 20 is very loud.
Netflix is all over the place, I was watching Boots recently and that was actually just right (this was mixed by Sony Entertainment - perhaps it’s studio dependent?) but the Diplomat was not.
I mean you are sitting in a glass and metal box with wind noise and engine sound - even the best case sound performance is about as audiophile as some $5 earbuds in a quite room.
> People in cars just want to hear the bass, nobody ever showed off their car stereo by saying “wait until you hear the treble in my new car!”
I do. Low distortion in the in the woofers and clean but not metallic treble is what I look for in cars. The best in class car I found was the B&O sound system used in the Ford Escape.
Honestly the salesman that sold me my 3 series told me flat out the stock system wasn't much different to the B&O in the fancier one, but I'd set a budget and he was doing us both a favour in sticking to it.
It's great until you want to play anything out of the ordinary. As soon as it gets subtle or heavy you'll be sat there wondering where certains sounds are because you know it exists having had it on your headphones.
It's not a dealbreaker for me, I don't spend much time in my car, and it's already better than prior cars just from NVH not ruining music. But it's the first car where I've realised I wouldn't have minded spending extra.
> The amount of people using subtitles for TV because they “can’t hear the dialogue” and you see that they have the TV touching the ceiling with stock audio…
I mean to be fair I have a proper 5.1 and sometimes still can't hear dialogue, even when adjusting the center channel sometimes. Mastering and mixing should be different for home TV and home theatres than it is for the actual theatre, but it seems like studios just ship over the theatre audio as is, untouched, and then streaming platforms or whoever else never consider it at all.
My sister had a crackling tweeter in her 2020 Tacoma with the JBL. I suggested she replace all six speakers and so she did. Even at double the impedance of the stock speakers, it's night and day. The quality is far better and they even get louder. Shows how much that premium JBL system sucked. That's just a *speaker* upgrade too.
The majority of manufacture car audio systems are produced and packaged by the same parent company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harman_International).
I’ll be honest, I’m one of those people. I’m sure some audiophile could tell me exactly why the base system in my car objectively sucks, but it sounds fine to me. A premium sound system isn’t something I’d be willing to pay extra for on its own.
As long as the head unit is reasonable to replace (or full featured enough for me not to care) and the speakers are standard sizes I don't care because whatever I install will sound better than the OEM equipment, even the "premium" systems.
As a 2016 WRX owner, do you have the Harman kardon speakers? Because the base model (Only one that was offered at the time here in brazil), the speakers suck hard
I had a 2017 base WRX until recently. Base sound system, hated it, went aftermarket, nothing but problems, never again.
When I bought that car all I thought I cared about was the driving experience, I've changed my perspective since then.
I usually get top-end trims that have the fancy sound systems.
I only listen to audiobooks or podcasts, or if on road trips with the family, kids' songs.
It's not like the really old days where you can pick and choose your options individually, because the high-end stereo isn't something I'd waste money on.
I am sure 90% of the complaints about audio systems are because they don't like the tuning curves in the vehicles. And part of that is the target of the brand and what the people at the OEM want.
I'm far from an audio enthusiast but the 6 speaker Boston Acoustics system that came from the factory in my 2013 Challenger seems fairly decent. That said I'd like to get a professional audio shop to overhaul the entire audio system to make it amazing. I just don't have the energy or interest in learning everything to pick components and do everything myself considering I'm already ok with it.
That said, I did go from dailying a 92 RAM D350 4 with pioneer speakers and head unit as a sound system with zero sound deadening so my bar was fairly low to begin with.
The LX cars and the Grand Cherokee at the time had well designed cabins which help a ton with acoustics. You could defs upgrade a few things but I don't think there'd be a huge difference.
Also companies play games with branding. The Bang & Olufsen system in my previous 2018 SQ5 sounds like ass compared to the higher end system in my 2017 A6. The average ignorant consumer just sees the same brand on both and the number of speakers.
With you on ELS Studio, it was the deciding factor for me getting an MDX with the Advance package. I would really love to hear the Type S back to back to hear how the top end system sounds too.
Yup, the B&O I had in my 19 S5 was just ok. Funny enough, the B&O in my F150 sounds better IMO, but I think its a better system in terms of power and setup.
This. A lot of the branded audio systems are just pulling speakers and components from the same pile the makes suppliers have to offer. B&O isn't designing a special set of speakers and tunings for every single car in Audi's lineup for example. The one in my S3 sounds pretty good but another model might be meh.
Personally I'd rather get the base system and do my own upgrade. It'll cost less than half what the dealership will charge, and be a much better system to boot.
I think it's always varied hugely. I've probably heard 20 cars with Bose branding and some have been great, others pretty awful. Same with Harmon, B&O and really any other brand that gets plastered on a speaker grille.
Within the 'premium audio' niche, there are a lot of variances.
Even within the same auto brand, Model A can have a drastically better sound system than Model B even though it's the same audio company making the systems.
Harman/Kardon in a Kia Stinger is WORLDS better than the Harman/Kardon in the Kia K5.
My F150 has the base speakers and it sounds pretty decent for a base system. I keep hearing the same criticism of the B&Os in the higher trim F-series trucks. My father-in-law’s GMC has the B&O and it sounds like ass.
The b&o in the Mach e is actually nice, depending on the music you listen to. For the stuff I listen to 90% of the time it's terrible, but for the odd time I listen to music with more depth and range, it's alright.
I’ve heard the same regarding the base system sounding decent. I’m not really soured on it all too bad as it was just a consequence of getting the features I actually wanted but still.
B&O in my 2019 Bullitt is aggressively "fine." Sub is turned up way too high and there's a harshness in the treble I can't get rid of. Also, there's a weird bull in the mids.
I was once in an equinox with Bose and it didn’t have a dedicated subwoofer. Dead serious. I’ve also been in a Tahoe with Bose and thought it sounded nice, so you’re onto something there
There are many General Motor vehicles with BOSE that did not come with a subwoofer. And it has nothing to do with age. 2006 Silverado with BOSE? Subwoofer. 2021 Silverado with BOSE? No subwoofer. So yeah like you noticed it just depends on the specific car you're in!
It has always varied a lot.
For example, Monsoon system Pontiac used in the 90s and early 2000s was really quite good… but then VW started using Monsoon systems and it was pretty crap. I have a feeling that VW actually didn’t specify Monsoon components that were as good as what Pontiac was using.
Bose is REALLY hit and miss. Some of their car systems are good, but most are crap. Mark Levinson seems to be the other way around, I’ve had a lot of good experiences with their systems in Lexuses.
I had an OEM Clarion system in one of my Saabs that was quite good sound quality-wise, although the speakers wound up being quite fragile, and I blew a few speakers despite not being a high-volume listener…
Right? Given how cheap audio and video tech is to produce now it's insane that some makes are still getting away with absolutely shit tier speakers in cars that cost $50,000
Reviewers are getting more and more scrutinous of car audio because it’s one of the only separators in certain segments of largely similarly featured and priced cars.
A lot of these premium audio systems are just for a feature checkbox and they always have been because buyers aren’t and haven’t really been making purchase decisions based on it.
Yep!
20 years ago I built a Bestbuy audio system, on a budget, for my POS hooptie at the time that blows the doors off my fancy H&K system in my current car
My work base model Maverick has a stereo on par with the luxury vehicles from 15-20 years ago. Overall car stereos have gotten so much better. I have a fully active 3 way Focal Utopia stereo in my F150, so I’m all in favor of better audio but today’s average car sounds pretty decent. Except Subaru lol.
I think Ford in general do base speakers better than most. My F150 with the standard speakers sound pretty good. My wife had an Escape with the base speakers that also sounded good - really good actually, so much so I was convinced they had accidentally put in the higher end speakers behind the grill of the base speaker.
Well and my Outback is a Limited and they sound pretty damn good and that’s a 17, so I figured “eh… I’m sure the speakers aren’t AS good in the WRX but I’m sure they are fine.” I was so wrong…..
Mainly because aftermarket sound systems aren’t as big of a thing as they were in the 90’s/00’s
How Crutchfield and their like are still going is a testament to people still wanting great audio, but with all the tech in dash these days, it’s a lot more complex than it used to be.
Cost cutting for better profits. Then double dipping by malign the base sound be really crap and the premium option better.
My c63S even with burmister upgrade still had shitty paper speakers
If you hold a 200$ infinity aftermarket speaker to a “BOSE” paper speaker from the say Lexus or whoever . you can see the quality difference. And sound to sound the quality of an aftermarket is far better.
You know I’m talking OEM parts bin paper speakers. The cheapest shitty ones.
I agree most consumers won’t tell the difference, and it is a design challenge. Where the OEMS do great is making the sound stage in-the car sound good for the least amount of $$. But for those of us who do like good
Sound. You can hear the weakness
Sadly, I just found this....my AMG Benz with the uprated system doesn't sound as good as a set of infinity reference fed by a Kenwood head end I installed in an old minivan....not even an extreme aftermarket install.
My HK BMW system was better...by a lot.
OEM speakers on the high end look cheaper because they don't have to look good to be sold. I bet you also thing the bigger heavier ferrite magnets are better than the tiny little neodymium magnets.
Also, Lexus uses Mark Levinson systems...which is made by Harman...you know what other brand is owned by Harman...that's right Infinity.
HK OEM speakers are actually relatively nice, for example you can meet neodymium magnets in them. Vast majority of them are complete bargain bin though. Even the Mark Levinsons and Burmeisters get well upgraded by competent aftermarket solutions.
To be fair, most Lexus's on the road are not equipped with Mark Levinson audio packages. The IS and the NX and the RX make the majority of sales at Lexus and unless you get a highly equipped model, it's coming with the base Lexus audio package.
Here in Canada, you need to get Executive pkg to get ML (top dog). Easily $15k over base. If someone has ML audio in their car, you know they have the money
The HK system in my STI was garbage, but that's because it has zero sound deadening. A coworker of mine has an HK system in his Night Edition RAM and it sounds great
The labels mean nothing - almost all are made under Harmon international and a HK system in one vehicle may use the same parts as a JBL system in another vehicle. The Mark Levingson system in one car might use the same parts as an Infiniti system in another. Revel, Becker, etc. They also just got the rights for Polk, Denon, Marantz, and B&W.
The HK system in my Pacifica sounds surprisingly good.
Unfortunately some of the car audio system branding is just that - branding. They will pay to license the H&K, Bose, whatever name to slap on the speaker grilles and feature list but it's often not like a H&K team actually developed the system for that specific car alone piece by piece.
Yup there are very very few OEM where I think “wow this system bumps and is worth the $$”. They can be good but very few are great.
I still laugh at the “ if it’s no highs, no lows. Must be Bose” cause it’s true lol
upvote for the fact that paper has nothing to do with quality. There are absolute brilliant paper/cellulose speakers out there. Perhaps not always the perfect material for car applications with the humidity/temperature changes though.
Great paper/cellulose speakers are usually good at separation or stage width for hifi speakers if they have the driver to use their agility. Great for dense audio or home theather stuff.
What is key is sound deadening, housing volume, housing stiffness etc.
There is no replacement for displacement is also valid for speakers not only engines.
In a car there the only way to get good sound is through a DSP and sound correction. A lot of glass, small room with complex shape, some have leather seats some have cloth which reflect different. Getting to a good stereo effect for 2 or even 4 seating positions independent of the amount of reflecting passengers in the car is tough.
They flap a fancy name of a company that used to do good stereo 40 years ago then sell hot garbage with the name and customers dont know better.
They stream mp3 quality on bluetooth anyway.
Not sure why they have a JBL speaker in the thumbnail article when they blow most of the competition out of the water. Their systems in the Sienna and Highlander sound phenomenal.
Anecdotal, but my S3 had the B&O sound system option (iirc $2k+ option) and I thought it sounded good but the sub in the rear deck rattled a bit.
I brought it to one of those Mexican audio garages and they convinced me to upgrade the entire sound system to a mid-tier JBL set up. I think it was $1200 which included installation.
Those speakers sound eons better than my B&Os lol. Like the clarity across the entire frequency range is an entire step up.
The brand name is just a logo applied as a marketing agreement. There's often no components from that brand in the system. Maybe a few extra logos on the back of some Chinese speakers and amp.
The compression on my Bose system is ridiculous. Whichever instrument is playing at the moment will get turned up, so you get this sort of pulsating thing going in.
I personally dont care if a base audio system is bad, but when youre paying for an extra option, it should have thought and effort behind it. Not just "bad with more bass". With that said, tuning audio inside a car is insanely difficult and probably time and money sucking, so its not surprising they just guess
It's also just not really possible because of the road and wind and engine noise changing constantly. You can tune a car stereo to sound amazing when parked, but it won't sound the same going 75 mph on a highway with 70 db of tire/road/wind noise alongside it.
Many (most?) OEM sound systems these days alter their output depending on how fast the car is going.
For aftermarket systems, you'd want more bass than strictly appopriate while tuning a car that's standing still, so it would sound right while on the move.
I’m pretty sure the difference in my F150 verses the base system is simply the addition of a subwoofer and a center channel speaker.
The highest up model add speakers in the headrest, but I think still retains the rest of the system.
It does depend on the manufacturer. Honda, Mazda and Volvo do see significant upgrades with their premium audio, at least to my ears. (Bose for Honda and Mazda, Bowers & Wilkins for Volvo)
I was not impressed with the Toyota or Subaru premium options though.
I bought my car knowing the speakers weren't great. In fact the bass element resonates with something really badly on certain frequencys and this a known issue with the cheap vw speakers that entry level Seats use.
However, there is also enough highway noise that i would not get any benefits from upgrading the speakers. I can hear my music and that's enough.
If i want to listen to music actually i'll use a speaker set that is not moving 100km/h on a motorway.
"Normal people listen to music, audiophiles listen to equipment" is probably part of it. No excuse for really bad audio in cars above the lowest price points of course, but most people just need a good enough system so they can hear their music/nav/fake engine noises clearly.
I would bet that it’s that a lot of people simply don’t know what a good sound system is even supposed to sound like by comparison and therefore have very low expectations. The amount of people who watch YouTube through their phone speakers, listen to music through a $20 Bluetooth pill or an Alexa, have a flat LCD/LED TV at home that sounds like a tin can, that “can’t hear without their subtitles”.
There is a lot of excuse making in this thread.
These are multi thousand purchases with fixed environments, if you can't design a sound system in that scenario, glass or not, then maybe you just suck at your job.
Especially when you can upsell a "better" sounding system for thousands.
Basically (1) people like super V-shaped sound when they first listen to it but it is exhausting and shitty over time (2) people don't actually care that much or figure that is the best it can get.
Go get a proper sound system installed and you suddenly realize just how absolute shit the ones in there are. And there is no fucking real excuse since they have the ability and scale and control of DSP and materials that nobody else has.
they learned from beats by dre.... manufacturers figured out most consumers are basically deaf. people can't hear audio range as it is, just that its loud and has bass. a lot cheaper to just use the cheapest speakers ever and put power to them than make it sound good to 10% of people
most consumers can't tell a difference, are not audiophiles, and alot of people just grow out of loud music when they get older. People who do like loud music are generally the younger crowd, who dont have much money to spend on a car to begin with.
like i know volvo bowers systems are incredible... but im not about to buy a volvo over a bmw m340 just for that. Or buy a honda civic si for the bose system over a much better performing GTI
I don't blast music in the car but it always surprises me riding with other people how they will put music on at such low volume you can barely even hear most of what's going on. It's not to make room for talking, they just cruise with barely audible music playing.
What the fuck is the point of playing music at a lower volume than the road noise in the car?
To sucker people into paying for fancy sounding brand names slapped on meh stereos in higher trims. More profit margin makes the shareholders happy while a small group of audiophiles wring their hands about using the names.
Money. They want you to jump to the highest trim to get the better stereo.
Take the Honda CRV as an example. The premium Bose audio is only available on the touring trim which is a ~3k jump from the previous trim. And the only other upgrade the touring trim gets is a heated steering wheel and power lift gate. So it’s basically a 3k premium just for premium sound
i was in my friends IS300 a few weeks back and i was appalled how weak the system was, barely any low end, high treble and the highs sounds like mud. Granted in my car i have JL audio speakers, but it was eye opening to hear how terrible it was. Older Lexus systems sounded WAY better.
Why? Because it's a cheap place to say a lot of money and most people couldn't tell you the difference.
And the ones that can will either pay more money for a better system from the factory, do it themselves, or pay a local shop to install one.
I had a succession of Jeeps over the years from Wranglers to top of the line Grand Cherokees. Always felt it was my hearing not being so great because I'm older but even the McIntosh system felt lacking in my Summit Reserve. Won't even bother with the lesser systems in the Wranglers, even my 392. After too many problems with the Jeeps, I recently bought a 2026 CLE 53 AMG Mercedes with a Burmester sound system and there's a distinct difference in the sound quality. I'm hearing lyrics I could never make out before because they're so much more crisp and clear.
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