freestyle5

2004 Lexus LS430 with ML Audio and Nav

My Mark Levinson amp died. We’ve all read the sob stories. Rather than find another piece-of-junk for $400 and continue using this joke of a head unit, complete with it’s tape deck and 6-cd changer, I finally decided to look into having an aftermarket unit installed. I actually removed my CD changer years ago and have been using a Vasitech VML in that vacant dash space. The VML has been a great little unit that required almost zero installation effort and has served me admirably... But even the VML can be a bit buggy, and it was time for an upgrade.

I’m busy, so I was just going to have someone else do it. I was given two quotes at car audio places of about $2500. Both stated that there was no way to replace the amp without also replacing the head unit, the wiring, and all of the speakers. They also searched all of their resources and had absolutely NO IDEA how to keep the factory navigation screen intact so that I could still access my A/C controls. <Sigh> If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

I was just going to rip everything out, bypass everything Lexus, and figure out what to do about a dash bezel later. The first thing I learned is that if you unplug the factory head unit and then start the car with cables dangling, you get an error or the nav screen that you can’t get past. The car is drivable, and you can just turn your A/C to Auto with the hard buttons and pretty much be fine -- but it’s pretty ugly to have an error message on your display forever. The same thing happens with the head unit plugged in, but you take all 3 plugs out of the ML amp in the trunk. (The VML, if you have one, only tricks the system into thinking it has a mini-disc changer and allows you to remove the 6-cd changer. The VML assumes that you’re using the factory HU and amp though, so it doesn’t do anything to help with HU removal.)

After a brief search, I found a solution. It’s a Beat Sonic MVA-24. I believe the (MVA-23 is for 01-03 LS430’s, and the MVA-24 is for the 04-06 LS430.) I was ONLY able to find it on Sonicelectronix.com for $369. That seems high, but without this, you truly can’t do anything. With it, you can do anything you want. First, it gives you a dash bezel that provides a standard double-din slot if you remove everything starting above the bar that contains the seat warming controls to just below the nav screen. You will lose your little storage cubby, but it’s worth it. It has holes for the emergency blinker button and the Norm/Pwr/Ice selection switch. The most critical part of this kit is the little metal MVA-24 box that plugs into the factory harness and electronically tricks the Lexus into thinking that everything is still plugged in. Lastly, this unit has leads coming off of it for Battery, Accessory power, and Illumination. It also has INPUT wires for Left Front and Right Front sound channels -- but it did not specify whether they were high level or low level inputs. I ignored these inputs, because I intended to run fresh RCAs from my head unit to my trunk anyway.

Once you’re at this point, it’s just a matter of picking out your parts.

JVC KW-R925BTS - has bluetooth audio and phone, dual USB inputs, aux input. I use my phone for everything, so I purposefully avoided touchscreen units, which tend to be expensive, slow, and dated-looking in a few years anyway -- but if touch screen stereos are your thing, I’m sure any of them would work.

JVC DRVN KS-AX3205D 5-channel Amp - I like JVC stuff. 300w RMS for the woofer, 50w RMS for each of the other channels. 150 bucks. I may have gone bigger if I’d planned on replacing all of the speakers, but my intent was to reuse all of the Mark Levinson speakers.

Mark Levinson Amp Removal -- Right side of the trunk. No one mentioned that if you have the parking warning sensors on your car, there is another little metal box piggy-backed on the amp, making it very difficult to remove. I had to bend a few brackets. No big deal.

The ML amp has 3 plugs. The largest one contains most of the wires going to the speakers. It maps out like this:

LF = Left Front door speaker
RF = Right Front door speaker
LT = Left Front Tweeter
RT = Right Front Tweeter
LR = Left Rear (speaker and tweeter in series)
RR = Right Rear (speaker and tweeter in series)
SW = Subwoofer



The second plug contains wires going to the subwoofer (two of the wires are unused as far as I could tell.)



The third plug I can only assume is providing power and audio input to the amp. I did not use it for anything. I considered finding the battery and remote-on connections and re-using them with my amp, but how they are powering this amp with what appears to be 18 gauge wires is beyond my comprehension. I decided to run my own wires for that.

Running Amp Wires. Get yourself an amp wiring kit that matches the power output specs of your amp. Running the wire to the battery was simple. I found multiple writeups on it. I ran all my wires together along the passenger side of the car, and in case you are wondering, there is no feedback noise. From the center console, I ran the antenna wire, the remote-on wire, and a 6-channel RCA cable. Getting the cables through the factory trunk access looked insanely difficult, so I drilled a 3/4” hole in the sheet metal behind the seat in a convenient place and ran everything through that. I re-used Lexus speaker wires, but I had no intention of installing my new amp over by the original plug in such a difficult-to-access location, so I crimped 3-foot extensions onto all of the wires.

Installing the New Amp. The carpet is velcro-friendly, so I just got some industrial velcro and stuck my amp to the top of the little hump in the back floor of the trunk. My cables come in just to the right of that. You’ll notice that the rear tweeters do not have their own set of wires. They appear to be wired in series with the 6.5 inchers in the rear doors, but still have a total resistance of 8-ohm. The front Tweeters DO have their own wires, so I decided to wire them in Parallel with the front door 6.5 inchers on the front channels. That makes them look like 4-ohm speakers to the amp, and splits the power between them. Left with left, right with right. You can either use the existing subwoofer wires, or just run some new wire since it’s only 3 feet away.

Additional Notes:
Any fancy crossover stuff that Lexus was doing for these speakers from their head unit or their amp is now gone. You'll want to play with your amp’s high pass filters / low pass filter settings to send what you want to the right channels. Using a 5-channel amp with a head unit capable of sending 6 different RCA pre-amp signals gives you a lot of flexibility here. It also means you can use almost anything that will fit in the doors speaker-wise -- go to all 2-ohm speakers if you want -- you’re not restricted to speakers that only sounded good in the ML system.

My steering wheel volume control is no more. I’m not losing sleep over it. I used it all of 2 times since I’ve owned the car, and my right hand is actually closer to the new volume **** than my left hand ever was to the steering wheel volume. It may be possible to wire them into some kind of wireless steering wheel control remote, but I officially deem that "not worth it."

The new head unit has a microphone for phone calls. I ran the cord out through one of the slots in the new bezel, so I can retract and extend the mic to wherever I want in the car. I generally clip it to my seat belt to sound normal.

I don’t particularly like that I’m powering my front tweeters in parallel with the front door speakers -- they each get half the power that way, and the 6.5 inchers do seem to sound just a little better if I unplug the tweeters. I’ve heard that accessing the front tweeters is almost not worth it, so at some point, I will likely just unplug them for good and get some quality 2-way 50watt RMS 6.5ers for the doors.

Unfortunately, the rear tweeters being in series with the door speakers prevents you from setting up a 3-way crossover -- i.e. wiring the tweeters together, mids together, and having your head unit send pre-amp signal accordingly. It sounds good enough without this though, and if you have a decent head unit with a good EQ and audio adjustments, you can make this sound very good. I have no idea what the total RMS output of the old ML amp was, but my new setup is making the factory speakers sound at least as good as they did before. To their credit, I always thought the ML system sounded pretty good when it was working well. The most noticeable difference is in the bass; my subwoofer definitely has more boom than the ML sub.

I haven’t had decent bass ever since the ML sub went out. I replaced it with an 8-ohm JL Audio one years ago, and it was only adequate. It’s max RMS value was too high. This speaker was practically silent with my new setup, so I bought a cheap Boss Audio 4-ohm 300watt RMS speaker to go here, and it sounds much better. I’ll probably just leave it this way.

My total cost was around 700 bucks, and I’m very happy that I have a better, more flexible audio system than I did before.

LS430cb

Nice write up, I have seen that replacement bezel in wood also.

toantran99

Thanks for the write up.

You can make it work without the beat sonic kit.
Keep the cd player plug in. The only downside is you can't install a DD unit, has to be a single D.

freestyle5

Nice work! Saved yourself $369. I didn't like the idea of leaving all those controls that do nothing, but I guess your display covers it up 90 % of the time anyway. What did you tap into to get constant battery power and Acc power?

xshurikx

I have an 01 UL. Will this work with it without running a new amp and wires? I just need Bluetooth and back up camera I don't want new wires to much work for me

PolishDude

Question for you, were you able to remove the factory ML amp after plugging in the MVA-24? Beat Sonic is telling me that I need to keep the ML amp in there even with the MVA-24 but it looks like you pulled yours out? I also have a 5 channel amp I'm installing. My ML amp is dead and was hoping to pull that dead weight out of the car since I plan on completelyng bypassing it.

whooodat

iTrader: (4)

PolishDude, I made the switch to all aftermarket with the MVA-24 with the ML amp installed. The amp stayed in until I had a buyer for it (several months) and removed it and everything still worked.

PolishDude

Okay that's what I wanted to hear, not sure why Beat Sonic is telling me the amp needs to stay plugged in? I do also plan on getting the DVD bypass, wonder if that has anything to do with it? Guess it's not a big deal either way as I bet I could only get like 50 bucks for it anyways.

e60bmw

iTrader: (1)

Yes, I’m going to be installing mine this weekend when my stuff arrives tomorrow. The backup camera may be a little more complicated, I gotta see what the camera is like when it arrives.

xshurikx

anyone get this done can let me know what parts i need to just plug and play?

iriz

This system has given rise to numerous posts in this forum during the last decade and more - mostly because it is "unique" and incompatible with most car stereo stuff on the market.

But what is the background for this system? Did Mark Levinson have any experience with car stereo or were they just chosen by Toyota because of being a big name in home stereo, this resulting in Mark Levinson re-inventing car stereo by disregarding all known standards?

Or does the Mark Levinson system represent a niche tradition? In that case, what other systems by other brands before and after the LS 430 are similar?

sonyxbr80

You can also have your ML amplifier repair by sending it to United Radio. I believe they upgrade a few components by using replacement parts and also coat the circuit board with resin

JordanT

So has anyone else done this? Is it confirmed that with the Beat-sonic kit you can actually remove ML stock amp completely with no issues or dash warnings? Are the speaker wires in that plug correct and what are the additional white cables in the large speaker harness? Thanks