The standard sound system is starting to sound a bit boring as I've been spending more time in the car and am looking to upgrade it.

Wondering what the exact difference is between standard vs Mark Levinson vs other after market equipment and if anybody here has upgraded theirs. Not looking to get subs but some high quality sound with some good rms would do.

Any thoughts?

 

Oh man.. you have opened a Pandora box now. so hang in tight. haha.

Many say that the ML system is much better than the Base system. I never heard the ML system on the GS, so I cannot confirm or deny that. But, my previous Acura TL had their ELS system, and I can tell you that there was a noticeable difference between the ELS and the Base Lexus... ELS being far superior and crisp. Of course, I got used to the Lexus Base system eventually, but I always felt that there was something missing. I upgraded all of my speakers with the Infinity Reference series speakers (Minus the rear door tweeters and the sub. They are still OEM), and I noticed a noticeable difference in sound clarity. Reason I went with Infinity was because of their high sensitivity, compared to the other brands. Those were the only speakers, besides JBL, that had over 90db sensitivity in all of their speaker sizes. I think Hertz had high sensitivity as well, but those are made out of paper and use foam surroundings, and I didn't feel comfortable putting that combo in the doors where humidity is higher than usual, especially in rainy seasons. Paper cone been better than the alternatives is another topic to discuss on, but, from the water proof point, I think the Infinity speakers were a better choice.

For the subwoofer, I tried Pioneer open air sub, JBL and Polk closed air subs, and I found that the Polk sub was somewhat closer to the OEM in terms of bass. But, between the 4, OEM produced deeper and punchy bass. So I stuck with the OEM one for now. Now if the OEM sub goes out on me at any point, I will be going with Polk sub to replace it.

Also, there are quite a few threads around here that talk about the speaker upgrades. Some of the folks went a bit on the higher end and installed the Vocal speakers as well to upgrade from the Non-ML speakers. Some folks here pretty much frowned upon the upgrade, but they had the ML system, so they had the better system to begin with.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks! I recently drove the ES with the ML speakers and they sound amazing compared to my standard equipment. Going to search through those threads to see what I find but definitely looking to upgrade.