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New owner of a 2013 GS350 with a Mark Levinson upgraded sound system.
I have to say I have been really disappointed with the sound of the stereo. There is high frequency harsh sound that is very noticeable at moderate to higher volumes and begins to give me a headache after while. I mitigated this somewhat by turning the highs down two or three notches from center as well as the mids with the bass in the middle or up one. I also turned off surround sound on all inputs.
It's almost like a harsh compressed digital audio sound but I hear it playing CDs, lightning, bluetooth & aux connected iphone playing Amazon Prime music downloaded to phone, downloaded podcasts, radio etc. My previous daily driver was a 2007 Camry with JBL upgraded audio and it sounded a lot better but I only connected via aux cable to my phone.
Do I have a damaged sound system or is there something else I'm overlooking?
Not much activity in this thread but since it popped back up I took a look. It's been over a year since I made this post and either my sound has improved or I've just gotten used to it but it does seem to sound better to me. One thing that might have helped is moving the fade slightly to the rear and lowering the highs in the equalizer. However, I'm almost starting to believe that it actually is sounding better.
I remember that years ago when I bought several pairs of headphones, they sounded bad out of the box and there are a lot of people that suggest breaking them in. Some play some exotic mixture of frequencies that supposedly help. I just played random music in them and set them down and let them play over night. I did this for a number of hours and I did seem to notice an improvement.
This made me think that maybe the same thing was affecting my ML system and I wondered if it was possible that, even though it was a 2013 and five years old when I bought it, that previous owners had seldom used it or maybe only listened to talk radio or podcasts and no music. Maybe the speakers were never broken in for music.
Anyway, it's just a theory but the sound of it doesn't bother me as much anymore.
You may have a point. Good observation. My car is 2006, so it should be broke in by now. I noticed my harsh sound more after I replaced the foam on all the woofers and sub. I wonder if with the 4 door and sub speakers having no foam somehow damaged the tweeters?
I pulled the FR dash speaker last night and listened to it. Even at low volume there is distortion. So I wanted to see if it was indeed the speaker, and tried to connect another tweeter I had laying around but I could never get any sound out of it. Why? is it that maybe the OHM or wattage needed is different on the ML's? Maybe it wasn't strong enough to push an aftermarket tweeter. That doesn't make sense to me, but what do I know . . . .
Not much activity in this thread but since it popped back up I took a look. It's been over a year since I made this post and either my sound has improved or I've just gotten used to it but it does seem to sound better to me. One thing that might have helped is moving the fade slightly to the rear and lowering the highs in the equalizer. However, I'm almost starting to believe that it actually is sounding better.
I remember that years ago when I bought several pairs of headphones, they sounded bad out of the box and there are a lot of people that suggest breaking them in. Some play some exotic mixture of frequencies that supposedly help. I just played random music in them and set them down and let them play over night. I did this for a number of hours and I did seem to notice an improvement.
This made me think that maybe the same thing was affecting my ML system and I wondered if it was possible that, even though it was a 2013 and five years old when I bought it, that previous owners had seldom used it or maybe only listened to talk radio or podcasts and no music. Maybe the speakers were never broken in for music.
Anyway, it's just a theory but the sound of it doesn't bother me as much anymore.
UPDATE:
Pulled the FR speaker and connected a newly purchased speaker, just to hear the difference. Discovered that I am getting no input to the small speaker, only the larger one. The two lines in the pic produce no sound in the test speaker, but the other two do (distortion is still there).
This seems to point to the Amp or Head Unit (the stereo itself) being bad.
UPDATE
My bad sounding system is only on the left side! Both front and rear. Surely, all the left side speakers didn't go bad all at one time. I've replaced the foam on all the door woofers and Sub woofer, and they sound fine.
Is there a way to test the Amp or headunit (stereo) itself? is it possible for one channel to go bad?
The best way for me to describe the sound is if there was some trash in the speakers when you play them. This sound happens worse at low volume. Higher volume seems to override the sound. I hear it most in Mid-range.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to have to buy a new Amp if that's not the problem.
11-04-18, 08:26 PM
Bad Sounding Stereo ML in GS350
What?
