Having a hard time finding a sweet spot for the audio settings. Please post what your settings are so I can try it out and see if I can get better sound. Here is what I have right now that to me is optimum after fudging with it for 5 hours and draining my battery!

Bass: -2
Treble: +3
Fader: -1(rear)
Balance: 0
Center: +5
SubW: -3

These settings work well with CD/DVD-A/MP3/IPOD but when it comes to FM/AM/XM it sounds terrible. Wish they had multiple sound setup for CD's/XM and so on.

 

I noticed the sound quality on XM is not as good as Sirius that I had before with Sirius it is very close to CD quality but with the XM it sounds more like local radio, also I find that the FM tuner dose not have very good quality, most of the time I get distorted reception which is odd (I don’t know its only mine or all TL’s are like this).
In overall I am not so impressed with the sound system, if you don’t believe me go and checkout Audi with B&O and you will feel the difference, you don’t need to spend 5 hours to get to your comfort level.

 

Sirius is no where next to CD quality, believe me Kami. Too much compression and 8 or 10-bit audio? It's all about the receiver for Satellite radio and how it converts that satellite signal to audio. I deal with XM/Sirius on AV systems in home theaters daily, and a good playback system reveals the limitations of compressed audio. I got MP3's from an iPod sounding better than XM/Sirius radio for one client as they now see how poorly satellite radio is broadcasted was revealed.

FM reception varies upon locations, too much interference to asses quality from hour to hour and day to day.

Chaiwala, it's all subjective! The sweet spot for you is when your happy, keep your settings and rock on. Unfortunately for me, I cannot find such a sweet spot in my TL as music is recorded and mastered in so differently with genre to genre. I've landed on Bass+, treble+1, Fader-0, Balance-0, Center-0, SubW+1, with Dolby simulation and SVC turned off mind you. When switching to XM, I have to boost the treble to +3 at least! It's just crap I tell u.

I posted a test with a SPL meter somewhere in this forum on each source on the TL, and I just can't find it in a forum search. Cheers.

 

Bmode, thanks! especially coming from someone who deals with AV installations on a daily basis! What was your Bass number?

Why do you have your Dolby PLII off? Just wondering. The difference between CD/MP3/DVD-A and regular XM/FM/AM is so big in this car that it annoys me to switch and change the settings everytime I go back and forth. Now I am truely whining because this TL does spoil me with its incredible sound system to a point that it shows the limitations of inferior quality of FM/AM/XM.

I will search for the SPL meter thread. Thanks again.

 

Oops, sorry. bass setting is +1.

The Dolby Pro Logic II is a simulation. A good one at that, but it's splitting mostly stereo signals which is not true and creates false or "ghostly" harmonics/frequencies. At least for my ears. The DVD-A's that are properly encoded Dolby for 5.1 playback, don't need to have this DPL II button on, so I leave it off in general, as well as the SVC setting, which I think is clever for the unassuming driver, but I need complete control of my car music.

 

Last time I checked, DPL II wasn't an option when playing DVD-As. I'm with bmode regarding settings, they are all over the map depending upon quality of mastering and recording.

To me, XM/Sirius is not for music because of compression, so news/talk is the limit. I was hoping there would be some magical transformation should I enable the option with my home AV system, but bmode saved me some bucks there!

 

I actually think the natural setting is great when the vehicle is at rest with engine off however with road noise interference I prefer the following:

Bass +2 Treb 0
Center +2 (adds midrange punch I think)
Subw 0
Fade 0
Bal 0
SVC: High
Dolby: off

Dolby II is not avail in DVD-A because it is already in Dolby 5.1 so no need for simulation.

Agree w/ Bmode Dolby II simulation sounds gimmicky and less authentic, but DVD-A sounds fantastic too bad I'm too cheap to replace my CDs with them.

Speaking of which, have people figured out the compression rate/algorithm for the CD to HDD rip? Can you guys hear the difference between the original CD vs the ripped verrsion? Haven't spent enough time in this area yet just curious.

 

I was told from Acura HQ's that the HDD rip is Mpeg layer 3 @ 128K, which is unacceptable for me. I don't use Mp3 rates of 128K for anything, there's too much information lost. Although the car is very forgiving on sound as the environment has so many audible distractions. It's sad to report that this is why my HDD is still empty.

 

What compression do u use?

 

If I have to use Mp3 format, it's always 320Kpbs. It's about 4:1 file size ratio and doesn't sound too bad. Most of my iPhone most used and important files are WAV and AIFF.

 

Although the ESL sounds pretty good, I was a bit disappointed because my front staging was next to non-existent. Played around with a CD that I knew placed the singers/instruments across my windshield from the system I had in my recently departed aftermarket equiped CL-S, and realized that the problem is the settings for the Front Center Channel. Thought that increasing the settings would be the way to go, but came to realize that by backing off (like next to bottem setting) the front placement was like I hadn't heard before in a moving environment. Give it a try.

 

What is your Center Channel speaker setting? When you say "next to bottom setting" do you mean -5 or more like +1? Thanks.

 

waaaaaay to the left (-) of center. -4 is where I'm at.

 

interesting, will try this, thanks

 

Being an audiophile since I was 8, I found this not not to work very well at all. The factory settings work best to my ears, and those are the settings that the author intended. When I used your settings there was a BIG hole in the middle as I suspected it would. Maybe that is the way you like you music, and nothing wrong with that. The staging I heard with the stock settings are close to how my 35K Krell system sounds in my home. I have listen to all the systems except the Lexus, and they were all good, but the ELS in the tech IS a step away. Botom line, is, if is sounds good to your ears then its all that matters. Sometimes "acurate" sounds terrible.

 

My test CD was a Capital Collectors series of the Kingston Trio. With the Center set to 0 or anything to the right, the Trio (plus bass, guitar and banjo) were fighting for attention in the middle and there was very little seperation. When moving the setting into the negative category, each singer/instrument their place across the stage ... much the same way as the POLK SDAs I puchased in the late '80s addressed the "sound in a box" phenomenon by cancelling out what they referred to as "Interaural cross-talk". This also worked with a Jame Taylor GHs CD and also for my Dire Straights Brothers in Arms, and in neither case did I end up with the hole in the middle. I'm sure that these settings will require tweaking with each/every source, but out of the box the center setting (or any increase to it) seemed to draw everything into the middle as opposed to (re)creating a studio environment.

Actually, my biggest complaint with the ELS is their use of 'pots' for treble and base, and nothing that remotely gives you the ability to tweak like an EQ does. All ears are different, and (agreed) what sounds good to one might sound terrible to another - and vice versa.

 

Make sure the DPII simulation is off for a more direct source playback.