Robdog1515

Khatieh,

I believe everyone on this forum feels exactly the same way as you. Other than continuing to complain, there is not much we(the owners) and the dealers can do. the ball is in Harmans court now. It is up to them to come out with a fix. Based on what I have read and heard it appears that the subwoofer in our cars is not a good match for the amp. the amp is too powerful and the sub cannot recreate the sounds it is being told to do without over traveling.

one very interesting path to follow is the one ICnothing is going down now. He is increasing the resistance on the sub as it fires down into the trunk converting it from a free air sub to a sealed subwoofer. This will limit the subs travel thus preventing it from bottoming out. I have no idea how this will affect the sound, I presume it will take a bit away from the lower frequencies and make the higher frequencies more punchy. I am excited to see the results as I have also messed around with this idea with some jimmy rigged boxes and I also saw an improvement. But a good solid fiberglass box will be required to really tell if it fixes it.

I sent a nice email to Harman last week asking for a status on a fix, all I got was the home audio person who received the email from csupport@harman.com and he asked John and Phillip to please reply. nothing yet.

khatieh

I have emailed harman and did what everyone recommended by contacting Harmon. I believe that the best way of getting to them is through the dealer. They kept my car and gave me a loaner and said that they are in contact with the engineers at Lexus. They also wanted me to listen to a mark levinson in their ES 350 and it had the same problem. They gave me hope by saying Lexus is very responsive when they send a product report. They told me that they will be in contact with me soon.

Quick question though.
The fiddling that you guys are doing...does that void any warranties?

ElliotB

" They gave me hope by saying Lexus is very responsive when they send a product report. They told me that they will be in contact with me soon. "

Sorry, Lexis is asleep at the wheel on this issue.

Robdog1515

If you change the fit form and function of the car then yes. Now with that being said, if you add an enclosure that can be removed easily without damaging the vehicle then I would say no. When u take the car in for service just remove it and lexus will not be the wiser. The problem is I don't think there are any unused holes to use, so we will have be creative wit the mount. Possibly prop it in place with a wedge from the trunk bottom. No bolts required, just renders part of the trunk in usable.

Tonight I will try this as a test. Don't harp on the execution, it's purely for test. Take a rigid plastic container, apply a ball seal foam bead to the lip, then press it up into place and use a prop to keep it wedged in place and tape to make a seal. Then play a known track at known settings(do this before) then see how high the volume can go before any distortion occurs. I bet it will be surprising. If the distortion occurs above the volume where the distortion occurred without a container then it's a success.....

well kind of.

If any of you have time to Spare, please try this experiment for yourself, I may or may not have time to do this tonight.

ICnothing

1. Hey Robdog, the shop put the system to max 63 and almost no distortion or thumping, the bass was just 2 point over mid.

2. The bass felt much better, and felt real the Justin Timberlake suit and tie sounded clean.

3. Yes, he has to make holes to hold the box without having vibration.

4. He will be at audio shows for 2 weeks, and when he returns he will do the job and I will take photos.

5. He did say after doing all this, he is not sure how long the sub will last, in his professional opinion the amp is to powerful for the sub. So he said I should see if Lexus will do something because once he boxes in the sub and when it blows, Lexus will not cover it under warranty and will say because it is boxed in.

I will keep you posted

Robdog1515

[QUOTE=ICnothing;7884968]1. Hey Robdog, the shop put the system to max 63 and almost no distortion or thumping, the bass was just 2 point over mid.

Excellent!!!!!!!! progress finally.

I did my experiment myself with a thick plastic mixing bowl. Wedged it in place with a piece of wood with some 1/2" weather stripping as a seal. Unfortunately the Bass all went away, all the low's were gone and there was no punchy bass. and at a volume of 50 ish on some techno song the distortion came back without any bass so I fear it was still over traveling. I'm thinking the volume was too small, the bowl was only about 1/2 cubic foot if that.

What volume is your enclosure? fiberglass and MDF or only glass?

Yes please post pics!!

Robdog1515

I just received a reply from Harman. Currently there has not been any progress on our ongoing distortion issue.

I again requested the following;
1) RMS and max power output of the subwoofer channel on the ML amp
2) Resistance in the subwoofer. 2, 4, 6, 16 ohms?

if I can get at least the resistance in the sub I can measure the voltage with my multimeter and calculate the Watts being delivered to the sub.

if any of you have access to an ohms meter or multi meter and your sub when not connected to the amp please measure the resistance, this will help us all out to determine what our options are.

Robdog1515

this is what I may do.

un solder the + and - from the current sub. and extend the line down to an enclosure for a 10" sub like this. then when/if a fix comes out I hook everything back up.

http://www.seismicaudiospeakers.com/...Quake10_16_Ohm

assuming the sub is 16ohms, this should work just fine without over drawing the amp.

khatieh

I tweeted Lexus official twitter about the problem and they actually responded pretty quickly.

Robdog1515

what did they say?

ICnothing

Yes what did they say....

As I came from my dealer a couple of hours ago and they said nothing is wrong the music I play has to much bass and maybe it was not built for it..:
I have to say what a joke
But they did tell me they will send their finding to Lexus to review and investigate.. Wow I even told them what a profession shop said and their reply was he does not know Lexus vehicle like us. I could not reveal who it was as this audio person does work for Lexus and other manufactures. I would never buy anything that is part of Harman systems as their service has been terriable, and no support at all. I think we should all e-mail Harman and address our disappointment in thiers company support on this issue, there is a fix Harman has choosen for it to just go away.They are waiting for us to get tired of complaining



So yes I am curious to know what was the tweet reply.

khatieh

They said they are sorry to hear about my troubles and asked for my VIN number so they can review my service history. They said they would call me to follow up. I was skeptical at first but I wasn't too worried because twitter verifies that it's actually Lexus. I'm hoping to get a response soon. If any of you guys have twitter you should do the same, idk who runs their twitter but it's worth a shot lol.

Robdog1515

I called Lexus corporate in Torrance CA yesterday and had them start the Lemon law process. If you look inside your binder of manuals in your glove box you will find the lemon law book that has the law for each state. For CA, if my vehicle has a defect that significantly affects the value or performance of the vehicle and cannot be fixed after 4 trips to the dealer then Lexus will buy back my car less the mileage from the first failed attempt. so since I went in at 1,800 miles they will buy the car back from that point. no idea how its calculated, do I take the hit on depreciation, or is it just $.55/mile like if you were doing your taxes.

I also sent an email to Harman telling them I was doing this and I can't believe Lexus would buy back a $46,000 car for a $300 defect/engineering error. It really sucks, I love the car minus the sub, and yes I can put in another 500 and put in a pro sub, but that goes against the principal of this situation. I bought the car for premium audio, if the base ES350 has the same sub and it doesn’t distort, you would expect the high end ML system to also not distort.

ElliotB

Robdog1515, what I can't believe is that you would give up such a fine car over a sub-woofer. I am not happy with the situation either but have been investigating other options, none of which are very expensive. I like my car too much to give it up.


"significantly affects the value or performance" good luck with your case - you are going to need it!

LexBob2

I guess it can't hurt to file a lemon law case but it's probably a stretch to think anything will come out of it. Good luck though.