Vir

Hello all my fellow members. I always appreciate the help I get from these forums and this community.

I have a 2008 GS 350 AWD. I have been doing upgrades to my car here and there because I love my car and I just love cars in general. I hope to have my car in its first car show by next summer.

So I love the sound of my cars system as it is now. I have “Lexus Premium Sound” whatever that is. And it’s not a bad system. Very clean and clear audio. The speakers are really good and even have good bass after I cut the factory subwoofer. Now the reason I cut the factory sub is because I installed an after market sub and amp. My factory speakers still run on the factory amp. Now I’m ready to do more upgrades.

I am looking into getting a new amp for my speakers and also new speakers for the car. I have already decided that I am going to do everything ML(Mark Levinson). Now I know that I could spend the same amount of money or even less and get equal or even better sound. I even have many friends who are audio techs with far more experience than me and have tried so much to sway me in other directions. But I’m dead set on ML. I appreciate the quality of ML and the sound is beautiful. I’ve heard many different set-ups and have done my research but I’m sticking to ML. I’ve already found the amp, now I just need help finding the speakers. So if anyone can help me find my speakers, I would appreciate it a lot.

Also I’ve done a little research and I don’t think I’ll have an issue, but do I need to change my factory head unit? I don’t think I have to but I could be very wrong and I’m actually okay with changing it, because I do want to have a nicer screen. But something that looks great in my car. I have friends that work at the dealerships so they can do any gps programming and what not for me.

Now the last thing I also need help with is finding a diagram for the audio system in my car. Once I have all the parts, a buddy and I are gonna put the new set-up in. He’s the expert and I’m there to assist and learn as I love learning new things about cars. So if anyone can point me in the right direction I’d appreciate that too.

I know I’m asking for a lot, but this forum always comes through for me since owning my Lexus. And even when I don’t get all my answers, I always learn something new.

Also if anyone that answers this post wants to tell me about their own set-up please add it to your replies. I love to know about everyone’s different choices.

Thank you all in advance!

stilande

ML Audio diagrams were just posted to this thread:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/gs-...07-gs450h.html

Maybe those are useful for you too?

BR.Sami

Vir

Thanks for that. It might come in handy when I go to set it up

stilande

Some speculation on this question: the ML amp has few nice features:
1) audio connection between head unit and the amp is digital (SPIF)
2) it has integrated DSP for those 5.1 or 7.1 channel outputs (e.g. creating 5.1 channels from stereo source). This is the part I like most on my ML setup.

I've assumed that there must be some control mechanism between the head unit and ML amp: you can e.g. switch that DSP stuff on/off from the head unit. Probably this is just normal CAN bus, but the question is if your head unit is able to "talk" to the ML amp...

There is also some after market amps available which has similar features as the ML amp + more advanced control of everything. Like Alpine PXE-0850S (it has only 8 channels compared to ML amp's 11 channels)

BR.Sami