fodalo

I have a 2018 and no carplay. Lexus had a software fix and now we have carplay but, it needs wired USB to play music and to get album/disc cover graphics.

asong1

I just re-tested. This is for 24 MY LC 500. i don’t know about the prior year models.

First of all, i have 2 USB connectors. one is USB-A, and the other is USC-C. USB-C is for charging only, and wired carplay does not work with USB-C.

Now back to the wired carplay audio issues. I am able to confirm that if you have ‘wireless’ carplay enabled and working, it does not switch to wired carplay mode when you plug in the device. It stays on its initial connection mode. Which means if you already have the carplay up, then plug in the USB-A cable, the audio system does not switch to wired mode. audio will stay BT/Wifi mode. how do I know? as mentioned above, i launch youtube and play a music video or any source that allows you to observe correct audio sync / timing.

Now, turn off bluetooth & Wifi with the USB cable plugged in, you will notice that the carplay disconnects, and does nothing,

At this point, with the BT & Wifi turned off, unplug the USB cable from the phone and plug it in again. Carplay magically pops up. now i launch the same youtube video: Audio sync issue is eliminated, working as it’s supposed to.

I then kill the youtube video, check that carplay is on, now turn in BT & Wifi. Launch another Youtube video. In this test, there no audio sync issues and everything sounds great.

Conclusion: if you have your phone paired with the LC & Carplay enabled, when you start the car, the head unit immediately looks for the bluetooth device and activate the ‘wireless’ carplay. once the wireless carplay is activated, you cannot switch to wired mode by simply plugging in the cable.

You havd to first kill the original wireless carplay mode, and re-activate the carplay with the usb cable (turn off BT & Wifi). once the wired mode is activated, you can now turn on the wifi & bluetooth if you so choose.

This is a pain in the a$$. Do all cars work like this?

For those wanting to play higher Bitrate, be sure to do this, otherwise, you are streaming via bluetooth / wifi.

I hope this help everyone to better understand what is going on.

One more point: Even If you turn on the car / start the engine with your usb cable connected to the car’s usb port, it will never activate wired if you have the bluetooth & wifi on. I was able to confirm this behavior. The head-unit’s first priority in device connection is ‘wireless’. so if you have your bt / wifi turned on, it would activate wireless carplay mode regardless if you start the car with the cable connected or not.

if you always want wired mode, plug in your phone, turn off the bt / wifi, then start the car. once the carplay pops up, you can now turn on BT & Wifi.

AutoCrazy

asong1,

Thank you for the explanation!

Fester

Wow, you nailed it! Thank you for figuring it out. I just verified it!! I might’ve eventually figured out but you were able to get to it faster. Hats off to you sir

asong1

Mark Levinson on 24 LC 'Convertible' Sounds amazing!! Going to be a long post, but hear me out as this may help you and increase your enjoyment

I had some free time today, and I wanted to get all the settings on my new daily car out of the way. So I took the time to really dig into the Mark Levinson's settings and got it to sound 'almost' perfect for me. I come from a pretty high standard bar if you will, when it comes to the stereos, speakers, etc.., As for the best sound I've heard in a car was in a S Class (Burmeister). It was a panty-dropper. Sounded amazing. As for the non-super-exenesive run of the mill 'premium' system, I hold the Harmond Kardons in my M3 pretty high. Has great sound stage and incredible clarity + punchy mids and bass. I have 2 SUVs. 23 GX (Mark Levinson), and 23 Acura MDX Type-S w/ Advaced trim. In the Acura, it has an amazing 3D sound system (ELS 3D Signature). I believe this is Panasonic brand. Anyhoo, it sounds amazing. Live the simulated 3D, spatial sound staging on any source I throw at it.

Now the LC. I have to say, I was pretty disappointed with the sound. But given that it's convertible, I knew the speaker placement was sacrificed, and the required sound insulation just isn't there. But I thought it sounded 'ok', and nothing to write home about. I decided to play with it a bit more to see if I can better understand and configure it. The end result is that ML on 24 LC 500 sounds amaizng! And the fix is fairly simple after understanding what LC's stock settings are and how they are setup. You have the following settings for Audio:

- Sound Levelizer
- Surround Sound
- Treble
- Mid
- Bass
- L R & Fade (Front and Back).

1. The problem with the default settings is that they are quite different from any other cars I've been into. The universal levels and effects from other cars don't apply here at all. At factory settings, the rear speakers have almost no voluem at all. The treble, mid & bass at 0, are all set to the equiavalent of negative values on other vehicles. So unlike other vehicles where you gradually increase the each levels to your liking, the right thing to do here is that you crank all up to 100% (Treble, Mid & Bass), and tune down to your liking.
2. The second issue is that you have almost no sound coming out from the rear speakers, which means most of the sound is coming from the front top and bottom. Almost nothing from the back. And this sounds really weird. And with this setup, the most volume I can tolerate is approx 40. Any more than that, I can hear the sounds crack as if the front speakers aren't getting enough power (which is likely).
3. With the stock settings, the Surround function is enabled by default. I don't think this 'Surround' function is working, or I have no idea what it's for. All it does is kill the sound in the back, and mute signifcant amount of range in the front speakers. Makes the sound get washed out. I've even tried to play some netflix on my phone, and wasn't convinced that the surround function really did anything here.

So the first thing I did, was to turn off surround. And I was able to immediately hear the overall 'punchines' of sound came back, including the level of bass + it's tightness. I then went to the trebel, mid & bass and cranked them up to 100%. I used the following songs to 'ear-tune' the stereo:

-UB 40 (Red Red Wine) - Great bass & other sound engineering. Allows me to test mid & treble limits + the level of punchiness of bass I want
- Guns & Roses (Paradise City): Allows me to hear the sound staging in a live arena environment
- Georghe Zamfir (The Lonely Shepherd) (Theme from Kill Bill): Mostly treble. Allows me to understand the treble limits until the sound tears.
- Kendrick Lamar (King Kunta): Oveall clarity of mid to bass ranges.
- Chris Botti in Boston (I've Got You Under My Skin): Treble, Mid, drums + live concert sound stage.

I know it's a diverse set of music, but I listening almost eveyrthing... Using these songs for every setting change (it was tedious..), I think I finally have the most optimal for car & sound system setup (mine s a convertible, yours may vary).

1. Go directly to the fade settings, and change the fade to Rear by 1 or 2 notch from neutral. For for me, just 1 notch was perfect. That would be -1.
What this does is, it increase the rear volume just a bit more, while not sacrificing the front too much. It actually improves it since this redues the tear at high volumes, and the bass is more natural since you can now hear the rear speakers more. You will find that the sound staging much better, and the high volume tearing is gone up to 55 - 60 volume level. So I believe this is a must.

2. Disable surround. You will immediately hear the speakers come back to life
3. Crank up the treble, mid & the base all the way up. I know this is counter-intutive. But just give it a try with the aforementioned settings set.

When testing this sitting still, be sure to turn off the level levelizer just to get a reference volume level idea. After you're done with the setup, you can turn this back on, and the sound quaity won't change. With these settings, volume level of 45 - 55 is ideal. Before this, 45 was all I can handle. anything above it, I can hear the tearing.

Now you may have the 'ideal' settings (which should've been the factory default settings), From here, you can turn down the treble, mid bass to your liking. As for me, with all 3 cranked up the max, it gives me a simlar sound as I have on my other cars. They are:

Treble: 90%
Mid: 70%
Bass: +1

Yes, that's where I am getting at. In order to achieve these 'typical' sound settings, I had to crank everything up on the LC.

Play Red Red Wine with these settings, and you'll see / hear what I mean. It sounds amazing. The clarity, and the increase punchiness of the bass. From there play your favorite songs to tune in / out other adjustments. But the key is this: You must fade it back towards the rear 1 or 2 notches. This greatly improves bass at louder volumes and eliminates the audio tear in the front. With these settings, I have found that the ideal range is 45 - 60. Depending on the song, I hover aorund 50-55. Now everything sounds great! Of course, it's not at the level of custom systems, or any of the other reference systems mentioned above, but this darn good to me, and I am very happy with the results.

I know this was a long post, but I wanted to share my experiences and findings. So to summarize. Surround off, fade 1 or 2 notches towards the back, crank up the treble, mid & bass. Finally play your music at the volume of 50 to start. From there, fine tune the treble, mid & bass from there.

Happy New Year!

AutoCrazy

asong1,

I’ve done a lot of google searches seeking ideas to fine tune my vehicle audio systems.
Your suggestions above are amongst the most helpful I’ve found.
Thank you so much for all the effort and time you have given to sharing your findings - I’ll call “teachings” - for the ML system. I will definitely use your “teachings” when I take out my vert in the spring.
I’ve been tweaking the audio system in my daily driver. I’ll use your song and settings suggestions to help me tune my DD.

Really helpful!!!

Thank you for the New Year’s present.

Happy New Year’s to you as well!

fodalo

I'll take it to my local Audio Doctor.

asong1

Very nice of you to say. Enjoy and Happy New Year to you!

Enzo954

I have a coupe and was disappointed with the ML sound system. I followed your instructions and tweaked them to my liking, and it sounds so much better. Great post!

Enzo954

What source are you using for the best quality songs to test the system?

asong1

Just spotify. But I do use the highest available bit-rate. You can go into your spotify settings and turn off the 'data saver' off. Then go to Audio Quality settings and set everything to very high. Also disable 'Auto Adjust Quality'. This makes spotify play at the highest bit-rate possible.

I used to use lossless using FLAC, but it's too troublesome for me to do this on regular basis when spotify 'Very High' settings produce great results (for me)

Barncobob

Interesting.. Im still in the where are the turn signals , lites, heat/a/c.:}}

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

don't know how old your adapters are but several brands now have 'new generation' ones with much faster circuitry and processing. i just got one of those and it works flawlessly (same speed as plugging in my phone).

i just posted a thread about it.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/lc-...rks-great.html

with a good wireless adapter you can do carplay with all features seamlessly.

again, older adapters mostly sucked and many were actually little android devices and slow ones at that. the one i have and several other newer ones, however they do it, are fast with no delays.

i don't see this as a pain in the a$$ - you just need to make up your mind (wired/wirelss) since you car itself does Carplay. seems if you're setup wireless then the port just becomes another charging source which makes sense to me.

the wifi in carplay is plenty fast enough for any audio you want to stream.

i have no issue with this behavior. if you've got wireless, why on earth would you want to use wired EXCEPT to charge?

wired and wireless carplay are the same. it's bluetooth ONLY that's less capable (no display, lower bandwidth). for wireless carplay, bluetooth is only used to make the connecition. presumably the car tells the phone what wifi network credentials to use.

silvernite

Bumping this thread because I cannot express how grateful I am for asong1's post on setting up the Mark Levinson. Every new owner should look at his guide on set-up.
Recently got my settings just right with his guide just tweaking it little with more bass.

2959

Agree, lived with an RX350L (still own) for 4yrs thinking the ML system was a waste (especially comparing it to my other non-ML Lexus vehicles sound). After getting my LC500C, I finally started trying to figure out why the ML system still didn't impress. Following his guidance (and others here), it's finally providing audio satisfaction. I'm a happy camper now, especially after installing the Ottocast U2Airpro for wireless capability (my LC is a 2023).