Hi guys. I bought a 01 ls430 for my father. Mint in and out. One owner car.
I was expecting the sound system to be amazing since it’s a ML system but it’s very weak.
I owned a LS460 and 06 GS430 both with ML and they were very good. Even my 98 LS400 stock system was better than this.
Current family car is 13 rx350 and that sounds better as well.
Few older cars I have with Morel speakers and JL amps also sound good.
What am I missing here ? Is the sub dead ?

It will do fine for my father but I’m just left wondering.

Thanks.

 

I listen primarily to classical, and the ML audio system on my LS430 (2005) blew away any home system I have ever had, and I have had decent home systems (NAD receivers, Polk speakers, etc.). The imaging is simply unparalleled, "punch", clarity, etc. and the bass too. I did not know a CD could hold so much information to reproduce music the way has sounded in my LS430.

I say blew away because lately it is not quite as good, was wondering if it is my ears as I have aged or the stereo. The bass is not as defined. I pried off the top of the subwoofer cover and the speaker is surpringly in fine shape and seems to be vibrating OK, but I am not sure it is at full force; perhaps it is slightly damaged from age (I have never clipped the amp massively or anything to damage the speakers). Still a very sweet stereo but if you are finding missing bass that could be it, maybe?. I listen to Strauss waltzes and similar to check out the bass (Empire Waltz for example has some good forte moments with punch in the bass that really exercises the subwoofer). Or maybe the 4th movement of Mahlers' first symphony.

Be sure you have a decent source. XM radio is ultra compressed (if you have that dealer-installed extra, which I do). I test with a really good CD, and I listen to decent FM radio stations and CDs. I still love my system and it is clear and sharp but I find myself pushing up the bass control quite a bit lately. But a couple of years ago there was no question the system was mind-bogglingly good. It is STILL a key reason I don't want to part with my LS430, although PERHAPS there are similar systems out there today. But why risk it :-) ?

 

I find the ML audio to be pretty good, particularly for a 15-year-old car. The audio source definitely matters. CD's sound much, much better than FM, for instance. I did have to replace the blown-out subwoofer, however, shortly after I acquired the car in January of this year. You will definitely hear it if the sub is blown. This is a common issue, and there are fixes documented on this site that involve repairing the sub rather than replacing it. My indy was doing the rear struts anyway, and I wanted to keep it simple, Next up for me audio wise is the USA Spec BT-45 bluetooth adapter, which has received good reviews on this site and reportedly easy to install. If anyone has install tips for that item, I'm all ears. The wood in my car is perfect, and I''d like to keep it that way.

 

imho music does not sound amazing in a car, and often car components are licensing, nothing more. Bose, B&O, HK, even McIntosh (remember Subaru)?

There is a chance the sub needs attention mine started buzzing. I went the RTV route and good ever since.

When Logic 7 was new to BMW in 2006, there were some audiophiles on the forum who did all kinds of testing and then shared the exact settings to optimize what the car had (at the time 13 speakers standard wasn't bad). Interesting too the position at first was not to use any digital enhancement, then it was to use it. I've never seen anything like that here, maybe I missed it, where someone basically treats the car like a sound lab. Then again I don't know that we have equilization etc. with the ML.

 

Thanks guys. Im an AV guy by trade.
Im also running B&W speakers with Adcom amp at home, have bunch of Paradigm, Mission speakers. Got into it finally since we had to stay home a lot lately.

So am pretty sure the Sub is dead. I have to dig into it today and see if it needs refoam or replacement. If i replace it, it will be with

Polk Audio DB 842 DVC. will run it at 8 ohms.

Again, its for my dad , he is 75. I just like things in running order.

Other than that, I amazed how quiet the car is and how it goes over bumps. My LS460 with complete front end overhaul with Lexus parts at the dealer was almost as good. This one is a high mile car. our 13 RX350 feels like a UPS truck in comparison.

 

haha on facebook years ago, a bunch of high school folks reconnected. So I was like David, let me get this straight, you spent over 100k on your stereo at home? He goes, hey, I drive a Camry. My stereo is like your cars....lol

McIntosh is yet another ship that sailed for me and I'm ok with it.

 

Thats funny. My audio setup is a budget one. I always buy used.
Hope to get McIntosh amps ones at least. I bought a Velodyne sub from a retired cop who had Two McIntosh amps with 2 Magnepan speakers. Thats when I realized Im lagging in sound system department. You live once.

 

Well the good news is the subwoofer works. The foam is all but gone.
I guess ill buy a refoam kit and take the woofer out to fix the issue.

 

Years ago like 2004, my buddy and I went to a hifi shop to admire McIntosh....I was thinking let's see, if I get all these components, I'll have a 60w amp and have spent like 15k lol

It's kind of funny, the way our society is focused on numbers to indicate goodness, like 330 HP (ignoring 267 ft. lbs torque), or megapixels, what, it's only 14, that's no good (when 6 MP and a good lense = 8x10 enlargement), it's hard to fathom a used 60W amp costing over 5k, amp only. Reaction may be, 60W? I have 1000w in my car, that's no good! lol To me the sound is warm, and besides, one needs to double amplifier power just to get 3 db

edit decided to google it, very difficult to determine what a 75w/channel amp goes for in 2020, but used it's easily in the $6k range, and now I have no idea how old the item is. These are like Leica cameras, maybe one can afford the body which might be 5-7k, but likely one cannot afford the lenses. My grandfather collected Leica.

 

Its easy to get carried away in Hifi Audio world. Trying to explain to someone why an amp can cost 5k is difficult. Why does Rolex Daytona cost twice more than a Sub?

 

Good HiFi systems don't need lots of power to produce enough volume.
Instead they use efficiently designed speakers and lower power amplification as that reduces distortion.
My home HiFi (Kenwood) is a mid-quality system that puts out 40W per channel and is loud enough to give me headaches, not that I use it at those volumes.
Cheap HiFi systems brag about power, normally quote peak-power ratings rather than RMS, and often have poor sound quality and crap reliability.
My Kenwood home system is nearly 40 years old and it all works perfectly except for the cassette player that just plain wore out, and the Sub that got drowned in a flood.

The ML system sounds good to me, especially when listening to CDs.
If you like lots of bass and rattling the windows, then good for you, but don't expect a Luxury saloon OEM audio system to do that for you.
it's all about quality of reproduction in what is, even in the LS, a noisy environment.

 

I concur, the ML audio system on my Canadian 2002 LS430 is on par with my SVS home theatre system. The ML imaging (from the driver seat), clarity, and quality of the bass is top notch. In 2002, the DSP did not have separate settings for the number of passengers in the car, so only the driver seat has the most optimal tuning, as noted in the Canadian 2002 LS430 brochure: When they talk about volume of cabin space, interior angles, etc., this means that the DSP is calibrated in both time domain and frequency domains using the exact speakers that come with the car. Some home theatre receivers (e.g Denon, Onkyo) emulate this calibration process by supplying a microphone with their receivers and getting you to place this microphone at several positions around the room as it runs a program of projecting sound waves with a specific decay/reflection pattern, which the receiver can then calculate the sound absorption, reflectivity, and volume of your room in order to tune the signal going to your speakers for the flattest frequency response across all frequencies given the dynamics of your room. Due to the particulars of human hearing, a small amount of fine tuning is required after obtaining reference quality audio response, and this is what ML (and other high end audio engineers) specialize in doing. I am sure that all good audio engineers, including the LS430's ML system, first uses speakers and DSP that can actually reproduce reference quality audio (flat frequency response across the entire range of frequencies) given one specific room configuration, tunes to the specific room, and then makes minor adjustments to compensate for the quirks of human hearing.

All of that being said, garbage in = garbage out. Tape, FM, and AM radio are all very low quality by their nature, and a good sound system will highlight such low quality. Streams from satellite/XM/Sirius are often low quality too, especially if you have good speakers and good hearing. If you listen to tape/FM/AM on low-quality speakers/headphones, they don't reproduce sound accurately enough for you to notice how poor the quality is. If your hearing isn't so good, then you won't benefit from a good sound system either.

CD source is good if you have actual retail CDs or you copied retail CDs using a bit-exact mode. Interfacing an iPod to the ML's undocumented MiniDisc setting (using a module like the VAISTech SL2Vi), and loading your iPod with lossless audio (e.g. FLAC files ripped from actual CDs verified with a logfile, converted to ALAC using ffmpeg.exe -vn -i "<SourceFileName>" -acodec alac "<OutputFileName>.m4a"), will give you audio quality that is empircally verifiable to exactly match the original source (running ffmpeg's -f hash function on both files will show identical hashcodes of the decoded audio if you converted the FLAC properly). You can even find 24-bit 96kHz FLAC files out there, which exceed CD quality (16-bit 44.1kHz), but an iPod maxes out at 48kHz so you'd have to specify -ar 48000 in ffmpeg. Some high quality YouTube sources are higher quality than CD, at 48kHz sample rate, and can be transcoded to ALAC with the frequency as-is.

Replacing the original door speakers, tweeters, sub, or amp with aftermarket, or having even one original speaker out of spec (e.g. torn surround, water-damaged cone) will trash the calibration. If you aren't accustomed to listening to accurate audio, hearing accurate audio may sound strange to you until you get used to it, after which you'll appreciate the clarity and balance and wonder how you listened to such inaccurate audio before.

 

It's an easy install. This video shows you exactly what to do.
https://gromaudio.com/installs/lexus...-grom-usb.html

 

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-...t-removal.html

 

Check all the speakers for surround rot. My '01 had a rotted replacement sub and all door speaker surrounds were gone as well.

I replaced the sub with a Dayton 16ohm sub, works great. I've also replaced the front door speakers with 6.5" Silver Flute wool coned speakers, available in 8ohm and they pair really well with the rest of the system. I have a pair and passive (bandpass) crossovers for the rear, but haven't installed yet.

Fwiw, coming from someone with a 3-way active front stage in my Tundra. The LS is my wife's and she could care less about audio quality. But it's our road trip car and I want it sounding good.