jefmedia

ML Survey

Title says it all. I am trying to figure out if I am the only one not happy with the new system. I have had 3 other LS's with Mark Levinson systems that I thought were excellent. This new one, I am really not happy with at all. Is it something specific to my car? I don't know, but I want to find out.
Thanks to all that respond, and totally understand if you don't want to.

Jeff

vantage78

jefmedia

Vantage78, I agree with you on the low end sound, if the music has it, you will hear it. I have some complaints about the mid range, I have heard others with the same complaint and I am trying to isolate it to different options on the car. That being said, do you have the HUD system on your car?

vantage78

jefmedia

Well actually any song with vocals. An example at it's worst, Hello, by Adelle, Seal, Crazy, there are so many more. Adelle sounds so bad it hurts my ears. I am thinking the distorted sound is coming from the speaker cluster that is right in front of the driver, i.e. where the HUD unit is located. I guess I need to go to a dealer with my trusty FLAC USB, and try it out in cars with and without the HUD. Of course I may be way off. In an other thread, another HUD car owner had the opinion that his mid range sounded "off" as well, so I am trying to isolate it with the survey.

vantage78

jefmedia

If my wife is not with me, I will listen pretty loud, on the open road 40 or slightly above. Normal driving around town 25-30. If my wife is with me 20-25, she has very sensitive ears, or so she tells me. I have gotten in the car after she has driven it and she left it up pretty loud, so maybe she doesn't like my music. Oh well, 30 years I should have learned what she likes. LOL

vantage78

jefmedia

Actually to me it sounds fuller at the louder levels. It doesn't really distort at any level.

jefmedia

I say it doesn't distort, other than the mid range, I guess it is hard to quantify. Maybe distortion is not the right word. It sounds abrasive, raspy, I guess that could be distortion.

vantage78

nsaldanh

So here are some of my observations:

1. I tend to listen at low levels with bass and treble boosted and mid range cut. At low levels you generally have to boost bass and treble -- similar to what loudness controls did years ago.
2. If you do raise the volume to about 40 then it all seems balanced as far as bass and treble go -- with mids still on the high side. Mids sound quite harsh.
3. I mainly listen to Tidal Masters - on a LG V30 connected via bluetooth. USB doesn't work on Android and I've never gotten it to work on multiple versions of Android on multiple LS 460s - 2012, 2014, 2017 and now 2018 LS500. Tidal works via USB on an iPhone (but MQA is not available on IOS)
4. My 2008 LS 460 had rich sound - good tight bass, and good crystal clear highs. I recently saw a 2008 LS460 at the dealership and that sounded much better than my LS500. Both had ML.
5. I have a Dirac live system at home and if I boost the mids between 1 - 4 Khz I get similar sound to what the ML in the car sounds like. As such I suspect they have really boosted that frequency range.
6. Mckellyb on the 4 LS forum (he has a 2012 LWB) has an external player where he can tweak frequency response and he is able to get rich sound. I can't get any of my android devices to output sound via the equalizer, android just bypasses it. I guess if we were to equalize the signal prior to feeding it to the ML we might be able to get better sound.

Some years ago I complained to Lexus about the terrible sound quality of the 2012 with ML. They sent out one of their factory experts. I was able to demonstrate to him that there was virtually no bass and that the sound system did not play anything below 80 Hz via bluetooth, DVD- Audio or CD. The same music from the same source sounded good on a 2008 that they had in the shop at that time. All I got from Lexus was "It works as designed"

LexRuger

When I first bought my LS, I thought it was terrible. The bass bottomed out at high volumes. After several hours of driving I guess the speakers loosened up. Now it's acceptable. I believe I have the mid and treble at -1 and bass at +2. I found that turning the mid and treble down slightly makes the low end stand out a bit more without me having to turn the bass up too far that it bottoms out at high volumes. Besides that, I still feel like the system eq's out the bass at high volumes, probably to avoid blowing the speakers. For 2400 watts, probably more like 1000 rms, I should be able to blast the music without hearing the system lose power. Also, like someone else said. The mid range sounds weird, like some kind of boost or effect. Doesn't hurt my ears though.

At this point I'm still a tiny bit underwhelmed. From the reviews, amount of speakers, and specs on the ML, I still expect more.

jefmedia

It's very good, but for me still a little raspy, beautiful voice though.

LexRuger: do you have the HUD system in your car? Not saying that is the cause of my hearing issues but vantage78 does not and nsaldanh does, soooo maybe a connection?
nsaldanh: I should be getting close to the same quality as you do with Tidal Masters playing back FLAC files of direct from CD. Granted most of those are not the original master quality, however they should be good enough for testing purposes.I will try your settings, do you have 3d and 2d off, and sound leveler off too? Curious, do you download to your phone then play or do you stream them? If you stream them I am guessing you have an unlimited data plan. I used 135GB of my phone memory putting just about all of my FLAC collection on my phone, not small files. Since Tidal also uses FLAC I am guessing size would be comparable, large.
It seems only a few of us are interested in this topic so I must assume others aren't having any issues or just don't listen as critically as we do. Hell when I am in my car I feel like it is my little concert hall. Good music with great sound can really make a trip a lot more tolerable, even enjoyable.

Jeff

LexRuger

Yes I have HUD