[djhovajk]

can the harmon kardon amp be adjusted? the rear speakers sound terrible and i cannot hear the subwoofer with rear fader on. is this system just for looks on paper, because i know 440 wts with a sub should be alot better.

 

[RocCityOutback]

can the harmon kardon amp be adjusted? the rear speakers sound terrible and i cannot hear the subwoofer with rear fader on. is this system just for looks on paper, because i know 440 wts with a sub should be alot better.

I don't think it can be adjusted. From what I remember, the HK speaker system is the same for both the std and the NAV equipped cars. I know that for the 11 OB (no sure on 12 or 13), the nav equipped cars allowed for additional adjustment of the speaker systems that wasn't available on the std head unit. The rear speakers on mine blow too. As soon as I touch the fader, (no Nav) I lose the rear speakers. They also seem to have a high and low limit cutoff and they only play muddled midrange. I gather this is a holdover from the nav cars and std radio people are out of luck on adjust the fade while maintaining the sub and full range sound. For some reason the only mid and high range speakers in the car are on the dash. The front doors are subs and the rear doors are crippled. This has to do wiht it being a 2 channel system with forward biased sound.

I know there was a bunch of discussion over the years on this issue, here is one long running one:

http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums/104-gen-4-2010-present/22586-440-watt-9-speaker-harman-kardon-premium-audio-sys tem-sound-quality.html


http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums...ardon-premium-audio-system-sound-quality.html

 

[lashlee]

The sub should be fed off the front speaker signal. If you fade to the rear you probably will loose nearly all of the sub. It seems that H/K (and more like Harman Intl.) designed the setup with a "soundstage" where the fronts are fed with more power (either through a non adjustable fade) or more likely a cascaded amp where the fronts are more powerful.

Depending what you really want I would look into an aftermarket option for your problems. The speakers are an easy swap, and the radio can be done without much effort. In my '12 I have an aftermarket H/U feeding all of the OEM equipment and will say that the sub is quite underwhelming. In my other car I have 2 12's with 1800 watts of power that can make all of the right noises when I want them to.