If you guys read the pages before this you will see that the 3-band EQ that is in the HK system is actually more functional the the 7-band EQ in the premium model. When I turn the "bass" settings all the way down on the 7-band there is still enough boom to shake my mirrors. I enjoy having a dedicated subwoofer in my cars, but there is no way I would add more bass to this system as it is. I'd like to add an aftermarket EQ actually.

 

I'm with you. I can't get the bass out of this thing (2.5i premium) no matter what I do. The EQ range seems impossibly narrow. I take any frequency range and adjust from min to max and back again with little discernible sound change. Junk.

 

The ROCK setting gets too much bass sometimes.

 

I have the premium model with the 7 band. I mostly listen to rock/metal/punk. The rock setting is garbage and the bass feels like it will blow out my speakers. Does anyone have any settings I could but I never had an equalizer before. Thanks,

 

The left side of the EQ is bass, the right is treble, the middle is mids. Play with it one day going to extremes and see where you like it.

 

I have to say I'm not so pleased with the sound in the limited at all. Does anyone know if under that fancy setup there is just a double din head unit that can be replaced? If so I'm getting a CarPlay compatible one asap.

 

Anyone know how to get into the hidden menus?

I have the Canadian 25i basic 2015 Outback, and my stereo (6.2-inch-diagonal screen, two control knobs up top) is also way too boomy. The EQ doesn't cut it back enough.

Perhaps there's a loudness function at work, even though "loudness" is not shown in the menus.

This stereo is clearly a Clarion model tweaked for this new vehicle. In previous models, which also had Clarion stereos, pressing a combination of preset buttons brought up hidden menus, including one that turned loudness on and off. But my stereo has no such buttons.

So that's my question: does anyone know how to access the hidden menus on this stereo? Might solve the too-much-bass problem for a lot of us.

 

fnlyfnd (or anyone else):

Did you ever find a solution to the bass problem. I have the same problem with a 2015 2.5i Premium and I'm tired of driving around in a "boom car". Adjusting the EQ will take out some of the bass but the resulting overall sound quality is terrible. Will new speakers help? Replace the entire system?

Please let me (and all others) know if someone has found a solution.

http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums/10201-fnlyfnd.html

 

I have replaced my four door speakers (I have no dash speakers installed) with fairly nice JBL speakers and while the sound is undoubtedly cleaner the "bass problem" still exists. In fact, my front door speakers are now 6X9 instead of the 6 inch stock. The 6X9 can easily produce more bass, so in a way the "bass problem" is even worse now (although the sound is clean now, not muddy). I am definitely not a fan of rap; sometimes my non-rap songs result in that crazy deep booming vibration that overwhelms the senses.

The Premium's stock "equalizer" can be used to "reduce" the amount of bass, but at the lower frequencies the adjustment ranges from "lots of bass" to "ridiculous amounts of bass."

In my past experience, reducing the bass to full minimum on an equalizer would cut the bass out, ideally to zero. This is not the behavior of the EQ in the Premium's Fujitsu system.

Certain songs sound good. Others have insanely high bass levels, even on songs that do not exhibit this when played at home or in another car. I set one of the custom EQ buttons to kill the first two frequencies entirely and this is useful for some songs, but if the song has someone playing a bass guitar at a normal level, be prepared for awful levels of bass. There is apparently no way to get rid of it. I simply do not understand how the development team ended up with this system configuration. My only guess is that they did not fully put it through it's paces or perhaps they tested it with songs containing very little base (for which the system might sound quite good).

I am considering installing an aftermarket Alpine amp after the HU but I am concerned that the excessive bass is hard wired into the audio processing and that this will simply be passed to the Alpine amp and the problem will remain. I could try taking advantage of the Alpine amp's high-pass filter to cut out some of the insane bass but this is not the intended role of these filters in the absence of a dedicated sub-woofer.

I am not certain if the problem can be addressed in Fujitsu's firmware or not. It may be that the bass problem falls out of the circuit design and that the bass reduction provided by the EQ is at the edge of it's adjustment range.

Or perhaps a firmware update could fix it. If the Limited's more "limited" adjustment options (bass-mid-treble) successfully kills the bass down to a normal level then I suppose there is some hope. The two units (Premium and Limited) have much in common. The head units share a wire pin-out diagram (posted on another thread) and appear essentially the same. On the HK system the head unit feeds a separate HK amp with the front channel outputs only, while the Premium's takes advantage of an internal four-channel (lower powered) amp.

My suspicion is that if the firmware made it to production when scrutiny is high, then it's importance to Fujitsu will diminish going forward in time. Subaru would have more clout with Fujitsu than individual users, but I am not sure Subaru really cares. When I made comments to my dealer about the poor sounding audio system, I basically received a blank stare and a shrug.

If anyone adds an aftermarket amp (such as the KTP-445U) to the Premium system then I would be very interested if the bass problem is mitigated.

 

I have replaced my four door speakers (I have no dash speakers installed) with fairly nice JBL speakers and while the sound is undoubtedly cleaner the "bass problem" still exists. In fact, my front door speakers are now 6X9 instead of the 6 inch stock. The 6X9 can easily produce more bass, so in a way the "bass problem" is even worse now (although the sound is clean now, not muddy). I am definitely not a fan of rap; sometimes my non-rap songs result in that crazy deep booming vibration that overwhelms the senses.

atlld- I have found the same thing. After replacing all speakers with Polk including the 6X9 in the fronts, the sound is definitely better with cleaner mid and highs. The bass while cleaner still has that resonating boom on certain songs which the EQ does nothing to reduce. Could it be the door cavities? Or something built into the head unit? I'm waiting for someone to replace the HU with an aftermarket and reporting back on this forum.

It's the resonant frequency of the wagon itself. I've had this same phenomenon on every wagon/hatchback I've owned.

 

atlld- I have found the same thing. After replacing all speakers with Polk including the 6X9 in the fronts, the sound is definitely better with cleaner mid and highs. The bass while cleaner still has that resonating boom on certain songs which the EQ does nothing to reduce. Could it be the door cavities? Or something built into the head unit? I'm waiting for someone to replace the HU with an aftermarket and reporting back on this forum.

 

I will be doing a major upgrade to my 2015 OB 2.5i Premium.

Installing Focal K2 Power 165 KRX2 component speakers, Audison Bit One Digital Signal Processor (with 31 band EQ), JL Audio HD900/5 amplifier and a JL Audio 10TW3 D4 10" Subwoofer in a custom box built into the spare tire well.

I am hoping the Audioson DSP will allow proper time alignment and EQ so my sound is well balanced. It remains to be seen if any Low end EQ is baked-into the Factory Infotainment Head Unit.

Install is probably a couple weeks away. (I will also be using copious amounts of sound deading inside the front doors and sealing them as best I can)

 

In my 3.6 Limited with nav/HK, the bass setting has only minor effect. It sounds like the sub bass is unchangeable but the mid bass can be changed slightly. This greatly reduces the utility of the bass control as lowering it still leaves the sub loud and then its out of linearity. What you get is a hole in the bass,not an even bass reduction.
I have noticed that the dash speakers cannot handle the bass and mud out badly even at modest volumes. Moving the fader to a more rearward direction unloads the dash and it sounds much better.
I did not like the over predominance of the center dash speaker either. It was easy to pop it out and solder in an Lpad and tweak it down some. I used an 8 ohm/15w and it gets only slightly warm.
Does anyone know if this "green system" is in fact an 8 ohm impedance system? The HK web site talks about reduction in current-which might mean that its more voltage (like pro audio) and may have a higher ohm rating-which would mean after market speakers may be difficult to impossible

 

After reading this thread, I played with EQ1 settings in my 2015 OB Premium 2.5i. Maybe I'm not as sensitive as you guys, but I was able to drop the bass significantly using the EQ at 63hz and 125z *Whatever the second EQ band is (?), ..the low bass sonic difference was not as dramatic or as noticeable as dropping the 63hz EQ band.

FWIW, I am a professional bass player, so while I like bass, I prefer 'accurate/tight bass' and I have very good ears with regard to low frequency ranges.

I tried both HD Radio and XM. Did not switch to a CD source or iPod.

Just figured it was worth reporting a different point of view. The 7 Band EQ does seem to work, at least in the Adjustable EQ1 or EQ2 settings. I did not try changing the EQ in the preset modes (rock, jazz etc).

 

If by significant you mean measurable, then yes the equalizer does make a measurable and significant difference, I agree. Some songs sound great. But try playing some tracks from, for example, TLC's Fan Mail, or even the new Madonna album. (Any pop album really with any bass track). I am telling you that with certain songs that sound fine in your house, the bass is excessive and impossible to reduce sufficiently to enjoy the song. People in adjacent cars look over because of the bass. Yikes. Some songs do sound great though. But there are so many postings about the bass problem that it isn't people's imagination.

 

So does anyone believe the 192watt spec? With 6 speakers that equals out to 32 watts per speaker. The dash tweeters are stamped with a 13 watt rating and re doors have 20 watt ratings. What gives?

 

If the amp is 192 watts the only way you could deliver that much power to the speakers is to have the volume so loud its completely distorted. You need overhead on the amp for the peaks in the sound. 32 watts/speaker sounds modest, but usable.

 

New user, not a techie, and I tried to read the previous comments. Maybe I need to start a new thread?

I recently purchased a 2015 Subaru Outback 2.5 Limited with the Navigation package and 12-15 speaker HK audio system. I am very disappointed in the audio sound and wondering if it was installed correctly or has a defect. There are no adjustment setting for the side panel large speakers and I have had to push front rear adjustment to almost max rear position to get audio away from the center dash speaker. Is there any option to adjust the speaker array sound internally with professional software?

My audio systems in my 1998 Sebring and my 2001 Subaru Outback both offer way superior sound? This makes no sense to me and I'm wondering how I can tell if my audio is defective or set wrong. I would say that 80-90 % of the Audi seems to come from the center dash speaker which gives the system an AM radio feel. I don't have the bass issue referred to a lot in this thread but maybe because I don't have the equalizer bass settings high.

If the above is not correct what do I do? Go to a Subaru service facility?

 

HK website

I found this on the HK website:
Sites-HK-US-Site

Scroll down to the end of the page and it shows a picture of the car and where all the speakers are and what types they are. It explains a lot as to why people in this thread are saying their front door speakers sound muddy... they only have "midwoofers" no tweeters. The only tweeters in the whole car are the two L/R dash, and coaxial on the rear door speakers. front door speakers are the same exact speaker as the "subwoofer" in the rear cargo area.

"Two 80mm midrange speakers combined with 16mm tweeters are integrated into the dashboard, together with an 80mm high-efficiency wide dispersion midrange speaker. The front doors are home to two high-efficiency midwoofers, while the rear doors house massive coax 170 mm high-efficiency midwoofers with integrated 25mm woofers. Another high-efficiency midwoofer in the side panel behind the rear seat rounds off the impressive setup."

 

I found this on the HK website:
Sites-HK-US-Site

Scroll down to the end of the page and it shows a picture of the car and where all the speakers are and what types they are. It explains a lot as to why people in this thread are saying their front door speakers sound muddy... they only have "midwoofers" no tweeters. The only tweeters in the whole car are the two L/R dash, and coaxial on the rear door speakers. front door speakers are the same exact speaker as the "subwoofer" in the rear cargo area.

"Two 80mm midrange speakers combined with 16mm tweeters are integrated into the dashboard, together with an 80mm high-efficiency wide dispersion midrange speaker. The front doors are home to two high-efficiency midwoofers, while the rear doors house massive coax 170 mm high-efficiency midwoofers with integrated 25mm woofers. Another high-efficiency midwoofer in the side panel behind the rear seat rounds off the impressive setup."

Interesting. I removed my stock speakers. The magnets looked like quarters and the speakers weighed a few ounces. The cones were made of heavy paper. Impressive setup indeed: it's impressive they were able to get fairly good sound out of them, I'll give them props for that.

 

Following up... The bass on this system is, well, awful. For example, a song with heavy bass ends up playing with "ridiculous" amounts of bass that is painful to hear, even if the first 3 freq settings are pulled to minimum. It's just crap.

I have wondered if this was done by design because the cheap paper speakers that come with the Premium need to be over-driven at low freqs. (Although, before I threw them in the trash I thought they had too much muddy bass too).

With my new JBLs in the doors, the mids and highs are fantastic but the bass is absurd.

Doing some research on the head unit has led me to believe that there are no line level outputs present that could be sent to a high quality amp. There are of course amps that can handle amplified output, but with all the bass in the amplified signal it doesn't seem logical to send it to a second amp.

So I'm thinking my long term options are to install new hardware to reduce the bass (e.g. an amp with a high pass filter, an active equalizer, etc.), or to replace the whole head unit. Head unit replacement would be the holy grail but I'd like to keep all the car info functionality plus the nice clean appearance.

 

I was always planning on adding an amp and bypassing the factory, in the hope that it would give the bass cut offs that are needed. Never got around to it though

 

Sounds like a BS thread to me...

 

You probably know by now the audio system has no EQ setting. Only bass, mid, treble balance and fade. The manual references another car or something. The best audio system they offer has no more software control than a $ 30.00 head unit. I found that to be really, really disappointing.

 

So you prefer a $35.00 unit? The system is completely controlled by chips that was specifically designed around the Subaru cabin. Most of the ney sayers have no idea what an exceptional audio system should sound like.

http://www.harmankardon.com/content?ContentID=subaru-legacy

 

So you prefer a $35.00 unit? The system is completely controlled by chips that was specifically designed around the Subaru cabin. Most of the ney sayers have no idea what an exceptional audio system should sound like.

Maybe, maybe not.. but we certainly know that Subaru didn't provide one

 

No the limited does not have the equalizer, but the premium does. The system is supposed to change the sound according to the cabin noise.

 

My 2016 3.6R Limited is the same. I also don't have bass boast.