Flat Sound/Weak Bass New Sony Head Unit

[ThePianoman]

I searched this because I thought this would be a common problem but didn't see anything.

My CD43 broke on me the other day and I had to go get a new stereo for my car, currently running the completely stock HK system. I bought a Sony mex-4100bt from walmart and installed it myself using a wiring harness adapter and antenna adapter I got from best buy. Everything works great except the sound quality is much worse. It is very flat and has like no bass. I'm not even sure if the sub woofer is working at all and I don't hear much bass coming from the kick panel speakers either. I use The Veldt by Deadmau5 when I test any new sound equipment just so I have a consistent reference and it was really sad. It sounded much much better on the CD43. Any help with this?

Thanks

[Pelican Parts]

It may have to do with the quality of the head-unit and your amp's power output. Do you know the overall wattage that you're running and what the unit requires?


-Dmitry

[DennisCooper]

Hi,

You need to double check the wiring you've done so far, then tripe check that double check. None of us know what OEM audio your car came with so it's hard to give you the exact reason for your lack of bass. You'll need to start from the basics and the first thing I think of is if you've got the polarity on the speakers incorrect. Swap one speaker's connections over and retry.

If you still have a lack of bass, how've you connected up the Sony to the OEM amp? I ask as the oem amplifier doesn't have any direct inputs. As your car has a oem subwoofer unit, how did you connect it given the oem amp doesn't have direct inputs to the Sony? The OEM speakers in an E36 I 'think' are dedicated to the oem audio system and there's a mid bass unit and a tweeter, again, how are they currently recieving a signal? if direct from the Sony, then you'll not get good sound quality as the impedences are different.

Trying to make aftermarket audio work with oem audio has technical difficulties that are harder and costlier to overcome. If you *must* keep the oem amp and speakers, you'll need to research through E36 threads to see how other's have done it and then do the same to your car. All that effort, faffing around, time waste and most likely increased monetary costs with the resulting mediocre audio performance makes for a low value for money ratio. I'd suggest that you remove the oem amp and speakers, and use a quality aftermarket amplifier and upgraded speakers that'll be an absolute doddle to install and will give you significantly improved audio quality and performance. If/.when you sell the car, remove it all and slot back the oem audio.

Lastly, I semi regularly listen to DeadMau5 myself and on my setup, I get incredible sound quality overall. The bass and sub bass performance is fantastic - smooth, controlled, musical, full bodied, tight and accurate. It's the same with my mid bass/mid-range and treble as well. I don't use any OEM audio at all. One of my Deadmau5 reference tracks is 'Alone With You' - it's melodic and smooth sounding with a nice underlying sub bass rhythm and on longer drives it's often chosen in amongst similar tracks

Cheers, Dennis!