Its not you, it is the system. There is a very long thread about the poor sound quality in the PS2. I am an audiophile and am not happy at all with it.

 

I wouldn't admit to being an audiophile to us headphone engineers. lol.

 

I have these settings on mine. It does seem they tweak things a bit each software update so I spend a session reconfiguring things each time to my liking. Also check the source - Spotify likes to reset things with app updates so it goes to “automatic” instead of “very high” bit quality.

 

I have these settings on mine. It does seem they tweak things a bit each software update so I spend a session reconfiguring things each time to my liking. Also check the source - Spotify likes to reset things with app updates so it goes to “automatic” instead of “very high” bit quality.

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How do you have the other two screens set? Speaker config and surround.

 

Surround off for sure

I default focus to all because in driver focused it’s a bit too quiet for my kids. And in driver it’s like the front main speaker is working over time. I go back and forth whether I prefer driver or all.

also. i need the volume at 40% or more to really have everything come through. Gets a bit painful for me higher than 60% though at that level it does contribute to sessions of spirited driving…

 

Surround off for sure

I default focus to all because in driver focused it’s a bit too quiet for my kids. And in driver it’s like the front main speaker is working over time. I go back and forth whether I prefer driver or all.

also. i need the volume at 40% or more to really have everything come through. Gets a bit painful for me higher than 60% though at that level it does contribute to sessions of spirited driving…

I hope that some day I will find a setting that is satisfactory for me. I am a long time Mercedes owner (This is my first non-Mercedes in 15 cars) and I have owned 3 recording studios. So music was always playing in my cars. I have found myself having nothing playing more often than not in the PS2. I am quite sad about that.

Ironically I had a friend that sold Maserati's and he told me that I would not like them because they had crappy radios. He knew me well. So I passed on getting one without even driving one.

 

That equalizer setting is the one that's been shared before, but there's pretty clearly been some fundamental difference in HK systems in the PS2, because that setting emphasizes high frequencies and in my car makes EVERYTHING sound like a gramophone. (I'm being hyperbolic, but point being it really makes for an unlistenable soundstage in my car.)

Vocals are in the 80-300 range, so if you're not hearing those cleanly and clearly, these settings probably won't help with that, but will actually exacerbate it.

I use the more traditional "soft-U" that you'll find recommended for most equalizers and is the most common on the Volvo side for both HK and B&W systems.

 

From a positioning (balance and fader) standpoint I like this setting the best. It is amazing that the front speaker is still very active. The bummer about this setting is that the front subwoofer gets turned off.

My hearing is still very good so I am happy with the highs. Here is my EQ setting.

 

I like this setting the best.

You're another of the handful of folks which have what can only be described as a 'different' HK system to everyone else. When I say a handful, I really do mean a handful, half a dozen or so people report that their systems have almost no low frequency response and end up doing crazy stuff like that to get it sound even close to acceptable.

Those settings are -totally- unusable in almost everyone's cars. I can't even begin to describe how utterly awful that sounds, and this is nothing to do with personal taste, audiophilia, golden ears or any other nonsense - it's just horrific.

If I get time later, I'll run a sweep with a calibrated mic and show you what your settings produce in my car.

There is a very long thread about the poor sound quality in the PS2. I am an audiophile and am not happy at all with it.

Just to be clear, there's a very long thread where a small subset of people complain about poor sound quality in the PS2. I think your car is broken... The difficulty is that unless you can get yourself an A-B test with a known good car, there's no way of proving this.

With some gentle tweaks, the PS2 system (in my car at least) is superb - crystal clear with perfect imaging and bass that goes plenty low enough without anything rattling or distorting.

 

will definitely play around with these alternative settings. I've tried rear-focused under I think a similar idea, but I think the system is front-biased so much (like the driving I guess!) that it doesn't sound satisfactory at all to me.

Else, I can only chalk up to folks' different experiences here as preference based. I'm not a card carrying Audiophile but def have a preference for different sound systems and those eq settings are good for me. When I've increasing the low frequencies like those settings, it gets to be way too boomy for me. But I also tend to listen to heavier bass music that maybe is already amped up with those frequencies at baseline? Or, it's just Polestar's system is bass-biased, matching my baseline preference.
I could also believe that Spotify applies its own filter for different tracks depending on some metadata. Wolfmother, Beck, and White Stripes come through very differently compared to each other in Spotify (car or laptop app), but the same tracks played through YouTube Music on my laptop sound more equivalently mixed.

edit: also, @jmorris644 sorry you seem to be TCAMed right now - what software version are you on? I def saw an improvement in sound after 1.9-2.0

 

I have not tried any streaming apps yet. So far I have solely used lossless audio through bluetooth. Maybe when they re-enable the USB connections I will try that too. I am hoping better bandwidth than bluetooth. But I am fearful that the source quality and/or bandwidth is not the issue.

re: TCAM, I am good now. My car got delivered with 2.0. I had to do a dual-battery reset. So no issues since.

 

Best test for me is FLAC from USB with Audiowagon...unfortunately broken with 2.0 - hopefully only temporarily. My EQ is somewhat similar to @polerad, but a few DB lower on the EQ sliders and a bit higher on the sub. Definitely All and no surround - the surround on makes it sound like unmitigated crap to me.

 

It's a faff because there's no line input to do the sweeps... Makes it -much- harder than it needs to be.

 

LOL, I had to look up what 'faff' meant.

 

It took a while but I found the Add timing ref. I had to also select "measurement" option.

I will get to this this weekend and report back.

 

Ok, I did some measurements. Fair warning, I am not all that proficient at reading REW graphs. I usually post them to an audiophile site and let the masters interpret them for me. But I will give it my best and please chime in. Warning, I may have to split this post into a few sequential posts. I am not sure how long each post can be. For every measurement I used the same sweep file and the same calibrated UMIK-1 microphone. I help the microphone across my right ear back to front so the end of the microphone was just in front of my nose . I was sitting in the drivers seat for all of the measurements. Surround was off and the seating sound experience was set to "all" for all of these measurements.

Here is the first SPL graph. This graph shows tone neutral and EQ off. This actually looks pretty good.

This graph is a little interesting. I thought to compare the above graph with the EQ turn ON but all settings neutral. You can see slight differences as the frequencies increase.

So I decided to look at 150Hz as there was a 10-15 db drop. I pushed 150 to 100% with the EQ and left all of the other settings the same. At 100% boost, 150Hz increased by about 3db. Here is that comparison.

I then, for the heck of it, pushed 74, 150, and 300 Hz up 100%. As expected it pushed frequencies form about 60-400Hz by 3db. Here is that graph.

Now, here is my personal settings as compared to the neutral graph. As I guessed, I was pushing all lower frequencies by about 10db.

Personally I am not a big bass guy. I run Magnaplanars for my home speakers and they are definitely not big booming speakers. The lack of fader control aside, I was puzzled as to why I wanted to push the low end so much. I think that maybe this next graph may show it. This graph combines the neutral graph with phase. I am just learning how to read the phase graphs but it looks to me as if quite a bit of the low end is 180 degrees out of phase. A thought: If the rear sub woofer is out of phase by 180 degrees with the front sub woofer then they would cancel each other out. This is just a guess as I do more research. I am surprised by the large ranges that are either 180 or -180 our of phase in the low ends.

As I mentioned, I am new to interpreting all of these graphs. So any insight is welcome.

 

Wow, that out of phase thing might be something to it - wonder if one of the air subs is wired backwards...

 

I wonder if something like that could explain the vastly different experiences some of us have?

 

Isn’t it just an equalizer in J or a V setting depending on if you like bass or treble? Not an audio file - but isn’t that kinda it?

 

I do not know what J or V setting is?

 

This is a very interesting writeup about the difficulty with car audio. I am going to reach out to the author and see if I can get their opinion on my graphs, but what I found interesting is the point made in the Midbass - low mids section

"Clean timing and phase relations between the speakers are necessary against acoustic cancellations. "

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I just realized that I unintentionally stole your thread. My humble apologies. I am going to create a new thread to continue the measurement discussions. Sorry....

 

lower all the eq bands to zero and raise them one by one. guitar and vocals are around 1k so start with that.

Gyazo

gyazo.com

 

lower all the eq bands to zero and raise them one by one. guitar and vocals are around 1k so start with that.

That is the way to do it if you are lucky enough to have got an equalizer with proper response (+/- 10dB or so) rather the one in my car where the response is hard to detect; +/- 1 to 3 dB.

(I had Polestar Service checking it and downloading newest SW on the audio system, but no errors were found and EQ response is still the same).

 

I recommend removing frequencies that are the loudest first. It's always best to remove eq and not boost if possible. Boosting too much can cause distortion in later gain stages.

 

To get back to the original post; @cbc02009 I too listen mostly to hardrock and metal. Been fiddling about with the settings alot to try to get the best out of the system. I've ended up with a typical V-shaped EQ with the trebles very high. This is probably personal preference but I like my treble high to get the most out of the drumkit and distorted guitars (besides I was a metal drummer for 15 years - too cool to wear earplugs, so I probably messed up my hearing somewhat, hehe). I take the middles down abit as the speakers of the P2 deliver very much mid-tones, which does not work to well with metal music. I'm still undecided with the bass setting, it varies from recording to recording. Also when driving you need more bass, as the roadnoise cancels much of it out.
The most important setting for me is: Set the focus to DRIVER instead of ALL. I find that works much better for rock/metal music as I find it gives better stereo reproduction and is much punchier than the ALL-setting. ALL sounds like playing music through a dolby surround system.
And of course, surround is set to OFF.

This is of course very subjective, but I find it works for me. Do this and blast Periphery's 'Reptile' on 70% volume and headbang your way to work! 🤘😆🤘

 

My daughter attends a dance class with a hopelessly inconsiderate teacher that has no respect for parent’s time. Don’t ask, there are no viable options. As a result I get to spend hours and hours waiting in my car. One of my recent projects was to spend about an hour and a half fiddling with the EQ setting. I brought no preconceptions into the process and just went with what sounded best. I mainly listen to rockish music, not too heavy. Dire Straits, Springsteen, Dylan, Kings of Leon, that sort of stuff. Anyway, these are the settings I like the best. Focus set to Driver, Surround off. Hopefully this might help someone out there.

 

After replacing all the speakers on the base system and adding a real subwoofer on the back. I use the app audiotool (android is better than iOS) and a calibrated microphone from Dayton audio following the link below and I’m happy with the results. I recommend it to all.