I have a 2016.5 model s with a base audio system. I installed the missing speakers at every factory location and even added a 10 inch subwoofer in a ported enclosure tuned to 35hz. I have a digital sound processor that can play directly from my phone by bypassing the MCU completely and the bass below 35 Hertz play fantastic on my system however playing anything on the factory MCU causes a sharp rolloff starting at 40hz and going almost completely faint at 35hz. I have read many articles and even came across one person who mentioned that had an aftermarket install by a shop mentioning that the base audio system from Tesla rolls off under 40 Hertz if not included with the UHFS package. Is there any way to replenish the sub frequencies from the Mcu? I have an equalizer on the sound processor and tried boosting the frequencies under 40hz with no luck since boosting something that isn't there is useless. I have thought of maybe asking a remote installer to toggle the Uhfs on my MCU through software but will see if any of them are willing to. Has anyone experienced the same lack of subwoofer frequencies with an aftermarket subwoofer installation with a base audio system? And has anyone installed a subwoofer with uhfs that can confirm subwoofer frequencies under 35 Hertz are still present?
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Base audio frequency rolloff below 35hz
- Thread starter Chito307
- Start date
Seems to me that reasonable base dow to 40 HZ is pretty good. Granted 35 is better but I’d be happy with 40. How steep is the roll off?
beatle
Active Member
You've pretty much answered your own question there. I didn't know the UHFS had a different EQ. If so, and you have a way of enabling it, let us know.
That said, there generally isn't much musical content below 35hz anyway.
Very steep starts rolling down at 40hz and goes almost completely faint at 35hz. A subwoofer port tuned to 35hz-38hz is not uncommon for all types of music. With that said, I do listen to mostly hip hop and there is countless music under 40hz and the difference from the MCU vs directly from the phone is night and day. I would like to use the giant screen in my car as the main source of music as using my phone requires to be connected directly through USB.
35hz is barely even there anything under 40hz is barely present. I will try to investigate with any remote installers of they can enable uhfs.
TeslaTap has information about a subwoofer install on an older Model S on his site in the modifications section. He tends to be pretty detailed in most of his write-ups. I'm not sure if you can learn anything from it. Maybe nothing there you don't already know, but maybe one resource you could review to see if it provides you any hints.
I use a Kicker KEYLOC in my Model S with base audio and it completely equalized the frequency response from 20hz to 20,000hz. I would suggest professional installation from a reputable shop. Keep in mind that the MCU EQ curve is volume-dependent. At low volumes, there's a decent amount of bass, but at higher volumes (7+), the bass will be dramatically cut in order to protect the factory speakers from over-excursion. Therefore, you should calibrate the correction process at a higher volume (9+). Also, the UHFS system still rolls off bass in a similar fashion. The small subwoofer used in any Tesla system cannot faithfully reproduce below 30hz without blowing up, so those frequencies are simply removed. To anyone saying below 40hz isn't important, you have no idea what you're missing out on.
I have a pioneer deq-s1000a dsp and it states to do exactly what the keyloc does and more. The pioneer even has a sample track that needs to be played in order to signal correct and I have done that numerous times. You can play 25hz through a signal generator through bluetooth? 25hz is completely missing from my system unless I bypass the mcu completely. What I have done all day yesterday is put a microphone inside the car to measure pink noise and record a plot diagram of the frequencies and their respective db. I then went to the mcu and put the bass to +8db on the leftmost eq setting which boosts the low frequencies and recorded pink noise again. I then compared the two graphs and equalized the boosted frequencies through the piooner to match the orignal flat eq and can report that it has in fact boosted the lower frequencies now down to 25hz but it's barely even moving the sub. At this point I might look into that kicker dsp that you mentioned. Hopefully that will restore the subwoofer frequencies better than this pioneer.
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