No base on premium sound studio package

[ProjectMM]

I'm wondering if this is normal, all the dealer did is turn up the base to 12+ and it sounded like **** when I got it back. This is supposed to have a sub somewhere right. and 12 speakers through out the cabin.
Let me know so when I send the car back I can have them address this again along with other issues that were not fixed or addressed.

 

[texex91]

I'm wondering if this is normal, all the dealer did is turn up the base to 12+ and it sounded like **** when I got it back. This is supposed to have a sub somewhere right. and 12 speakers through out the cabin.
Let me know so when I send the car back I can have them address this again along with other issues that were not fixed or addressed.

The bass should only be around 7 (of 12) and treble about 3-4. Very different than most cars where I would turn bass and treble almost all the way up.

The stock sound system is not great to begin with, but adjusting the settings correctly help tremendously.

 

[jerry33]

I set mine at +2 -4 0 (B M T) and am very pleased with the sound. I think a lot of the "problem" with the sound system is that many folks use Slacker. Rip your CDs to FLAC (lossless) copy them to a thumb drive and enjoy. Now I don't say it's as good as the $5K+ Reus sound system, which I've never heard, but I'm really enjoying it. I have what used to be called the Sound Studio.

 

[patn]

Try turning off Dolby...

I'm wondering if this is normal, all the dealer did is turn up the base to 12+ and it sounded like **** when I got it back. This is supposed to have a sub somewhere right. and 12 speakers through out the cabin.
Let me know so when I send the car back I can have them address this again along with other issues that were not fixed or addressed.

Try turning *off* Dolby Sound. I was super disappointed in the stereo until I did that. Once I did that I bumped the bass +2 and the treble -1 and I've been happy with it ever since.


Pat

 

[ocstig]

I've seen a couple of cars with the factory SS woofer amp fuse blown. The fuse is not in a user serviceable location. It is located under the cowl trim next to the 12v battery. The actual woofer can be touched if you reach under from the lower storage area in the rear of the car on the right side. (to see if it's even moving)

 

[Gizmotoy]

The UHFS S I got in sounded extremely front-heavy when balance and fade were set to zero. I pulled it way towards the back, then spiked the bass and treble (leaving mids at zero), and it sounded pretty good. There's some recommended settings around here somewhere that I used as a guide for the test car, but that was the general idea.

 

[jerry33]

The UHFS S I got in sounded extremely front-heavy when balance and fade were set to zero.

Right. That makes it sound like a concert hall. I've never been to a concert where the bass player or drummer was in back of me. And mine has plenty of bass.

 

[Gizmotoy]

Right. That makes it sound like a concert hall. I've never been to a concert where the bass player or drummer was in back of me. And mine has plenty of bass.

The point is the bass is behind you. The sub is in the trunk, and the default mix is faded far to the front. In the test car, I had to fade to the back somewhat to get any meaningful bass response. The majority of the sound still came from the front speakers. A concert hall is filled with sound (yes, even behind you), and this sounded like stereo speakers directly in front of me and that's it. There was no real presence until I corrected the fade.

Still it was a 15 minute test in one of the test drive vehicles. Who knows if it was working properly. *shrugs* I'll get to play more next month when mine arrives.

In any case, I was offering what I found because what the OP described sounds almost exactly like my experience with the test car.

 

[100thMonkey]

Right. That makes it sound like a concert hall. I've never been to a concert where the bass player or drummer was in back of me. And mine has plenty of bass.

I have really tried to embrace this "concert hall" narrative, but in the end I have concluded that it's kind of a BS way of making up for speaker placement constraints and in some cases, down right faulty units. Some S's have a problem with their sound, not all premium sound systems are equal across S's it appears. from driving several loaners. at best the sound is sub par for the cost of the system and car, IMHO, but a rare few are down right terrible. now that i've heard how it should sound, with dolby off, the sub woofer working properly, you should be uncomfortable with it turned up to 11 and the bass response should be pretty juicy. The one's that have issues, don't have full volume and have a truly lack luster bass response... if this sounds like you, I strongly suggest you press Tesla on this issue till they find a fix. if there is a common blown fuse, it needs to be taken seriously. I doubt I'm the only one who weighs the satisfaction of the sound system heavily in my overall impression of a car. All my complaints about this fell on deaf ears at Tesla but since I've traded up, the difference in the sound system is undeniable. My satisfaction level went from a frustrated 5/10 to a pretty enjoyable 8/10. Even with a new car now, I plan on taking it to a high fidelity specialist to see if a simple addition of a set of speakers somewhere behind the front seats will better center the sound. I think there are just too many speakers crammed into the front edge of the dash. no matter what people have said to try and convince me that I should like the "concert hall" effect because it's more "realistic" I still want to feel like I'm in the recording studio, not the concert hall, I want to feel saturated, immersed in sound at the zero point. I even find myself on occasion leaning forward to try and make up for the forward heavy lay out. Maybe another way of putting it is that I don't want to be in the audience in front of the stage, I want to be in the band, on the stage, between the speakers! Bottom line, for the money, we should all have the choice as to whether we make the sound forward heavy, centered or backward heavy.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

Bass response in my Model S w/ Studio Sound is phenomenal. On HD Radio, the bass vibrates the whole car if bumped up to 4 in the equalizer. I can't imagine going any higher. Make sure that you are using proper source material to judge the car. HD Radio is probably the best material in a pinch. Do not use Slacker at all to judge audio performance, it's simply crap over 3G bandwidth with no low end. Even Tune-In is heavily compressed and quite harsh.

 

[yobigd20]

Am I the only one that keeps bass on 12?

I can't remember what I have the other two set. Either mids at 6 and highs at 3/4, or mids at 3/4 and highs at 6.

Doesn't matter. In either case the bass does punch but only for very few select songs at certain frequencies with flac files. Overall I find the sound studio package very lacking. But this is coming from someone who used to drive around with a 1500watt amp, 3 one farad caps, and three 12" woofers plus another 400 amp and infinity mids and tweeters. Sound was incredible. And that was for half the price the sound studio is at now. lol

 

[jerry33]

Am I the only one that keeps bass on 12?

I don't. +2 gives me plenty of bass.

 

[Larry Chanin]

Greg Timbers is the Chief Engineer at JBL. He's a Model S owner and forum member. He measured the frequency response with a multiple microphone array in the driver's seat and front passenger seat. Here are some of his remarks.

SOUND STUDIO AUDIO - This is also a mixed bag. It has the potential of being one of the best Factory systems available, but it isn't there yet by a long run. The system has a very unique center channel implementation which presents a front image for the driver centered on the steering wheel. The passenger gets the same image over the glove box. Very nice. The stock "0" settings are not quite correct, but fortunately, some adjustment of the sliders can give a very good response curve. My measurements indicate that Low @ +6, Mid @-3 and High @0 is a very good start. Unfortunately, the rear speakers are very poorly integrated into the mix. The Dolby position should not be used. It stinks. I have found that if you move the fader to approximately -13, some amount of rear fill is obtained without messing up the front image. Using these settings gives what I consider to be very fine overall sound, particularly if you use real or lossless signals from a USB stick.

The hardware in the upgraded system is more than sufficient to support a class leading factory system. It is the implementation (software) that is somewhat lacking. The car has rear door speakers and a pair of small 2-ways in the rear hatch. With the implementation of ProLogic Iix or equivalent, a very nice rear sound field could be derived from the stereo front material. For those who prefer a simple front source, one would just switch the Dolby off like is currently possible. The existing sub works very well and is very well implemented. As I have said before, a touch of EQ to fix the response problem at around 600 Hz plus Dolby ProLogic II or equivalent instead of the current Dolby offering and we will be in great shape!

I use Greg's settings (Bass +6, Mid -3, High 0, Fade -13) and I throughly enjoy the sound in my Model S.

Like Greg I believe it would sound much better with the implementation of Dolby's ProLogic IIx or Lexicon's LOGIC7 to better distribute the soundfield throughout the cabin.

Larry

 

[andrewket]

Greg Timbers is the Chief Engineer at JBL. He's a Model S owner and forum member. He measured the frequency response with a multiple microphone array in the driver's seat and front passenger seat. Here are some of his remarks.





I use Greg's settings (Bass +6, Mid -3, High 0, Fade -13) and I throughly enjoy the sound in my Model S.

Like Greg I believe it would sound much better with the implementation of Dolby's ProLogic IIx or Lexicon's LOGIC7 to better distribute the soundfield throughout the cabin.

Larry

I use Greg's settings as well and am happy with the sound quality.

 

[jak]

Bass response in my Model S w/ Studio Sound is phenomenal. On HD Radio, the bass vibrates the whole car if bumped up to 4 in the equalizer. I can't imagine going any higher. Make sure that you are using proper source material to judge the car. HD Radio is probably the best material in a pinch. Do not use Slacker at all to judge audio performance, it's simply crap over 3G bandwidth with no low end. Even Tune-In is heavily compressed and quite harsh.

My car is less than a week old. I have Studio Sound, but my equalizer levers at 0,0,0 and the Bass feels like it's thumping pretty strong even though the sub is in the rear when on HD Radio. Slacker didn't seem bad either. I thought I'd be disappointed, but it sounded pretty darn good to me. Note: I'm not an audiophile with a discerning ear. Will try FLAC and MP3 when I have some time.

Update:

I tried MP3s encoded at 320Kbps CBR and FLAC and I thought they both sounded great. But I'm a little worried about the Bass. Even with the equalizer at 0,0,0, the Bass sounds quite powerful and shakes the car a little when not driving (not that it matters since there's no gas engine in the car). At +12,0,0, I feel like I'm one of those folks that disturb people with their loud bass explicit music. That normal??

Actually... when I drive down the road, the bass sounds more masked... Perhaps they turned up the bass to compensate for road noise.

 

[Gizmotoy]

Greg Timbers is the Chief Engineer at JBL. He's a Model S owner and forum member. He measured the frequency response with a multiple microphone array in the driver's seat and front passenger seat. Here are some of his remarks.

I use Greg's settings (Bass +6, Mid -3, High 0, Fade -13) and I throughly enjoy the sound in my Model S.

Like Greg I believe it would sound much better with the implementation of Dolby's ProLogic IIx or Lexicon's LOGIC7 to better distribute the soundfield throughout the cabin.

Larry

I'm pretty excited that the settings I came up with in 20 minutes in the car closely reflect those of someone who does this for a living. :biggrin: I thought the rear fade helped tremendously.

i have Logic7 on my Harmon Kardon at home and it's absolutely fantastic. If we could get something like that I'd be ecstatic.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

Using the above recommended settings by Greg Timbers, is that with Dolby on or off? Sorry for the obvious question, but that part was a little confusing.

 

[jerry33]

Using the above recommended settings by Greg Timbers, is that with Dolby on or off? Sorry for the obvious question, but that part was a little confusing.

Dolby off

 

[MrPinrel]

I am curious to hear if Greg Timbers has had to make any adjustments after the rumored changes in sound system behavior in recent firmware upgrades. When I got the car about a month ago I tried Greg's settings and thought they sounded great, but after upgrading to 5.6.8 I find that having the fade so far back has a detrimental effect.

 

[zwede]

I'm thinking things must have changed with recent software updates, then. I consider myself a picky listener (not quite audiophile, but very particular with what it should sound like).

First of all, you can't evaluate the system while listening to the radio. Put some FLAC or 320bps MP3 on a USB stick. Be sure you use music that was recorded properly. Many albums don't sound good on any system.

The settings I prefer in my car (Sound studio, pano), are:

Dolby: OFF
Listening pos: Center (0, 0)
Eq: +2, 0, +2 (B M T).

End result:

VERY good overall sound. Especially guitars & vocals are excellent. Mid bass is excellent. Deep bass is the only iffy thing. Some songs that have bass but not really low frequency bass sound great. Example Dire Straits - 'Once upon a time in the west'. Others that really go down into low frequency bass sound like some of the lowest frequencies are missing. Bob Marley 'Babylon by bus' is a prime example of where there's something missing. I'm thinking it's a limitation of the subwoofer size. Increasing the bass on the eq does not help as it just exaggerates higher frequency bass.

My conclusion is it is a very capable system that could benefit from a larger subwoofer.