Sound system lost it's "punch" after latest update

[brobinson]

this is totally anecdotal, but it was nearly 60 degrees here in ohio yesterday afternoon and the bass sounded the best it has in weeks. It was in the 30s when I left for work in the morning and it sounded like *sugar* again. There could be several factors at play, though...

- warmer temperatures
- having windows open - increased airflow?
- louder volume due to windows being open.

I dunno. It sounds so good when its working, I just want it to be consistent

 

[wupcwww]

@TEG , where is the subwoofer located and is it easy to access and check the plug? Did you test after pushing the plug back in?

 

[PoitNarf]

@TEG , where is the subwoofer located and is it easy to access and check the plug? Did you test after pushing the plug back in?

It's on the right side of the trunk. Just move the fabric trunk liner out of the way all the way on the right side to get to the sub.

 

[tomas]

Are you playing the same tracks at the same volume? I have found all Tesla sound systems a) very sensitive to how source recorded and b) bass very correlated to volume. Little bass at low volume, lots at high.

 

[tomas]

@TEG , where is the subwoofer located and is it easy to access and check the plug? Did you test after pushing the plug back in?

Passenger rear in trunk. You don’t even need to remove carpet. Just put your hand on side of trunk at rear and you will feel it working or not.

 

[TEG]

The amp has a cable going to the sub box. The 4 wire cable plugs into the bottom edge of the subwoofer box where the orange arrow is pointing.
You would have to get behind the liner. In this picture it is blocking the plug/socket that I mentioned could be loose.

 

[TEG]

Passenger rear in trunk. You don’t even need to remove carpet. Just put your hand on side of trunk at rear and you will feel it working or not.

There is "working" and "working well enough". One theory is that loose plug could cause only one of the 2 voice coils to fire resulting in lower output.

I have a data set of 1 (my Model 3). If anyone else finds that the plug was not clicked/snapped all the way in please let us know so we can see if other cars have the same issue.

 

[V__2]

With 29 pages of comments in this thread, not sure how to summerise, but is there a way to gather how many people are participating in the discussion and count those that (whether subjectively or objectively) find an issue with the sound?

Any way to group responses and possibly get better idea if this is an issue? I guess a poll with options such as yes/no on questions - do you think your car low frequency sound has changed, when do you think this happened, etc. Maybe even a question such as - have you been to a Tesla owners meetup and you tested with others playing the same audio file and sound is different between cars?

If someone buys their car today, would low frequency sound be bad as it is already with the update that "broke" thinks a few months ago?

 

[zhu-]

this is totally anecdotal, but it was nearly 60 degrees here in ohio yesterday afternoon and the bass sounded the best it has in weeks. It was in the 30s when I left for work in the morning and it sounded like *sugar* again. There could be several factors at play, though...

I've found temperature differences to be very consistent with the bass output in my car since 50.6. At below 35F there's often reduced bass output, but above is usually fine. I haven't had a chance to make a recording yet but hope to get one soon.

 

[PoitNarf]

I've found temperature differences to be very consistent with the bass output in my car since 50.6. At below 35F there's often reduced bass output, but above is usually fine. I haven't had a chance to make a recording yet but hope to get one soon.

I agree, there definitely appears to be a direct correlation between low temperatures and sub-par bass from the stereo. It seems that if you let the car warm up a bit first it's not an issue. Could be related to the cold weather tweaks they made. I was just discussing the headlight flickering issue with a mobile tech just last week and he mentioned that the headlight flickering only started when they released the update that included the cold weather improvements (charge port locking, window rolling down when opening door, etc) and he was under the impression that somehow by adding the new cold weather features it somehow affected the headlights. It's possible that this could have also affected the subwoofer output as well when it's colder outside. It sounds a little bit far fetched, but I've definitely seen stranger things in my job before.

 

[tomas]

My trunk had gotten pretty full of stuff. A few days ago I reorganized and reduced clutter to almost nothing. Suddenly: better bass! I previously had bass EQ up 1.5. Now I can turn to flat and still more bass. I think very sensitive to junk in your trunk so to speak.

 

[brobinson]

My trunk had gotten pretty full of stuff. A few days ago I reorganized and reduced clutter to almost nothing. Suddenly: better bass! I previously had bass EQ up 1.5. Now I can turn to flat and still more bass. I think very sensitive to junk in your trunk so to speak.

Wish I could say the same. My trunk is always empty. I'm actually surprised that the bass at 1.5 is loud at all. I typically run it at 7.5 and still have intermittent issues

 

[goldengate]

I'm looking for another thread I saw about this topic, where the poster was convinced it's a bug in 50.6... I am convinced of that as well. If I hit the left steering wheel button to mute, the system loses its bass until I do a hard reset on the car. I think all of this is a software issue, perhaps brought on by the cold weather software mods?

 

[usofrob]

That's a really interesting observation. The original complaints started around the time that the cold weather software modifications came out. (No reason to believe it's directly related to the cold weather, likely other modifications caused the issue.) But, if the issue can be re-created by just using the left button to mute, that'd make it much easier for the Tesla SW engineers to find the bug. Anyone that has an open request with Tesla Service should try this and report to Tesla.

 

[PoitNarf]

That's a really interesting observation. The original complaints started around the time that the cold weather software modifications came out. (No reason to believe it's directly related to the cold weather, likely other modifications caused the issue.) But, if the issue can be re-created by just using the left button to mute, that'd make it much easier for the Tesla SW engineers to find the bug. Anyone that has an open request with Tesla Service should try this and report to Tesla.

I've muted plenty of times and have never experienced that causing the bass to get lower or cut out. I'll give it a try on my drive home from work though. I do have active communication with a mobile tech about this issue and I've been sending in bug reports. When I send in a bug report I contact the mobile tech and he flags it for the developers to look at.

 

[Rootbeard7]

Check out the email response shown in this thread: (Here's what the designers of Model 3's sound system had to say about Sentry Mode's effect on the speakers. : teslamotors)

Tesla is using a high-pass filter to protect from low frequencies. Perhaps this filter is malfunctioning?

I’ve noticed some frequencies of bass sound great (electronic songs, for example) but in others the bass seems non-existent (rock songs, for example). I know this is far from scientific, and I’m no expert, but it certainly seems like the bass is only present on certain frequencies - even after playing with the EQ settings.

 

[goldengate]

When I lost my bass on a long car trip, I had just muted a few times and then the LTE went out (no connectivity...) and system rebooted, and when it came back, no bass.

 

[voip-ninja]

Check out the email response shown in this thread: (Here's what the designers of Model 3's sound system had to say about Sentry Mode's effect on the speakers. : teslamotors)

Tesla is using a high-pass filter to protect from low frequencies. Perhaps this filter is malfunctioning?

I’ve noticed some frequencies of bass sound great (electronic songs, for example) but in others the bass seems non-existent (rock songs, for example). I know this is far from scientific, and I’m no expert, but it certainly seems like the bass is only present on certain frequencies - even after playing with the EQ settings.

I'm suspicious of something similar. It sounds like they are using different filters on BT audio compared to Slacker audio for example. I have EAC --insane VBR ripped MP3s of songs that are being presented at much higher bit-rates over Bluetooth that sound flat compared to the same track playing through Slacker at pretty low bit-rate of, I believe 64kbps.

I'm tempted to set up Tesla Tunes and load a thumb drive with my music library so I can do a direct comparison between USB audio and BT audio with the same music files. In my BMW there was an audible difference between the two but it was subtle. I suspect that with my Model 3 the difference will be much more pronounced.

 

[Rootbeard7]

I'm tempted to set up Tesla Tunes and load a thumb drive with my music library so I can do a direct comparison between USB audio and BT audio with the same music files. In my BMW there was an audible difference between the two but it was subtle. I suspect that with my Model 3 the difference will be much more pronounced.

I’d definitely be interested in hearing about your comparison. I certainly think there is a difference between Bluetooth and other audio sources, but it sounds like the bass issues may go beyond just Bluetooth audio. This leads me to believe the instances of weak bass are present in certain frequencies and not as much dependent on the audio source itself. However, I’d still be curious to hear how much worse Bluetooth audio is overall.

 

[voip-ninja]

I’d definitely be interested in hearing about your comparison. I certainly think there is a difference between Bluetooth and other audio sources, but it sounds like the bass issues may go beyond just Bluetooth audio. This leads me to believe the instances of weak bass are present in certain frequencies and not as much dependent on the audio source itself. However, I’d still be curious to hear how much worse Bluetooth audio is overall.

So, I installed Tesla Tunes (cool app btw although it needs an option to skip duplicates) and loaded about 20GB of music onto a thumb drive.

Similarly to my BMW the audio quality on USB is slightly better than BT from my iPhone X to the point it's noticeable if you are paying attention but for all intents and purposes they are close enough to be indistinguishable in general use.

Also, USB audio has some serious limitations such as no playlist support, failure to resume playback when you get back into the car, periodically needing to reload the music data (which if you have a lot of tracks can take more than a minute), etc.. all of which leave me to where I would not recommend USB audio at this time.