Sound System Phase Cancellation?

[iceblueorbitz]

Hello Everyone, I just had to turn in my 2014 GLK lease which made me very sad, but fortunately I just bought a beautiful 2010 EX35, and so far I LOVE it! I also love the fact that I own it and it won't just disappear in two years. Being a used car and one that I can modify, I'm sure I'll be frequenting these forums with my endeavors!

Anyway, I have the 2010 non-journey edition, so no blue-tooth, navi, or bose sound system. The stock system is fairly good (I'm quite spoiled from the incredible stock Mercedes sound system) but I noticed a strange issue that leads me to believe either A) there's a design flaw, B) the sound system was not installed correctly by the manufacturer, or C) there are perhaps aftermarket speakers that were wired incorrectly.

Basically when pan/fade the audio to one front speaker, it sounds quite nice with decent bass response. I pan to the other speaker on the passenger side, and same thing, sounds good. As soon as I center balance the panning, the bass frequencies severely cancel each other out. It's quite noticeable and really kills the punch of the sound. Is this something all EX35 stock systems suffer from or is there something else I should look into? I turned off the Super Phase Enhancer or whatever their branded "loudness" filter is called.

On a side note I haven't found many resources to how easy or what options there are to replace or upgrade the whole sound system. Is the only option to tie in new speakers/amps to their media center unit?

[Teknical]

I have the Bose system, but can confirm that I don't have that issue.

The fade control shouldn't be doing any frequency filtering. There may be crossover filters in the doors to split the signal to the tweeter and the main driver(s). If you say it's out of phase, maybe the polarity at some driver connection is reversed. I suppose you could test this by balancing it 50-50 and having someone hold a thick blanket up over one side or the other an confirming that the bass isn't being filtered out by the fader.

[iceblueorbitz]

I think I'll try to pull the door off and check the polarity on the lower right driver. Using the fade and balance controls, it appeared that the bass is nice and full when only the rear two speakers or left two speakers are on. Whenever I pan/fade it back so the passenger front speaker comes on, the bass starts to thin out.

[AWGD8]

I have a non bose system, but I replaced the 4 speakers into a nice Poineer speakers (Which is actually $75 a pair at Amazon vs buying it at Bestbuy for $150 a pair)

The Phase cancellation when " on " seems to clean noise sound. I would compare it to like a Sony Dolby sound setting on. If you have an extra dough, the stock 6.5 speakers (front and rear doors) are not ideal.