I had to fiddle with the stock settings in my 2020 Impreza Premium to get the response I wanted from the speakers. I’m an audio engineering hobbyist, so I spend a lot of time getting what I can out of speakers without having to upgrade.
First of all, I can’t say I’m a fan of the speed sensitive volume thing. I had to turn that off.
I also try not to use anything except CarPlay, I get much better perceived quality than over Bluetooth and I simply hate the drop in quality of radio(FM or SXM) along my commute. I will rather die before you catch me using a 3.5mm to play audio.
Next my EQ is set to boost the lows by a few dB, mids by a bit less, and treble by a bit less than that. This creates a gain effect and flattens out that weird anti-distortion thing at high volumes (in which the low band gets compressed in exchange for high band clarity). I also try to stay below volume setting 30 to ensure this anti distortion thing still doesn’t kick in. For most studio quality tracks that are well mastered, volume settings above 28 seem to have little impact on the perceived loudness.
This setup allows me to play music about as loud as I like it, without losing my bass response. Those stock speakers will kick without audible clipping or distortion and even give your mirrors that satisfying rumble you’d usually need to upgrade to achieve. I’d love to see how the factory upgraded speakers would sound with this setup. I actually decided NOT to look into a passive subwoofer because I’m so satisfied with the response from this setup. But if the money is there, a compact powered unit with a built in amp would be really cool 😎
only thing I wish this car had was per-speaker low and high pass filters, in my old car I had an aftermarket head unit and I would low pass and increase gain on the rear speakers and high pass the front speakers to eliminate A lot of distortions from each speaker trying to handle the entire frequency range all at once. Nobody ever really rode in my back seats, so this in addition to a slightly adjusted fade/balance setting did amazing things for audio quality. But that being said what I described on the stock Impreza stereo did its justice.
What’s your setup(stock or aftermarket?)
Anyone with the Harmon Kardon upgrade wanna fill me in on the actual change in quality? Worth it?
First of all, I can’t say I’m a fan of the speed sensitive volume thing. I had to turn that off.
I also try not to use anything except CarPlay, I get much better perceived quality than over Bluetooth and I simply hate the drop in quality of radio(FM or SXM) along my commute. I will rather die before you catch me using a 3.5mm to play audio.
Next my EQ is set to boost the lows by a few dB, mids by a bit less, and treble by a bit less than that. This creates a gain effect and flattens out that weird anti-distortion thing at high volumes (in which the low band gets compressed in exchange for high band clarity). I also try to stay below volume setting 30 to ensure this anti distortion thing still doesn’t kick in. For most studio quality tracks that are well mastered, volume settings above 28 seem to have little impact on the perceived loudness.
This setup allows me to play music about as loud as I like it, without losing my bass response. Those stock speakers will kick without audible clipping or distortion and even give your mirrors that satisfying rumble you’d usually need to upgrade to achieve. I’d love to see how the factory upgraded speakers would sound with this setup. I actually decided NOT to look into a passive subwoofer because I’m so satisfied with the response from this setup. But if the money is there, a compact powered unit with a built in amp would be really cool 😎
only thing I wish this car had was per-speaker low and high pass filters, in my old car I had an aftermarket head unit and I would low pass and increase gain on the rear speakers and high pass the front speakers to eliminate A lot of distortions from each speaker trying to handle the entire frequency range all at once. Nobody ever really rode in my back seats, so this in addition to a slightly adjusted fade/balance setting did amazing things for audio quality. But that being said what I described on the stock Impreza stereo did its justice.
What’s your setup(stock or aftermarket?)
Anyone with the Harmon Kardon upgrade wanna fill me in on the actual change in quality? Worth it?
