I am about 1,000 miles in on my new 23 Turbo, and loving it so far. I was happy to see that it came with a capable Bose 10 speaker system. I am still getting used to the settings, and trying to fine tune the best possible sound from them. I know that the sound quality from Sirius XM is seriously lacking, but I do still use it for convenience, and some news and talk radio. For music I prefer Apple “Lossless” plugged in via USB. I am struggling with the Linear options and the different settings under that. For some types of music it sounds pretty good, then for others not so much. The system seems to lack the richness and fullness at lower volumes. It is only when I get about 35 that the system seems to kick in. While I am a fan of Bose products ( all of my BT speakers are Bose)this one seems to be a little lacking. I am just wondering if there is an ideal setting that will help at lower volume. Jazz, classical, & big band do not seem to sound as full as pure rock music. On the other hand rock music really makes this system sing, and the clarity is pretty darn good for a factory stereo.
2023 CX-5 Turbo Bose Settings
- Thread starter jofo67
- Start date
Here is some help from Youtube.
www.youtube.com
It looks like the Bose Centerpoint is turned off, that might give you a better sound by turning it on.
I like to set the Fader to the rear a few click.
2023 Mazda CX-50 – Bose 12-speaker Sound System Review | Apple CarPlay & Android Auto Test
Just like many of the other Mazda vehicles, the all-new CX-50 gets a 12-speaker Bose audio system for it's top-level radio. We're not sure why, but this one ...
www.youtube.com
I like to set the Fader to the rear a few click.
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It is Blose! Without mods (driver replacements), it will always sound like Crap. I was able to get reasonably flat, tested, amplitude response with new drivers and setting the bass tone control to -6. otherwise the response curve is the dreaded "smile".
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Like many manufacturers, Bose has a range of product lines from low end to high end. The system in this car leans towards the lower end without question.
Out of curiosity how much $ did it take to bring up to something more respectable?
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- :
- Canada
I would experiment with the Centerpoint and Fader settings as @Bruins 8 mentioned above. In my CX-9 I have Centerpoint turned off and the Fader set to the rear a couple of notches, but for your preferences maybe having the Fader more front-biased would help?
Another option that may be worth exploring is playing with the equalizer built into your music player app (if you are playing from an app). I personally have been using PowerAMP for like 10 years and it offers enough customization for my taste.
Bose gets a lot of flak from the audiophile community, probably for good reason, but as far as the system in most Mazdas goes, it works well enough for 90% of the owners.
Another option that may be worth exploring is playing with the equalizer built into your music player app (if you are playing from an app). I personally have been using PowerAMP for like 10 years and it offers enough customization for my taste.
Bose gets a lot of flak from the audiophile community, probably for good reason, but as far as the system in most Mazdas goes, it works well enough for 90% of the owners.
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Thanks for your input. For stock out of the box stereos, this system is better than many. Unless you plop down big $ for a high end luxury SUV, I don’t expect much more at this price point.
I just came from an 18 speaker B&O unleashed system, which so far is the best sounding stock system I’ve encountered. That was in a $75K truck though, and the system was plagued with problems.
I just came from an 18 speaker B&O unleashed system, which so far is the best sounding stock system I’ve encountered. That was in a $75K truck though, and the system was plagued with problems.
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- :
- NS, Canada
Curious what problems you saw in the Ford B&O system? We have a similar system in one of our trucks at home (the standard B&O setup) and it seems to be working pretty well. It has had a few rando resets but the XM sounds exponentially better in that than in my Mazda. I would pay for XM service in my CX5 because it just sounds so tinny and weak.
I find the Mazda system sounds great via CarPlay. Very pleased with it.
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I was able to get the bose system to sound OK. Currently have Centerpoint at one with fader in the middle. Bass and treble up about 4 and 7 or 8 I think. And the feature that turns up the volume at 2. But it took some time to break in before I could get any depth from the music. Speakers needed to be broken in. Hope that helps.
BTW I use it for everything from EDM to punk to hard/classic rock.
BTW I use it for everything from EDM to punk to hard/classic rock.
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I remember when Blose touted their 901s by saying you could plug them into a wall socket and they would not fail. The mark of "real" quality! I have heard most of their systems, beginning with the 901 Series 1 and all were just aweful. No one charges more money for less quality and content than Blose.
It turns out I spent about $5 each on the four 3.5" squawker/tweeters and disconnected the center channel (no more 5.0 movies on the screen). A little more for plug adapters. I have not replaced the hyper bright rear door speakers, but I have a pair $100 Kenwoods if I decide to. Since they are near the floor, the screeching is more tolerable.
Updated CX-5 dash speakers
I popped in a set of Polk db351's in the dash this afternoon. Pretty easy job once I gave up on trying to find a speaker adapter so I wouldn't have to cut the plug off the end of the Mazda harness. No luck on that. I hit several car stereo installation places and found nothing. Most of the...
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Thanks for the feedback. I am indifferent to Bose. It’s what the car came with and is better than many vehicles at this price point. I was simply looking to maximize what it came with versus tearing the dash apart. I’m simply not that motivated. I’ll live with its shortcomings. If I decide to keep the car for the long haul, I will bring it to a reputable shop for an upgrade.
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for anyone interested, I'll post my settings here. i have the 2023 carbon edition cx5 with bose. for what it's worth, I'm a part time audio engineer and review audio equipment (mostly headphones) on YouTube. just to say I'm familiar with a lot of sound science and have heard many playback systems in my life.
i have a fondness for studio quality sound, meaning the sound of a well designed acoustic studio space with flat measuring studio monitors. you can easily get into debates on what that means and objective vs. subjective sound preference. but my point is just to say I'm not just voicing a completely uneducated opinion. I'm not claiming my settings are the best or anything, but just that i feel they most closely approximate what i personally perceive to be a neutral sound in my experience.
I'll start by saying the bose system does some things very well and some not as well. and that no matter what you do it doesn't sound completely perfect, but it is fairly capable for a car system. in fact, it does more right than most imo when tweaked.
I'll list each setting and explain my reasoning.
first, i start with all enhancements turned off.
audio pilot is just volume auto adjustment based on road noise. that's a personal thing. not for me. choose what you prefer.
centerpoint off. this adds a surround sound style quality which can be cool. any setting beyond 1 ruins the stereo image imo. but even turned on 1 the sound becomes wider but much less distinct. it also changes the subwoofer relationship to the speakers. so off for me.
fader and balance default 0. these can be adjusted to taste, but with my settings, 0 will give the most neutral frequency response.
listening position set to driver... screw all the passengers:
but really, this gives the sound a more direct and precise imaging akin to speakers in a room. and it is not a drastic difference to passengers.
here's the biggie. stereo mode set to linear. this is big because the bose setting is essentially an eq that gives the sound more bass punch and treble sharpness. it does this at the cost of mid frequency accuracy and gives the sound a"V" shape eq tonality.
it may seem counter intuitive but with linear stereo mode it sounds much thinner and weaker. however, you need to set bass and treble to +7. this brings back bass and treble presence while retaining more mid range than the bose stereo setting. you can tweak up or down a point to taste, and passengers will affect the perceived response, but this sounds good to me.
make sure to disable any eq or enhancements on your source player. once you get used to this it can be further improved with eq in an app like poweramp by increasing lowest sub bass to taste.
again this is to mimick a neutral speaker response as much as possible. if you like the enhancements that's cool. I'm just going for response and imaging accuracy.
with these settings, what i find the bose system does well is overrall smoothness of the response. there are no major peaks or dips in the response. nothing objectionable. it is very resolving and smooth.
what it doesn't do amazingly well is bass impact. it's very smooth and clean bass, but to get sub bass punch and fulness you need to ruin the mid bass accuracy. so i opt for these settings. granted, to me they still sound great and bass has nice sub bass extension and hits well enough. but there's just always a certain oddness to the bass or mid bass. almost an out of phase quality. but these settings minimize the issue the most.
so that's my recommendation. give it a try and see what you think. i haven't spent a lot of time yet so i may tweak things slightly, but this is what i have settled on initially.
i have a fondness for studio quality sound, meaning the sound of a well designed acoustic studio space with flat measuring studio monitors. you can easily get into debates on what that means and objective vs. subjective sound preference. but my point is just to say I'm not just voicing a completely uneducated opinion. I'm not claiming my settings are the best or anything, but just that i feel they most closely approximate what i personally perceive to be a neutral sound in my experience.
I'll start by saying the bose system does some things very well and some not as well. and that no matter what you do it doesn't sound completely perfect, but it is fairly capable for a car system. in fact, it does more right than most imo when tweaked.
I'll list each setting and explain my reasoning.
first, i start with all enhancements turned off.
audio pilot is just volume auto adjustment based on road noise. that's a personal thing. not for me. choose what you prefer.
centerpoint off. this adds a surround sound style quality which can be cool. any setting beyond 1 ruins the stereo image imo. but even turned on 1 the sound becomes wider but much less distinct. it also changes the subwoofer relationship to the speakers. so off for me.
fader and balance default 0. these can be adjusted to taste, but with my settings, 0 will give the most neutral frequency response.
listening position set to driver... screw all the passengers:
but really, this gives the sound a more direct and precise imaging akin to speakers in a room. and it is not a drastic difference to passengers.here's the biggie. stereo mode set to linear. this is big because the bose setting is essentially an eq that gives the sound more bass punch and treble sharpness. it does this at the cost of mid frequency accuracy and gives the sound a"V" shape eq tonality.
it may seem counter intuitive but with linear stereo mode it sounds much thinner and weaker. however, you need to set bass and treble to +7. this brings back bass and treble presence while retaining more mid range than the bose stereo setting. you can tweak up or down a point to taste, and passengers will affect the perceived response, but this sounds good to me.
make sure to disable any eq or enhancements on your source player. once you get used to this it can be further improved with eq in an app like poweramp by increasing lowest sub bass to taste.
again this is to mimick a neutral speaker response as much as possible. if you like the enhancements that's cool. I'm just going for response and imaging accuracy.
with these settings, what i find the bose system does well is overrall smoothness of the response. there are no major peaks or dips in the response. nothing objectionable. it is very resolving and smooth.
what it doesn't do amazingly well is bass impact. it's very smooth and clean bass, but to get sub bass punch and fulness you need to ruin the mid bass accuracy. so i opt for these settings. granted, to me they still sound great and bass has nice sub bass extension and hits well enough. but there's just always a certain oddness to the bass or mid bass. almost an out of phase quality. but these settings minimize the issue the most.
so that's my recommendation. give it a try and see what you think. i haven't spent a lot of time yet so i may tweak things slightly, but this is what i have settled on initially.
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- :
- 2023 CX5 turbo
thank you the post needs to be stickiedfor anyone interested, I'll post my settings here. i have the 2023 carbon edition cx5 with bose. for what it's worth, I'm a part time audio engineer and review audio equipment (mostly headphones) on YouTube. just to say I'm familiar with a lot of sound science and have heard many playback systems in my life.
i have a fondness for studio quality sound, meaning the sound of a well designed acoustic studio space with flat measuring studio monitors. you can easily get into debates on what that means and objective vs. subjective sound preference. but my point is just to say I'm not just voicing a completely uneducated opinion. I'm not claiming my settings are the best or anything, but just that i feel they most closely approximate what i personally perceive to be a neutral sound in my experience.
I'll start by saying the bose system does some things very well and some not as well. and that no matter what you do it doesn't sound completely perfect, but it is fairly capable for a car system. in fact, it does more right than most imo when tweaked.
View attachment 321257
View attachment 321258
I'll list each setting and explain my reasoning.
first, i start with all enhancements turned off.
audio pilot is just volume auto adjustment based on road noise. that's a personal thing. not for me. choose what you prefer.
centerpoint off. this adds a surround sound style quality which can be cool. any setting beyond 1 ruins the stereo image imo. but even turned on 1 the sound becomes wider but much less distinct. it also changes the subwoofer relationship to the speakers. so off for me.
fader and balance default 0. these can be adjusted to taste, but with my settings, 0 will give the most neutral frequency response.
listening position set to driver... screw all the passengers:
here's the biggie. stereo mode set to linear. this is big because the bose setting is essentially an eq that gives the sound more bass punch and treble sharpness. it does this at the cost of mid frequency accuracy and gives the sound a"V" shape eq tonality.
it may seem counter intuitive but with linear stereo mode it sounds much thinner and weaker. however, you need to set bass and treble to +7. this brings back bass and treble presence while retaining more mid range than the bose stereo setting. you can tweak up or down a point to taste, and passengers will affect the perceived response, but this sounds good to me.
make sure to disable any eq or enhancements on your source player. once you get used to this it can be further improved with eq in an app like poweramp by increasing lowest sub bass to taste.
again this is to mimick a neutral speaker response as much as possible. if you like the enhancements that's cool. I'm just going for response and imaging accuracy.
with these settings, what i find the bose system does well is overrall smoothness of the response. there are no major peaks or dips in the response. nothing objectionable. it is very resolving and smooth.
what it doesn't do amazingly well is bass impact. it's very smooth and clean bass, but to get sub bass punch and fulness you need to ruin the mid bass accuracy. so i opt for these settings. granted, to me they still sound great and bass has nice sub bass extension and hits well enough. but there's just always a certain oddness to the bass or mid bass. almost an out of phase quality. but these settings minimize the issue the most.
so that's my recommendation. give it a try and see what you think. i haven't spent a lot of time yet so i may tweak things slightly, but this is what i have settled on initially.
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Antoine
Administrator
Side note...I don't believe we can sticky an individual post that's not the original one, we may be able to move it to its own new thread but that would take it out of context. In this case, since this is a question thread you can upvote a post...The OP @jofo67 can also mark a post in this thread as a solution.
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i will add that if you have 4 passengers, the centerpoint set to 1 will make it sound a lot better for the rear passengers. with centerpoint off, the focus is on front speakers presenting the full sound with rear and sub playing lows. this is aimed for front seat listening primarily. with centerpoint on, more full range sound goes to the rear speakers.
so off will make the back seat sound more bassy and muffled. on will sound more normal. just something to consider if you have 4 people enjoying music on a trip or something.
so off will make the back seat sound more bassy and muffled. on will sound more normal. just something to consider if you have 4 people enjoying music on a trip or something.
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- :
- 2023 CX5 turbo
we rarely have people in the back and if we do don't listen to music much in fact 90% of the time I have the rear seats folded down. we tried the above settings in our 23 cx5 turbo and it sounded great. This was listening to xm radio the blend and the bridge so mellower music. Probably would sound even better with something better than xm.
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for anyone interested, I'll post my settings here. i have the 2023 carbon edition cx5 with bose. for what it's worth, I'm a part time audio engineer and review audio equipment (mostly headphones) on YouTube. just to say I'm familiar with a lot of sound science and have heard many playback systems in my life.
i have a fondness for studio quality sound, meaning the sound of a well designed acoustic studio space with flat measuring studio monitors. you can easily get into debates on what that means and objective vs. subjective sound preference. but my point is just to say I'm not just voicing a completely uneducated opinion. I'm not claiming my settings are the best or anything, but just that i feel they most closely approximate what i personally perceive to be a neutral sound in my experience.
I'll start by saying the bose system does some things very well and some not as well. and that no matter what you do it doesn't sound completely perfect, but it is fairly capable for a car system. in fact, it does more right than most imo when tweaked.
View attachment 321257
View attachment 321258
I'll list each setting and explain my reasoning.
first, i start with all enhancements turned off.
audio pilot is just volume auto adjustment based on road noise. that's a personal thing. not for me. choose what you prefer.
centerpoint off. this adds a surround sound style quality which can be cool. any setting beyond 1 ruins the stereo image imo. but even turned on 1 the sound becomes wider but much less distinct. it also changes the subwoofer relationship to the speakers. so off for me.
fader and balance default 0. these can be adjusted to taste, but with my settings, 0 will give the most neutral frequency response.
listening position set to driver... screw all the passengers:
here's the biggie. stereo mode set to linear. this is big because the bose setting is essentially an eq that gives the sound more bass punch and treble sharpness. it does this at the cost of mid frequency accuracy and gives the sound a"V" shape eq tonality.
it may seem counter intuitive but with linear stereo mode it sounds much thinner and weaker. however, you need to set bass and treble to +7. this brings back bass and treble presence while retaining more mid range than the bose stereo setting. you can tweak up or down a point to taste, and passengers will affect the perceived response, but this sounds good to me.
make sure to disable any eq or enhancements on your source player. once you get used to this it can be further improved with eq in an app like poweramp by increasing lowest sub bass to taste.
again this is to mimick a neutral speaker response as much as possible. if you like the enhancements that's cool. I'm just going for response and imaging accuracy.
with these settings, what i find the bose system does well is overrall smoothness of the response. there are no major peaks or dips in the response. nothing objectionable. it is very resolving and smooth.
what it doesn't do amazingly well is bass impact. it's very smooth and clean bass, but to get sub bass punch and fulness you need to ruin the mid bass accuracy. so i opt for these settings. granted, to me they still sound great and bass has nice sub bass extension and hits well enough. but there's just always a certain oddness to the bass or mid bass. almost an out of phase quality. but these settings minimize the issue the most.
so that's my recommendation. give it a try and see what you think. i haven't spent a lot of time yet so i may tweak things slightly, but this is what i have settled on initially.
Life and music are in the midrange. Your settings still recreate the obnoxious smiley face ("V") response curve. You need to do some testing. You can use FM inter-station hiss and an app called Spectrum Analyzer to adjust for approximately flat response (crash cymbals not louder than hi-hat, bass F not louder D/E, unless played louder).
"Impact", from the kick drum, is above 90 Hz and above most common bass notes. Adding 7 dB at 40 Hz buries the impact. There is no "impact" from low bass. If you have a Blose system that reproduces any low bass (below 40 Hz) it will be the first in history.
The Blose system I had was far from smooth in any frequency range. It earned its name.
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You have an obvious issue with Bose. But your griping doesn’t really help anyone here. Fortunately for you, you don’t have to ride in my car and listen to my stereo. Besides most every day drivers have no clue what you’re speaking of. If it sounds good to them, then so be it. It’s still better than any stereo I’ve heard at this price point for an OEM option, and while it’s not an audiophile’s wet dream, it certainly is “good enough”
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as i had said, it isn't perfect. the system is geared towards that V shape sound. no adjustments will completely eliminate it but i find my settings help. it is all a compromise.
more correct mid range will make the low bass disappear on this system. and there isn't a good mid point eq to adjust. i wish they'd add a third eq point with firmware. still wouldn't be perfect but would give so much more control. I've been using custom EQ on my source player lately. i was considering measuring and posting a custom EQ. if anyone is interested i can try. i have the proper gear to do so, but without getting into super detail, the process isn't fullproof. but it would get it even closer to neutral if that's your thing. just not sure when I'll have time...
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