We have an excellent post that will help many adjust the factory system so it works getter. Thank you, "CaryKen!" His negative comments about "centerpoint" are echoed by many.
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Tone controls were initially tough for me to find. Once you know how to navigate the menus properly, they are easy enough to get to. You get a simple three-slider equalizer for BASS, MID, TREBLE. Just the kind of rough boosts and cuts you have seen on cars for many decades. I did not see any factory-built equalization curves that you sometimes see in car systems with categories like "Jazz", "Pop", "Classical." That's fine with me, as I find them mostly useless.
You get four mode settings for "Driver", "Centerpoint", "Rear", and "Normal". All of them are very obviously digitally processed to within an inch of the music's life. You can hear artifacts and signal games in each mode.
"Driver" does a good job of placing the perceived focal point just about resting on the dash in front of you.
"Rear" I suppose would be for tailgating parties when you have the trunk lid up and want to blast songs for the crowd. It is much more muffled and lacking in highs for the cockpit occupants. Maybe you could use it for quiet background noise if you were trying to have a conversation and didn't want to actually listen to the music. But I think on the road it would get covered by normal driving noises.
"Normal" seems to be the classic front-center oriented soundstage balanced for both occupants.
"Centerpoint" is a fake surround sound processor that synthesizes a center channel and adds some delay to the rears. I found it annoying. It adds a slight echoey quality to the music and sounded the most fake of the modes.
In all modes there is also a simple graphical fader/balance that lets you move the perceived focal point front/rear and left/right. It worked better than most I have played with. Changes were obvious but did not overly affect whatever tone quality the settings had previously produced.
As many have said, the default bass is overemphasized. Audiophiles will recognize the design criteria from other low-end systems... It favors big booming cone excursions that move a lot of air and produce a tactile response... "You can feel the bass." But it does this at the expense of crispness and speed of response. So the bass "blooms and booms" and ends up muddying the sound. I immediately turned it down. That reduces both the negative and positive effects. The music gets crisper, but loses the bottom end."
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Thanks again CaryKen.