Hi folks and seeking fellow NDers advice: Sound settings: Fade front to rear balance equal: the headrests are very quiet. When I put the fade to full rear they were very quiet still!? The music is banging out of the front speakers but so faint in the headrests albeit if a telephone call comes in that can be heard as clear as day but why not the music?
Please can you check your sound from the headrests and see if they are faint when balance front to rear is equal. Have a decent volume audible from fronts then fade to rear and see if they are quiet?
Just want to check before I enquire at the dealer. Only the telephone call has any volume coming out of them!
The sound in the car is good but only noticeable from the front speakers as the headrests are whisper quiet
Touche, I just did the fade test in my car and I would say that the rears are only slightly quieter than the fronts, but that there is a bit of a difference. Hope that helps.
I know it’s for the ND and I’d let other answer first but as Ian above says they aren’t to compete with the main speakers just fill in the sound around the rear of the car as the Mk3 does.
In theory ones ears are much closer to the headrest, so for an even sound balance the head rest speakers should be quieter than if one put ears as close to the main speakers.
However, if the head rest speakers are even quieter still, and cannot begin to compete with the distant main speakers then there is a problem. Maybe the radio/cd muting is on all the time, when normally it should only happen when there is a phone-call or the sat-nav talks. Is there an option for this in the menus?
In our Mazda3 the sat-nav or phone speaks to the driver only, and this is disconcerting in the way the (non-Bose) audio mutes and the interruption suddenly leaps to the right. Fortunately it does not have head rest speakers, merely a more distant pair behind the rear seats. We’ve eventually dumped the phone facility and turned off the in-car sat-nav for most of the time, and mainly use the old stick-on Garmin sat-nav because this allows planning a route with way-points and repeating it as many times as required, and importantly the passenger/navigator can also hear it! And the passenger makes all the phone calls with the mobile not talking to the car.
The headrest speakers are presumably pretty small so perhaps don’t have the range or power of the door speakers. I imagine they leave the (largely non-directional) bass to the others.
The convention of course is to have the “sound stage” in front of the listener so perhaps we shouldn’t expect too much oomf from the headrest.
I don’t have the Bose and only the driver’s seat has speakers so I won’t attempt to draw comparisons with mine.
It’s all a bit academic with a canvas (or no) roof and an exhaust that sounds like a trapped wasp anyway;)
Thank you for your replies and I now get the overall sound set up. I have set the balance equal front to rear and when cranked up the sound is good in the car obviously more defined front to rear but you get the surround sound sensation with what comes out of the headrests and being limited stops damaging your ears as so close. The telephone interruption is class and so clear! Happy now.
Great forum and thanks again.
I messed around with my setup a bit yesterday. Yes, the headrest speakers are very quiet and the front/rear fade test confirmed that they are very quiet even when the fader is at full rear. I did try “balancing” it so that the fader was about 3/4 to the rear and then turned up the volume. However, although the rears could now be heard as clearly as the fronts, I thought it made the sound a bit “muddy”. I thought that the sub became too much of the overall sound with that kind of setup and so I had to start playing with the bass and so on too.
Basically, I agree with the others; the headrest speakers are just there to fill out the sound and not to give the kind of effect that you might expect from a set of full-size speakers in the rear.
I went back to the original setup after messing around with stuff and I’m happy with how it sounds. In the good old days, ripping out the HU and sound system and replacing it with a custom setup was always something that I used to do with cars but with the MZD Connect system being so integral to the car’s other electrical systems, that’s not really an option here. Not for me anyway.