LCP

I had already posted a solution for better sound before knowing of the hidden equalizer whereby balance was faded to the rear to make the larger rear speakers handle the bass, and relative midrange and treble settings increased to bring the soundstage up front.

Lately, there's been a flurry of activity of people changing their equalizer settings to enhance their sound. Most of these have been people with Bose systems. Tonight, I decided to see if the same held true for us non-Bose people, and what needed to be done to the popular recommended settings to make it work with the non-Bose speakers. Well, it does work for us.

To access the hidden equalizer, do the following:
1. Turn off stereo.
2. Press "5" and turn stereo on.
3. You should see "55555555" displayed.
4. Turn volume dial to change the values, and press "P.Scan" to scroll through the digits.
5. Turn stereo off and on again to hear changes.

If you think you can't tell a difference when you make changes, try the following settings, and then get your hearing checked: 11991199 followed by 11111111. Note that it has been reported that you must turn the key off/on to hear changes, if the key's on. I did all of my adjustments without the key even in the car, so I could just turn the stereo on/off to hear the changes.

The 8 digits represent the following tones, in order from left to right:
1. Front low bass
2. Front mid bass
3. Front midrange
4. Front treble
5. Rear low bass
6. Rear mid bass
7. Rear midrange
8. Rear treble.

Anyway, I started with the popular settings for Bose users, 88698869, but figured they would need tweaking for the non-Bose speakers, which have very little capacity to reproduce bass in the front and very little capacity to reproduce treble in the rear. The combination I found best at allowing the speakers to do the jobs for which they were designed, while keeping the soundstage in the front was 38679657. Slight variations of this combination that I tried would have allowed changing some of the digits (in different combinations -- never all at once I think) to 48788757, but 38679657 is the winner for me. The volume level to which I was able to play the Symphony stereo without distortion amazed me with these settings. Making the puny front speakers try to reproduce deep bass tones causes distortion by moderate volume levels, but the rear speakers can handle them at very high levels. Of course, set your generic ****-adjustable fader, bass, treble and midrange settings to neutral.