Originally Posted by TTKammer

I purchased the factory/Kicker subwoofer upgrade, and to be honest... I'm not real happy. The sub and the amp are actually quite good (especially for an 8" woofer with only 100 watts RMS), but the factory radio settings that change when you activate the subwoofer option in the menu sound WAY OFF to me. Here's where I am coming from...

It sounds to me as though there is a Low Pass Filter (LPF) that is activated when the subwoofer option is turned on. Unfortunately, it sounds like those LPF settings are off. When I activated the sub, I lost all bass to the rear door speakers, and a lot of bass to the front door speakers. With every system I have ever owned, that's normal. However, the cut-off point seems too high for the door speakers and too low for the sub... leaving a dead zone in the bass spectrum on anything that isn't Straight Outta Compton. Here's a good example... I'm a big fan of Van Halen, but Van Halen isn't mixed with a ton of bass. Any time anything by VH cycles through, I get a lot of mids and highs, but absolutely no depth. The bass that rounds out the sound gets cut out of the door speakers by the LPF, but there isn't enough bass to really drive the subwoofer... leaving a really flat, dead sound. It's the same with almost everything that isn't hip-hop or electronic. When the song is already bass-heavy to begin with, it actually sounds really good and hits really hard. However, everything from rock to country to funk to jazz that isn't "bumping" actually sounded better with the factory Sync 3 7-speaker system BEFORE I turned the subwoofer option on.

The other issue I have has to do with the volume levels. Activating the subwoofer option totally killed the volume. It used to be that a volume of 15 (out of the possible 30) was plenty loud, and 20 was awesome (I don't remember turning it up much past 20 before activating the sub). Now 15 is hardly enough to get the subwoofer thumping, 20 is getting there, and 25 is where you go when your favorite song cycles through. Those volume changes also affect the bluetooth phone function through the radio. I basically have to crank the stereo all the way up to 30 when I take a call through the Sync 3 system (it wasn't like that before activating the sub).

If they hadn't messed with the volume levels and the bass frequencies... I think I would be really happy with this system. If they had added a remote bass level control ****, an electronic remote control, or even a bass level control in the stereo... I think I would be really happy with the system. If they had given the user the option to control the LPF levels int he stereo... I think I would be really happy with this system. Unfortunately, this option just doesn't offer me the control over the sound that I want, and that is enough to outweigh the plug-n-play ease of everything. I'm thinking I will probably sell this one and install something that will allow me to turn the stereo settings back to where they were, and offers me some bass level control from the dash.