Dear Ford, I want my 895 dollars back.

[13razorbackfan]

Ha, no thanks. I also have hearing damage, but I don't think it's bad enough to make me unable to hear distortion.

Oh no don't get me wrong I believe you. I'm just very disappointed in my B and O. My upgraded Sony systems in my F250'S sound better. Funny enough my 13 model with 135k sounds better than my 16 with 50k. Settings are identical. Maybe a downgrade in quality idk

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[samanosuke47]

I'm neutral on the B&O, Initially I liked it during testing on the lot, thought yeah lets get it. After living with it for awhile now, I don't hate it but, I do believe some older aftermarket systems I've had experience with are better.

That said, I've found that for me I leave it in surround mode, and I've turned the bass down like 5 notches, the treble up a few and mid up one. with it more balanced out to my liking I'm happy with it. Would I get it again.. ehhhhhhhhhhhhh

I mean I'm glad I got it in a way for the speaker placements. Maybe I can upgrade the speakers and get a better sound out of it one day.

*I'm also not a loud listener. I used to be back a 5+ years ago. I think now I just enjoy hearing my car more than most music it seems. lol

 

[1Bear]

I'm neutral on the B&O, Initially I liked it during testing on the lot, thought yeah lets get it. After living with it for awhile now, I don't hate it but, I do believe some older aftermarket systems I've had experience with are better.

That said, I've found that for me I leave it in surround mode, and I've turned the bass down like 5 notches, the treble up a few and mid up one. with it more balanced out to my liking I'm happy with it. Would I get it again.. ehhhhhhhhhhhhh

I mean I'm glad I got it in a way for the speaker placements. Maybe I can upgrade the speakers and get a better sound out of it one day.

*I'm also not a loud listener. I used to be back a 5+ years ago. I think now I just enjoy hearing my car more than most music it seems. lol

I would not buy again, that is for sure.
I probably should have avoided a stereo up-charge anyway as I have the Active valve exhaust; that thing is loud as heck in track mode.

Bear

 

[samanosuke47]

I would not buy again, that is for sure.
I probably should have avoided a stereo up-charge anyway as I have the Active valve exhaust; that thing is loud as heck in track mode.

Bear

I love the active exhaust as well, and one thing I love more than I thought I would was quiet start. It's actually really nice to not be super loud in the mornings like I used to be with my old 03 Tiburon lol

 

[ClayAce]

Quoted over $4,000 (wont spend that coin) to straighten up the crappy radio in my 16 GT Prem Vert. Looks like I will have to learn how to install the components myself. My 2003 had the Mach 1000 factory system in it and sounded pretty good. Shaker System with no sub - bad bad. Bought the car 3 months ago so i wasn't me who made that decision.

 

[krishelnino]

Well.. fixing the audio in this car has been a challenge. I had a V6 with the base 6 speaker system for 1.5 years, decided not to upgrade since it was only a temporary car and was going to get the GT anyway. When i was ordering the 18 GT (still frustrated Ford didn't include B&O for MY18) i paid the additional 895 for Sony Shaker Pro thinking it would be worth it. A few months in, i was disappointed. I looked into ways of improving based on the inputs from the forum members - disconnected center speaker; then replaced it. Also added polyfil in the trunk sub. Subtle difference, more bass now but that's about it.

Finally took the plunge after a year and replaced the front 3 ways with Focal AS 165AS3, then went ahead and swapped rears as well with Focals and trunk sub with JL Audio 8 inch sub. Got the RF DSR1 to replace factory DSP/amp and a Audio Control LC 6.1200 amp to passively crossover the front 3 ways, rears and sub. Spend close to 2.5k for these components and ended up regretting; still sounded marginal at best. Then got a Helix DSP .3 - this is when things got interesting. Wow, this is where the whole system started sounding good. The tune isn't perfect and there are still issues with rattling, etc. but i started getting annoyed having had to spend so much time on this. I left the system as is for now - i might try a different installer in the near future to get it perfectly tuned or go active 3-way for the front.

I wouldn't try this again - it's just not worth it in my opinion for the amount of time i spend driving my car.

 

[samanosuke47]

Well.. fixing the audio in this car has been a challenge. I had a V6 with the base 6 speaker system for 1.5 years, decided not to upgrade since it was only a temporary car and was going to get the GT anyway. When i was ordering the 18 GT (still frustrated Ford didn't include B&O for MY18) i paid the additional 895 for Sony Shaker Pro thinking it would be worth it. A few months in, i was disappointed. I looked into ways of improving based on the inputs from the forum members - disconnected center speaker; then replaced it. Also added polyfil in the trunk sub. Subtle difference, more bass now but that's about it.

Finally took the plunge after a year and replaced the front 3 ways with Focal AS 165AS3, then went ahead and swapped rears as well with Focals and trunk sub with JL Audio 8 inch sub. Got the RF DSR1 to replace factory DSP/amp and a Audio Control LC 6.1200 amp to passively crossover the front 3 ways, rears and sub. Spend close to 2.5k for these components and ended up regretting; still sounded marginal at best. Then got a Helix DSP .3 - this is when things got interesting. Wow, this is where the whole system started sounding good. The tune isn't perfect and there are still issues with rattling, etc. but i started getting annoyed having had to spend so much time on this. I left the system as is for now - i might try a different installer in the near future to get it perfectly tuned or go active 3-way for the front.

I wouldn't try this again - it's just not worth it in my opinion for the amount of time i spend driving my car.

Near the end there you hit on the 'camp' that I'm currently sitting in. With wanting a daily driver out of the gate that I didn't need to fuss with, I think the B&O is alright. It gets the job done. I don't regret spending the money myself, I'm also not likely to 'option' it in if I went back. I'm still just neutral on it, there are far worse stereos in vehicles nowadays I would assume - and audio is like a lot of things, very subjective. Perhaps I can upgrade the speakers one day and get some better sound out of it. Maybe go a route you have, but it'll be when I can leave it in various states of disassembly in my garage with a different daily vehicle lol. So, awhile from now for sure as I'm not able to do that.

 

[Idaho2018GTPremium]

I haven't heard the B&O system so I can't compare. I'm surprised it doesn't sound good (not surprised it wouldn't sound great, since it is still a factory system with cheap grade drivers). But I can honestly say that in my '18 GT Premium (with the 9 speakers), once I replaced the rear deck speakers with some Focal RCX 165 two way speakers, the whole system sounded much better. They are more sensitive (thus louder) than the horrible quality factory speakers with whizzer cones, so it helped balance the front center dash speaker, which was too overwhelming in the mix. With the slightly louder rear deck speakers with crystal highs and great mids, the whole system sounds better. I wish bass was a little stronger, but it isn't bad at all. Overall, it holds together fairly well even at louder volumes with the Focal speakers in the back deck. My next speaker mod may be to find better quality and more sensitive door subwoofer speakers, to bring the bass up a few dB. Haven't made it a priority, though, because the system now sounds pretty good as-is.

 

[CrashOverride]

y'all might want to experiment with the factory EQ settings that are cooked into the ACM (And you can only alter them with ForScan). You might like a boosted response, for example, for the base radio. I have the base stereo, with the base speakers, but when I upgraded to Sync3, I wired in an Alpine KTP-445U amp. I initially turned off the factory eq, and even with playing with the bass and treble settings on the ACM, I couldn't get it to sound the way I wanted. I left the output of the ACM Line level, but put back the factory EQ and I'm happy with the system. The bass is a bit lacking, but it probably isn't anything worse than anything out there. I think the problem is the "signal to noise" ratio is problematic. What I mean, is that our exhausts are pretty bass-ey, so in order to maintain any sort of bass more noticeable than the stock exhaust requires a good sized driver with some good power behind it. I have no source to authenticate that, but I've had the same effect from other cars.

Another way to test is to listen to the radio with the car off. I'll bet the bass all of the sudden sounds quite a bit better.

This will probably shock some, but the worst stereo I had was in my BMW 135i. It had 6 speakers. two "full range" in the doors, two "full range in the rear" and two 6.5 inch "subs" under the seat. The bass was okay, but there was absolutely no treble. BMW has a premium system that had tweeters in the door pillars, and all US cars had it until 2010, the year I had. So BMW in the infinite wisdom, boosted the snot out of the signal to force the full range speakers to have some semblance of treble. But, it was extremely shrill. I had never even heard of listener fatigue until I started researching it. I put in an Alpine 4-channel amp, ran some fairly decent component sets, and replaced the under seat 6.5 "subs" with 8 inch "subs". I won't go so far as to say it made it awesome...After all there wasn't a way that I knew of to "re-eq" the treble nonsense out of it, but with the treble down all the way, it was livable.

I think the problem with most "premium" car speakers is the marketing garbage. More speakers and more watts. throwing lots of lousy speakers into a car doesn't help the sound. And inflating the wattage doesn't help either. If the Shaker 500 system doesn't have at least a 40 amp fuse, then it's not 500 watts. Unless Ford can hit efficiency levels unmatched by anyone else. (I have no idea what size fuse it has, so if it is >= 40 then hey they might be honest here). For modifying, the problems become the re-eq like i mentioned (Although thankfully ForScan can fix that) but also the strange impedance levels if one wants to keep using the factory amps. Many systems like to use 2 ohm speakers, although my Ram truck has 8 ohm speakers.

 

[Briebee72]

y'all might want to experiment with the factory EQ settings that are cooked into the ACM (And you can only alter them with ForScan). You might like a boosted response, for example, for the base radio. I have the base stereo, with the base speakers, but when I upgraded to Sync3, I wired in an Alpine KTP-445U amp. I initially turned off the factory eq, and even with playing with the bass and treble settings on the ACM, I couldn't get it to sound the way I wanted. I left the output of the ACM Line level, but put back the factory EQ and I'm happy with the system. The bass is a bit lacking, but it probably isn't anything worse than anything out there. I think the problem is the "signal to noise" ratio is problematic. What I mean, is that our exhausts are pretty bass-ey, so in order to maintain any sort of bass more noticeable than the stock exhaust requires a good sized driver with some good power behind it. I have no source to authenticate that, but I've had the same effect from other cars.

Another way to test is to listen to the radio with the car off. I'll bet the bass all of the sudden sounds quite a bit better.

This will probably shock some, but the worst stereo I had was in my BMW 135i. It had 6 speakers. two "full range" in the doors, two "full range in the rear" and two 6.5 inch "subs" under the seat. The bass was okay, but there was absolutely no treble. BMW has a premium system that had tweeters in the door pillars, and all US cars had it until 2010, the year I had. So BMW in the infinite wisdom, boosted the snot out of the signal to force the full range speakers to have some semblance of treble. But, it was extremely shrill. I had never even heard of listener fatigue until I started researching it. I put in an Alpine 4-channel amp, ran some fairly decent component sets, and replaced the under seat 6.5 "subs" with 8 inch "subs". I won't go so far as to say it made it awesome...After all there wasn't a way that I knew of to "re-eq" the treble nonsense out of it, but with the treble down all the way, it was livable.

I think the problem with most "premium" car speakers is the marketing garbage. More speakers and more watts. throwing lots of lousy speakers into a car doesn't help the sound. And inflating the wattage doesn't help either. If the Shaker 500 system doesn't have at least a 40 amp fuse, then it's not 500 watts. Unless Ford can hit efficiency levels unmatched by anyone else. (I have no idea what size fuse it has, so if it is >= 40 then hey they might be honest here). For modifying, the problems become the re-eq like i mentioned (Although thankfully ForScan can fix that) but also the strange impedance levels if one wants to keep using the factory amps. Many systems like to use 2 ohm speakers, although my Ram truck has 8 ohm speakers.

Could you point me to info on how to use forscan for this? I have the set up but I have had one heck of a time finding reliable or even correctly explained info on how and what exactly to do with forscan on anything. I have found half assed spread sheets halfway explained info and stuff that always leaves out 2 or 3 details that are necessary it is infuriating. LIke anything else on the internet tutorial wise people only tell you half what you actually need to know. Never could understand the point of making tutorials and then not explaining everything. And it is usually the important stuff they skip.

 

[CrashOverride]

Could you point me to info on how to use forscan for this? I have the set up but I have had one heck of a time finding reliable or even correctly explained info on how and what exactly to do with forscan on anything. I have found half assed spread sheets halfway explained info and stuff that always leaves out 2 or 3 details that are necessary it is infuriating. LIke anything else on the internet tutorial wise people only tell you half what you actually need to know. Never could understand the point of making tutorials and then not explaining everything. And it is usually the important stuff they skip.

Sure no problem. I actually created a ForScan sheet myself when I did the Sync3 swap. This thread kind of shows how to use it. The module you want to look into is the "ACM" module, which starts with "727".

The F150 crowd has the most extensive listing of ForScan settings. This is the spreadsheet that has stuff for newer-than-2017 Fords (I have a 2015, so I didn't need it although the EQ setting appears to be the same).https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...iVSlDFGFHnfeuhb3RTMVz95730/edit#gid=338817466

If the URL didn't link you to the "ACM" tab on the bottom, click that one.

If you scroll down to row 82/83 (As of me writing this...it's a living document so it could change). You will find the heading as "727-01-02". The next set looks like "x*xx" and the last set looks like "xx". Using this nomenclature, the x's represent anything. Meaning that your car will be different than mine, and different than your neighbors and so on. The hexadecimal character of interest is the astericks. The spreadsheet shows there are nine different EQ settings. Presumably there are nine different eq settings Ford has developed for their vehicles based on the sound systems, and the acoustics of each vehicle. To try them, write down/take a screenshot/etc what you alread have. It will look something like 727-01-02 4356 A7. You are only interested in the asterisk, which in my example would be "3". You can change it to a 0,1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9 and get different EQ curves. "0" means no eq, and export a flat signal. Not that it matters, but mine is set at "1" which is the base package mustang EQ setting.

I'd recommend giving it a try. Change it, write it, drive around a few days, rinse and repeat. It's definitely worth the price of the Bluetooth OBD-2 adaptor. Hopefully, you can find an eq setting that helps! Also remember that, you still have the tone controls in the radio itself -- these ForScan "eq" settings are the hidden ones which are applied on top of your settings. So in addition to changing the eq setting in ForScan, you will still want to play around with the tone controls on the head unit itself.

 

[Briebee72]

Sure no problem. I actually created a ForScan sheet myself when I did the Sync3 swap. This thread kind of shows how to use it. The module you want to look into is the "ACM" module, which starts with "727".

The F150 crowd has the most extensive listing of ForScan settings. This is the spreadsheet that has stuff for newer-than-2017 Fords (I have a 2015, so I didn't need it although the EQ setting appears to be the same).https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...iVSlDFGFHnfeuhb3RTMVz95730/edit#gid=338817466

If the URL didn't link you to the "ACM" tab on the bottom, click that one.

If you scroll down to row 82/83 (As of me writing this...it's a living document so it could change). You will find the heading as "727-01-02". The next set looks like "x*xx" and the last set looks like "xx". Using this nomenclature, the x's represent anything. Meaning that your car will be different than mine, and different than your neighbors and so on. The hexadecimal character of interest is the astericks. The spreadsheet shows there are nine different EQ settings. Presumably there are nine different eq settings Ford has developed for their vehicles based on the sound systems, and the acoustics of each vehicle. To try them, write down/take a screenshot/etc what you alread have. It will look something like 727-01-02 4356 A7. You are only interested in the asterisk, which in my example would be "3". You can change it to a 0,1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9 and get different EQ curves. "0" means no eq, and export a flat signal. Not that it matters, but mine is set at "1" which is the base package mustang EQ setting.

I'd recommend giving it a try. Change it, write it, drive around a few days, rinse and repeat. It's definitely worth the price of the Bluetooth OBD-2 adaptor. Hopefully, you can find an eq setting that helps! Also remember that, you still have the tone controls in the radio itself -- these ForScan "eq" settings are the hidden ones which are applied on top of your settings. So in addition to changing the eq setting in ForScan, you will still want to play around with the tone controls on the head unit itself.

Wow thanks so much. I know what im doing tomorrow.

 

[Condor1970]

I dunno know bout you guys, but I think the best decision I made, was to get the base model with Sync-1, and do a Pioneer D-Series speaker upgrade, front and rear. It cost a good $360, but they are far superior in quality than anything sold stock. Then, leveling the EQ in Forscan made everything come alive. Once I installed the new Phoenix PX6 head unit, the music sounds even slightly better, with better loudness on the low end. I honestly don't even need a sub-woofer with these speakers, because unlike the JL Audio and Focal speakers, the Pioneers have a bottom end of 30 Hz. It's quite impressive for just a set of 6.5's.

 

[Pero]

I think the problem with most "premium" car speakers is the marketing garbage. More speakers and more watts. throwing lots of lousy speakers into a car doesn't help the sound. And inflating the wattage doesn't help either. If the Shaker 500 system doesn't have at least a 40 amp fuse, then it's not 500 watts. Unless Ford can hit efficiency levels unmatched by anyone else. (I have no idea what size fuse it has, so if it is >= 40 then hey they might be honest here).

My 2019 GT has B&O system with following fuses (from User Manual):

Fuse Number ----------- Rating ----------------- Function
F05 ........................................ 20A ................................ Subwoofer Amp
F27 ........................................ 30A ................................ Amp
F33......................................... 20A ................................ Audio Head unit

Amps together has 50A, which in theory can supply max 600W.
I don't know if F33 can add something to end sum (if Head unit would have it's own amp to power some smaller speakers directly)?
Why then Ford declared B&O system as 1000W ?

 

[Pero]

They could be playing the peak vs RMS game.

Yes, that could be the case.
Nowhere in the documentation is written which type of "wattage" is addressed.

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