Dear Ford, I want my 895 dollars back.

[Rock&Roll]

I like the Premium Sync 3 with the Shaker Sound system and its worth the extra money but ...

I have tennitis from years of being a Loud dirt bag musician and I have a constant ringing in my ears. I almost never have it on and or it's never loud. I mostly listen the exhaust these days. I do have a flash drive with mms's just in case I feel like hearing music.

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[nathanks]

I feel exactly the same. I found a car optioned the way I wanted it, and it just happened to have the B&O (which I didn't care about). But I have not been impressed at all. When I first got the car I went back in the trunk to make sure the sub was even connected. The sub is laughable and the quality of the rest of it is questionable.

 

[Qcman17]

I have the 16 premium Sync 3 with 9 speakers, and a vast improvement was made by clipping the center speaker, fading the the front passenger seat (fader front balance right).

Agreed 100% Sync 3 as well and I used very similar config settings. I just unplugged my center speaker last week my God what a difference! I actually like the system now. OP put a thick book ( I used Tom Petty's biography lol) over the center speaker grill and then listen to it. If it sounds a good bit better then start there.

This is the likely culprit for most of your issues.

 

[JCFoster]

Do you guys that don’t care for it listen to mostly FM radio? I know my Shaker sounds like crap on FM unless it’s a HD station, but through Bluetooth to my iPhone it sounds pretty descent. Had a Samsung that sounded better. With that, it’s all subject to the source. I wonder if the B&O is the same.

 

[TheReaper]

Yeah my girlfriend was the same. Her little rockford fosgate 4 speaker system in her Nissan Juke sounds better.

How old are you ?

 

[Linkster1666]

The '97 had 9000 miles on it when I got it (was a rental), cranked up it could not be heard over the A/C blower, new head unit fixed it enough with a set of Tri-axials. The Premium in the 2005 Roush body clone was ok. The Premium in the 2012 was acceptable, BARELY. I only had that car for a year or it would have changed.

The 2019, 9 speaker, nope. You could hear it (sort of) at 30 (cranked) with the A/C blowing and 80 mph on some good Interstate. I fixed it, it gets to 10 and sounds good now.

Bad to ok to acceptable to you're serious? I can not believe the stock speakers, paper and about a gram magnet. Hope the magnet was expensive.

 

[Spork3245]

My 19’s B&O sounds great, better than my 13 or 16’s premium Sony system and almost as good as the high-end aftermarket system I did for my 01.
OP, did you enable the surround (or whatever) setting in the sound settings? The default is stereo which indeed sounds very underwhelming, even compared to the previous Sony system.

 

[MaskedRacerX]

Just going to C&P my previous response to this:

I also had the Shaker Pro upgrade in the '16, and vs. the '19 B&O, I'd say the latter has a little brighter highs, the mid-base seems a bit punchier, depending on the music you listen to the roll off on the lower end bass can be better or worse at higher volume. In general I think it's noticeably better, but not dramatic, but far better than the base system. I don't include aftermarket setups in the comparison, I'm just not into doing those kind of mods, I want it to be good as delivered, I save the tinkering, tube rolling, constant gyrations for my home systems

Also wanted to add: for the small amount it costs - in the grand scheme of a $30K+ purchase (and especially loaded Premium GTs / Convertibles in the $50K+ range) - it's a pretty decent upgrade. I mean, it was like 1.5% of the cost of my car to have a system from day one, that's pretty decent, that doesn't require pulling out panels, hassle, that's covered by warranty, etc.

 

[seth21w]

The best factory sound system was in my 06 mustang gt with shaker that was a good system should of stayed with that setup.

 

[Schwerin]

Do you guys that don’t care for it listen to mostly FM radio? I know my Shaker sounds like crap on FM unless it’s a HD station, but through Bluetooth to my iPhone it sounds pretty descent. Had a Samsung that sounded better. With that, it’s all subject to the source. I wonder if the B&O is the same.

I'm mostly listening to Music form my phone.

 

[3star2nr]

Man Ford has had issues with "premium" stereos. I remember back in the day was same thing with the Mach 440 stereo. It sucked and then they made it about possible to change due to it ran on some funky voltage which required changing out the entire system wires and all if I remember correctly. Now this much Hyped B and O. I mean seriously the stereo in my 2007 focus with 4 crap speakers and a replacement walmart pioneer head unit that was 80 bucks sounds better. It just works. my bluetooth connects automatically and right to pandora with me not even taking it out of my pocket of doing anything with wires.

I think the new sync stuff is overboard makes everything take longer and is more complicated. And I'm sorry the B and O system does not sound that great. I could have spent half as much and replaced a base system and had better sound. If I leave it on regular I can definitely tell the bass (i'm not a rap or hip hop bass person to be clear I like rock and mostly non bass oriented music) is coming for the back corner and sounds like its in a box. And if you leave the car running and music on and then go open your trunk it sounds like the subwoofer is dying trying to keep up. Putting it in surround mode helps blend it out but then all the music sounds sorta wispy and washed out.

I'M just highly disappointed for the cost. And yes I tried it out at dealer but how much can you really play with it? You are more focused on the car itself at the time. It's not till you get your music and play with the settings and all that you get a feel for the stereo. Short of replacing the whole system what low cost options did any of you do to make it sound better?

I know it is all perspective. People coming from less than premium stereos will think this sounds great but those of us coming from other cars with premium stereos ... well this really ain't worth 895 dollars.

I saw that Video where B and O were all proud and they claimed they designed the system to work with the harmonics of the car and blah blah blah.. The people got in and were all wow this is amazing. Oh my go best stereo I have ever heard.... I think they forgot to put that one in my car.

I have used a thumb drive with 320kb mp3s and that helps a bit over compressed music from pandora or spotify. But it is still lacking.

Anyone made a mp3 file structure on a optical disk and see if that helps any? I wouldn't think so over a thumb drive but our cd players do play mp3 file structures from a disk so was curious if worth the hassle.

Did u test drive the car when u bought it?

 

[mkonrad]

Always do a blind a/b test with a Camaro before buying. See which car sounds better.

 

[maniak]

Yeah my girlfriend was the same. Her little rockford fosgate 4 speaker system in her Nissan Juke sounds better.

We ended up with the same reaction. We went from a 2006 mustang with the shaker 1000 and an after market head unit to the 2019 B&O and while the B&O sound cleaner/better at low volumes it had crap low end bass and distort early. What bass it does have acts like it's some cheap, under powered, tiny sub that isn't really a subwoofer as it's playing way too much upper bass and not acting like a real subwoofer.

It looks like a DSR1 and new amps/speakers is in the future but that extra money we paid for the B&O was just a waste.

~Mark

 

[torqued]

I think it's pretty decent. I live around hills but once I get a few freeway offramps up it sounds a lot better. I realize there isn't $900 of equipment value in it, but not having downright crappy sound and not being forced to replace it is worth quite a bit to me.

 

[GreenS550]

I have the sound package on the Bullitt, but it is no where near the quality of my explorer. Or, my daughter's 2012 Escape for that matter.

It's good, just not what you would expect for the price.

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