front/rear fading of speakers

The JBL system appears to be designed to emphasize your being able to localize the audio position of a virtual stage in front of you. Because you ears localize using the higher audio frequencies, JBL makes use of those front speakers.

To me, coming from a larger car with a Bose system, the JBL seems a little "thin" and lacks the resonant bass when rendering instruments like, for example, a cello. That's not to say that the system should be boomy, but I would much prefer a little more moxie below the mid-range.

I've found that setting the system so that the visual display shows the center-point about 80% to the rear helps. But, because of those front speakers, the audio center-point does not seem to shift as far back as the graphic would suggest.

Here is a YouTube video of a gentleman from JBL giving an enthusiastic explanation of the design of the Prime's JBL audio system:

I find that being able to create a personal collection of music on a USB drive is a very nice feature -- even though the MP3 format does not provide the best fidelity by a long shot.

 

I agree and in the beginning I thought it was a little weak. I changed my mind quickly after I went to the sound settings and bumped each of the treble, mid, and bass only one step up from the default. That made a huge difference in the over all fullness of the sound that I thought was lacking.

I agree.

 

Ok, as a brand new owner of an “Advanced” model, and maybe I’m dense, but I cannot seem to find and controls for fading F/R or balance L/R for the JBL audio system. I found the “audio setting” both in the manual and on the display, but the only choice giving are presets for stations and label covers. What am I missing? Would have thought there would some equalizer setting too?

 

Short of having a degree in automotive electronics or a photographic memory for the user manual, this is just one of those simple but not immediately obvious things.

First, notice a touch-screen button "sound" at the bottom right of each of the "source" screens for AM, FM, SAT, USB, etc.:



When you touch "sound", you will get another screen with the settings you're looking for:



I'm not going to say "RTFM" -- but I do suggest downloading the various manuals in PDF format and saving them on your computer. You can then easily let your computer search for terms like "sound", etc.

Someday those clever engineers at Toyota (and other companies) will figure out that they can include a PDF reader in the car and provide all of the current manuals in digital format so that you can just use the screen in your car to find out stuff like this. And that would let you put more useful things in your "glove box" other than the five-pounds of paper manuals.

 

Thank you very much! The “sound” selection was not visible to me with no indicator arrow suggesting to move left or right. It was driving me absolutely nuts.