Installed a 4200nex in my bose equipped 06 coupe. The sound is just awful compared to stock HU. Very bright, no full midbass to speak of and the soundstage is suddenly very far forward.

I've messed around with all the settings I can find, even tried the autoeq but can't even get it back to the same sound as oem. I know sound is highly subjective but this is obvious to everyone that sits in the car so not just me. Am I looking at going whole hog and replacing everything with aftermarket or have I overlooked a connection/setting/feature of Bose not included in the pioneer (voltage out etc)?

 

Sounds like a connection problem or something along those lines.
I have a single din basic stereo running through a line out converter (amplified to signal) and then back into the wire harness and through the OEM bose amp in the trunk.

No fancy adapters or anything else. The line out converter I have is old and only supports two channels (so I had to choose between front/back or Left/Right). The sound quality is still very good and definitely better than oem. I have s 10" sub to up the bass but even with it turned off it still thumps good for an OEM system - again better than with the OEM headunit

 

No, he just didn't follow the DDin guide that specifically calls out which module you have to use to convert 2 ohm... he most likely bought the Metra 7550 or w/e instead of the PAC module as recommended. I had the same problem.

 

Not an issue of ohms, it's balanced vs. unbalanced signal, but yeah, probably didn't follow the guide.

 

Nope. Followed your guide exclusively. Very well put together and I thank you for that. Used the PAC-ROEM2 as recommended.

I haven't pulled it out to double check the connections but I can fade L/R F/R so I would assume everything is connected properly. It's just such a drastic change in sound I was hoping it was something I've overlooked like a voltage setting or something like that.

 

Dang, we'll make sure they are equally balanced, or I'm not sure and the wizard will chime in .

 

Well, my next thought is that it's not sending the full-range signal. Check for HPF and LPF settings and make sure they're off for both front and rear. Lots of Pioneer units default to a filtered signal, so EQ won't do anything to fix that until you enable full range on all of the channels.

 

Figured it out. There's a setting for listening position. While it was set to "All" and all speaker levels were manually zeroed, switching it to "off" completely rectified the situation. For some reason I never noticed the off button to the lower right of the screen.