Background - I traded my 2010 Lexus ES 350 in last Friday.
I leased my 1st Honda. 2013 Accord V6 EX-L w/o Nav.
I noticed when my wife and I took a short drive Sunday and noticed
that while listening to XW Symphony Hall and Classical Pop that the sound of the to put it bluntly sucked. It sound muffled and hollow. I thought well I haven't set the tone adjustments yet so it should sound better after I set up the treble, bass and subwoofer.

Well I set everything up, treble/bass 0 and subwoofer about 4. It still sounded like junk. I went and adjusted the treble/bass to about 4 and still sounded muffled and hollow.

Am I expecting more from the Honda audio system? My late Lexus audio system was just so pure it sounded like I was sitting in a concert hall.

 

the lexus is a higher end vehicle than the accord. I would imagine it has a nicer audio system. are you leasing with the plan to buy or are you going to trade it back in? you could get a stereo comprable to what the lexus had without spending a ton of money. but if you arent keeping the car may not be worth it. the factory speakers in the accord are rather cheaply made. when I changed mine out, I was actually amazed at how they looked. If I saw them before I heard them, I would think the sound was amazing because of what was producing that sound.

an amp, a set of components for the front, and some mid bass drivers in the rear, plus install accessories and wire and you would be set.

 

I know that comparing a Lexus to the Accord is like comparing apples to oranges. But since the Accord is the top of the line in Honda's sedan line I would have thought that the audio system would have sounded better.

It's too early to know if I am keeping the Accord when the lease is up.

But thanks for your comment.

 

just for some perspective though, think about it this way.
acura and honda are the same, just like toyota and lexus are the same.

neither honda nor toyota are top of the line. acura and lexus are these companies top cars. they put different badges on them to sell them in the states.

In japan they are high end honda's and toyota's. but americans care a lot about brand name so they put a different name on the high ends to sell more.

A friend of mine has an acura RL and the factory sound in it is much better than the factory sound in my accord was.

 

Read the sticky thread "problems with Nav and Bluetooth". You are not alone and a patch should be out in March if we are lucky. A lot of us are very disappointed to say the least.

 

I did read the sticky concerning the "problems with Nav/bluetooth". I don't have the Nav system and my iPod Nano is plugged into the USB port at the bottom of the center console. I also don't stream audio from my iPhone. I did one one occasion just to check and see if the audio would sound any different from the iPod and XM.

 

more importantly, XM has terrible sound quality. it's good for background noise only, IMO.

put in a good CD and use that as the basis of comparison.

 

Apparently there is a sound system update that should make a huge improvement in sound quality and bass. I've heard others say that Honda issued this update in February, but it was up to dealerships to ensure the update was installed. I think there are definitely a fair amount of 2013 accords that missed out on this update.

The first 13 Accord I test drove was a Sport, and I was really happy with the car except for the sound system. In fact, I was really disappointed in the sound quality. No bass to speak of; it sounded as if all low frequencies were being filtered out. So at that time I realized that I would have to upgrade the sound system if I bought the car. About a month later I bought a different 13 Accord Sport with the intention of upgrading the sound system, however the sound quality and bass in this car was drastically better than what I heard before in the other Sport. In fact the sound quality and bass is so decent in the Sport model that I bought, that I've decided that I don't need to upgrade the system now. The difference between sound quality in my Accord and the one I test drove a month earlier is night and day. Obviously this difference has to be due to a software/firmware update, since both Accords had the identical 160 watt 4-speaker hardware. The Sport I bought came over from another dealership and must have had the sound system updated there.

So, if your bass is flat and system sound really poor, then your car probably didn't receive this update. If that the case then be sure to hit up your dealership to get this update installed. You'll be really amazed at the improvement in sound quality.

 

some of the poor sound quality may be the Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) system at work.

 

Please read my post of today on how much better the stock system sounds with the ANC off. I think you will be impressed.