Guess I got lucky... I have an early '14 V8S with the upgraded system and have never noticed buzzing or severe rattling. I do occasionally get a bit of a thud in certain very bass-heavy tracks but i have to play it very loud to get even that. My settings are DTS with everything at midpoint.

Other than wishing for a bit more subwoofer-driven kick in the pants, I've been satisfied. Hopefully my SVR arriving in a couple of months will be similarly lucky.

On another note it sounds like some of you aren't as lucky as we are in Seattle in terms of the dealer situation. I think I would find that aspect more frustrating than any issue with the vehicle itself but fortunately it's not an issue at all for me.

 

Amazing what an extra hour will do

 

My wakeboard boat has a system that blows my jaguar away.

 

I continue to ponder what the hey is going on, with some owners reporting no problems and a good sized batch who want to scream over there poor sounding systems. Intermittent quality control install coupled with intermittent batches of bad processors? Someone must have a clue by now.

 

+1 - One would think!

 

I took my car in again today, this time I asked if we can sit in a few other f-types to try and figure out how wide spread the issue is. We took my USB stick into a 2016 AWD S, 2 different 2016 R's, and a base 2017. The issue with the distortion coming from the tweeters was prevalent in all of them. Each had varying levels of rattling coming from rear sub area with the R's being substantially worse than the others.

After hearing the issue in every single 2016 and up F-type I have personally been in, its hard for me to say the issue is not wide spread. I can reproduce the issue without any problem by playing a couple songs I know exhibit a particular type of bass. (Drake - Own It is the best example)

I took the car in specifically for the tweeter distortion. The foreman had no real solution since it was in EVERY car we tested. He recommended that he file EPQR's on each car we sat in, stating it's vin number and the issue. I guess an EPQR is some type of internal report for Jaguar letting them know there is an issue in the design of the car or system itself. If enough EPQR's are made it will force Jaguar to take notice and have them hopefully issue a fix.

 

You described exactly my own experience, including the Drake song. I even named my USB stick "Rattle". You probably have the same Crossover issue I do.
Try out a function generator like this:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/g-au...768229610?mt=8
And play 20-50 Hz, so low that only the Subs should reproduce, and yet you'll see the tweeters going wild with buzzing/rattling/similar distortion.
So what other songs do you have on that USB stick?

The XF has the same speakers as the F-Type, and you can see the tweeter should only be playing 3kHz and higher - clearly not the case.

The full specs come from Meridian directly in this PDF.

 

Thanks for putting up " the fight ". I'm sure others appreciate it as much as I do. Honestly, what was the facial reaction of the sevice advisor when he was next to you during the test. It is very embarrassing for you to prove there is a problem in do many different unsold new cars. What type of vib were you getting from the guy.
Thanks

 

I wonder if this is somehow related to coupe or convertible. I've never been in a coupe but I assume that the rear speaker placement may be different. Of course that should have no bearing on the tweets trying to reproduce bass. An audio spectrum analyzer connected to the tweets would tell if the crossovers are really doing the job.

 

I appreciate the responses guys. This is not my first time speaking with this foreman. The last time he was able to fix some of the subwoofer rattle but thought the tweeter issue maybe a bit rate issue with the music. I actually went out and purchased the drake album on CD to prove that it was not a bit rate issue.

The fact that every car we sat in had the issue is both a good and bad thing. It was good because it was easy to replicate the problem, and proves that there is something innately wrong with the system. It was bad because the dealer has no solution, replacing broken parts with broken parts won't fix anything.

Every other time I have been to the dealer, I sit in the car with a tech and they hear the problem clearly; However, when I pick up the car they admit to the system being faulty but say the parts themselves are faulty and they are unable to make any fixes. On the final service report they simply state that the "speakers are functioning as designed." This is a cop out and creates an insanely stupid never ending cycle that will lead to no changes. When I called Jaguar North America to tell them that the audio is a problem, they conducted an investigation and found that there was no issue with my car basing it mostly on the "speakers are functioning as designed" line. They wouldn't even send an engineer out.

I told the foreman that we need to put on paper somewhere that there is a problem otherwise the issue will never get resolved and the fact that every car coming from the factory has this problem does not somehow mean it's not a problem. That is when he suggested the EPQR's.

Pistol, thanks for that information. It is crazy that we have seemed to identified the problem pretty well but we can't get the information to the proper sources because of Jaguar's inability to recognize that there is a wide spread issue. For reference, Kanye West's Wolves, FML, and Highlights were good examples. Drake's new album also sounds terrible, I think the song Feel No Ways was a good example. I also had a few EDM songs on it. They have my "rattle" stick with them right now but I should get the car back in a day or two and I'll make a more exhaustive list.

 

It was suggested about 2 years ago that one major reason some have issues and others are relatively satisfied is, in many cases, a function of one's musical taste. I'm an acoustic and classic rock fan, and I was satisfied from day 1 without any need for the TSB. I don't know who Drake, FML, and Highlights are, but I do know about Kanye and would never listen to him.

I don't think this is the only explanation because I think there were rattles and vibration problems in some cars, that were just pure quality control issues in assembly that some have and some do not.

I acknowledge that it is quite likely that if you had put Drake in my car at your settings you would have heard the same thing that bothers you.

 

Like you, they tried to discredit my music that it was not the highest quality, first they blamed bluetooth, then they blamed the quality of the songs. Then I put 320kbit tracks on the USB.

It would be good if they tried to fix it on one of their own cars instead of getting us to turn in the cars for days or weeks. That's not going to happen though.

Same exact experience. In the car, the service advisor realizes and admits how noticeably bad it is. On the final service report it states "behaves as intended" or "operates as designed". I escalated this with JNA and a CRC Supervisor, and they finally got the Field Service Engineer (Rob Davis) to scheduled out in a month from now. We'll meet at the dealership, where they scheduled an appointment for me on July 19th.

Same exact experience. If they are telling me that it's normal, I at least want an official statement confirming the symptoms (distortion, rattle, buzz, etc) and saying that it's expected and normal in these conditions. After insisting, they added on the report that they "Confirmed a previously noted electronic sound thru the tweeters while playing client's provided sound files". Ridiculous.

I am sure Jaguar knows about this. They are not willing to admit the issue, and are not willing to pay the costs to fix it for everyone, given how widespread this is.

You can find more details I provided in the previous pages.
As I did, maybe you can also record some of these symptoms and post them up on YouTube - in my case the rattle came out incredibly well. You can then email them over to Jaguar CRC at jagweb1@jaguarlandrover.com

 

Just to be absolutely clear, yes the tweeters and the midrange speakers in the F-Type are the exact same ones as used in the Meridian-equipped X250 XF's, same part numbers.

But the door bass speakers and the subs are different components, different part numbers. While you can assume that the ratings and ranges of the bass and sub speakers will be the same, it's not a given. There are two subwoofer channels on the XF, but in the F-Type there are four, so something will have to be different there.

The amps are the same between F-Type and XF but that's a different story (also the same amp in the XJ, Evoque, LR2, and others).

On the Meridian 380W and 770W (825W for XF) systems they are wired up a similar way, with individual channels going to each tweeter, midrange and bass speaker in the front doors.

So if the front tweeters in the F-Type are being overdriven somehow, it seems unlikely to me for it to be a hardware problem otherwise these issues would also be present in the XF, and nobody has ever made these complaints about an XF.

So it's a software / digital tuning problem then? But if it was software related then EVERY car should have the same problems, but it seems not all do, well not all the earlier cars anyhow...

 

Oh and btw, the speaker outputs from the amp are mixed up between the F-Type and XF. For example the pin-outs from the amp can be cross-checked as such.

XF rear right tweeter is F-Type front right midrange (pins 7 & 15)
XF front left tweeter is F-Type front right tweeter (pins 3 & 11)
XF rear right bass is F-Type rear right mid/tweeter (pins 8 & 16)

And so on...

The amps are apparently not a traditional channelled amplifer, since the channels can be changed via software. Any channel can be assigned an audio range and location (front, rear, left, right, bass, mid, high)

So i'm wondering if there might have been a screw-up in the channel assigning in the software...

 

Thanks Cambo. It would be interesting to see if it's a software issue... If the amplifier can for example configure the crossover, or if simply the speakers are connected to the wrong pins. Maybe all of cars have the issue, but since it is only noticed on some types of songs, which some owners may not play, it hasn't surfaced more.

Here's some additional info I found:

 

The power max rating of these speakers seems quite low to me (tweeter). They are also not very efficient. They could be overdriven also.

My dealer as I said in an earlier post wants to fix this for me, but is at a loss as what to do. I can ask if they will file EPQRs.

 

My car doesn't seem to have the problems that others have, but then again I have no idea who Drake is. Before they applied the TSB for speaker rattle, I had that issue on the driver's side with bass on some songs. The TSB fixed it. At the same time they upgraded the S/W for the Amp. I didn't think to ask what the S/W upgrade did.

 

I couldn't be happier with the sound system, and in my book the fact that it couldn't be used to blast certain kinds of music is a desirable feature.

 

Interesting how I was one of the pioneers on the 2015 F-Type that I just traded surrounding this issue with the stereo. In fact I worked with JLRNA on getting it understood, fixed etc., and they did just that for me, then the fix came out of the UK with the Styrofoam.

I now have the 2nd half build 770W system on the R AWD, and pushed it pretty hard yesterday with classic rock, acoustic etc., and not a problem whatsoever in any mode, using bluetooth streaming. I figured that if bluetooth could handle it, then it could only get better with CD, or USB etc.

Not sure of the intermit. problem here, but it has to be the first half of 16 builds back as I know the problem exists and is real. They must have a fix at the factory for the 2nd half 16's forward, as it worked in my car like a charm. I was suspect to this stereo issue, and was in touch with my sales guy at least a half dozen times to assure me that the thing was tested, pushed hard, and will meet my expectations. He assured me as such and was "Spot on"!

Qualification.....this is only with 2.5 hours of push, but I think that is long enough to conclude as to the outcome. I will update if this should change, but I am not happy or should I say lucky to be on the other side of the ledger with the fix from factory yielding a decent result in the stereo dept.

Good luck to those trying to seek resolution, as this is the most frustrating thing when you like good engine sound and complimentary good audio sound as well.

 

This is exactly what I've wondered - tweeter signal going to midrange, and midrange signal going to tweeters. If I could figure out how to take the door card off, I might hook up a spectrum analyzer to see what's actually going to each speaker.