I’m always confused when I read these posts that complain about the Meridian audio in the Defender. I have the 400W version in my P400SE and using a high quality audio file streaming service like Tidal, and more recently Qobuz (best file rate of any service), the sound is more than decent. I would recommend avoiding Sirius and lower file rate streaming services but most especially Sirius XM - it sounds just as awful in my Defender as it did in my previous Jeep Summit with a great sounding Harmon Kardon Surround system. I think it might be more to do with dud speakers that slipped through the QC section of the production line, rather than the system being poor. I’m not saying you’re wrong - just that we know there are many (many) quality control issues with the Defender and perhaps poorly wired, or poor quality speakers (or amps) incorrectly got installed on some vehicles, because it doesn’t seem like a universal issue - certainly I have no issues with mine, and I’ve also rented two Defenders in the UK and both sounded good too.

Either way, if you do switch out for better speakers or system - let us know. Most of the time, I like the sound of the P400 engine so much I drive in silence anyway….(that or the PiviPro system HATES CarPlay and music apps….)

 

We bought a Discovery today with the 700w surround Meridian in it and was disappointed when we first heard it. We tweaked a little, sounded better later in the day.

Took it for another drive at night and it dawned where I had heard this type of poor sound before, on my Bluetooth headphones. Not that they are bad headphones, they are top of the line, but every now and then the signal seems to get weak and you lose sound quality.

Car didn't come updated with the latest software, its downloading now hopefully that gives it an improvement.

 

Started today with my speaker upgrade, started with deadening. 2 layers, heavy dampening first, foam second.





inside panel foam

 

How easy was this? Any broken clips or new rattles?

 

Not very difficult, only time consuming and I went one step further by unplugging the cable tree

This helps/ explains:

 

Nice work so far. You picked speakers?

 

I like high quality sound but know very little about the science behind it all. We recently bought an X5 and only the middle quality HK sound system was available. So I'm having my trusted auto electronics shop install a Focal system in the X5 for about $4K. He said I could do a similar Focal speaker swap for about $5K in the Defender and it would improve the sound. As noted above, he also mentioned the Meridian Surround Sound speakers are somewhat cheap. Of course he had me listen to a $13K Morel system they just finished installing in another Defender. So tempting if I knew I would keep the Defender beyond the warranty period.

 

"Somewhat cheap" is being extremely generous. He has honest tact and that's respectable in a sales person. They are $5 speakers and I'm not exaggerating.

I ran a custom car audio shop and owned a company that did theater rooms and whole-home audio for years.

 

Yeah, but at 5 bucks each, as many speakers as they claim there are, it all adds up. Pretty soon you're talking about some real money.

 

@allegedly Did some reseach on the speakers. Between Focal and BLAM. Both 2ohm compo sets .

Will probably go for the BLAM Live 165A , pricerange $ 300 / $ 400