A Kia EV6 owner has made a modification to their car’s sound system that nets owners significantly improved audio quality by rewiring the EV6’s trunk-mounted subwoofer. By simply rearranging four wires that deliver power to the subwoofer, the owner claims they have solved a problem Kia or its audio supplier, Meridian, seems to have not been aware of: the EV6’s speaker is “out of phase.”
What The Heck Does “Out Of Phase” Mean?
Kyle Edward
To understand how rewiring the EV6’s sub fixes this issue, we’ve got to cover some terminology. When a speaker is out of phase, it means that certain frequencies are being canceled out by equal and opposite sound frequencies from other speakers. Most of us are actually already familiar with this effect: noise-canceling headphones use phasing to cancel out sounds outside your headphones with other noise, which results in you not hearing whatever is happening on the other side of the speakers in your headphones.
This is, in effect, what’s happening with the subwoofer in the EV6. As the owner illustrated in their Reddit post, the solution is to reverse the speaker’s polarity. You can also check out the video below for a more in-depth tutorial. In essence, the process involves swapping a corresponding pair of wires. Doing so is pretty simple and doesn’t require more than a screwdriver.
Swapping Some Wires Fixes An Issue EV6 Owners Have With Sound Quality
Kia
It sounds too easy – so easy it may be hard to believe that either Kia or Meridian missed it. However, The Drive confirmed it is at least a possibility. Speaking with industry audio experts, the outlet reports that the issue exists and that swapping these wires around does solve the out-of-phase issue: “…they [industry audio experts] agreed on one thing: It’s a rookie mistake that the manufacturer should have caught.”
What remains to be seen is what steps, if any, Kia will take to address this. It’s possible the automaker could go as far as to issue a recall. However, recalls are usually the product of somewhat lengthy internal investigations into an issue before they’re announced via the National Highway Safety and Traffic Administration (NHTSA). For now, it seems owners have at least figured out a workaround instead of an official fix.
Â
