Does your outside soundbar work as it should?

[freen03]

We have a Sirius radio subscription and my wife likes to listen to the radio while she is outside. Our sound bar on our outside entertainment center hardly transmits any sound at all and to hear the radio outside you have to turn the radio volume up so loud that the sound bar outside is useless. We picked our coach up at the factory and, when after checking everything they knew to check and agreeing with me that it is not correct, our technician and his manager checked with the department that installed it. They were told that is the way it works but needless to say the sound bar is no benefit for the radio when outside so we just turn it up like on our last coach without a sound bar.
Is anyone else having this problem?

Thanks in advance

[David D.]

How does the sound bar work with the dash radio? You can go to the music channels if you have Direct or Dish tv and it will work great.

[freen03]

Originally Posted by David D.

How does the sound bar work with the dash radio? You can go to the music channels if you have Direct or Dish tv and it will work great.

On our 2017 there is a switch on the outside entertainment center to move the soundbar so it will pick up whats playing on the radio inside. My wife has her certain channels on Sirius that she likes to listen to.

[Rd1]

I am out of town and don't have access to my notes. From memory, I think I had to adjust the balance on the dash radio to get the outside speaker to work. On mine, I think I had to adjust to the rear. check your dash radio and adjust the balance see if it raises the vol for the outside speakers.

if it didn't work, let me know, i'll be back to the coach in about 10 days and will check my notes. had the same issue.

[Skilletface]

At the risk of alienating some folks, is it possible the mfg's of outdoor entertainment systems for RV's have considered other RV's pursuit of peaceful time away from the syber day to day?
Unless you are tailgating in an environment conducive to the entertainment, just maybe wireless headphones would be more conducive for RV nahbors .
I'm just saying.

voyage sûr mon ami

Sent from my SM-G900V using iRV2 - RV Forum mobile app

[Vanslam]

Originally Posted by Skilletface

At the risk of alienating some folks, is it possible the mfg's of outdoor entertainment systems for RV's have considered other RV's pursuit of peaceful time away from the syber day to day?
Unless you are tailgating in an environment conducive to the entertainment, just maybe wireless headphones would be more conducive for RV nahbors .
I'm just saying.

voyage sûr mon ami

Sent from my SM-G900V using iRV2 - RV Forum mobile app

I would have to agree but it still doesn't fix his problem. I don't have an outside entertainment system and it took me a heck of a time to find my Canyon Star without one. But I do use a blue tooth speaker at times. I don't think I answered your question either. But hopefully the next person will.

[jedgar1]

I called the factory with the same question and they said it only worked on the outside tv.We have a 16 DS. So why have it? I did find that it was bluetooth and came on with an ipod.

[tjZ06]

I agree, the soundbar on my 2017 is pathetic, the TV itself is louder. I have other Bose soundbars at home and they are far superior.

I'll probably have to replace it when I get the time.

To the person above, we don't use the outside entertainment when it's not appropriate. However, we camp in Glamis a lot on the outside of a loop where there aren't people immediately next to the curbside of the RV and there are rails, bikes, quads, SxSs running day and night. It's entirely appropriate and not bothering anyone.

In fact, on Sunday the neighbors come over to watch game and we're the place to be for the fights.

-TJ

[tjZ06]

So, has anybody replaced the soundbar on their DSDP? I think swapping the "mounting bracket" over to a new bar will be easy, but how tough is it to swap the power cable out? I haven't looked to see where the hole in the outdoor entertainment compartment that the cabling goes through leads to.

Has anybody checked to see if there are settings that can be changed on the Bose bar? Maybe Newmar set it up pretty quiet on purpose?

-TJ

[RVOF5]

I experienced a similar but possibly different issue with ours. For reference it's a 2017 DSDP 4326 and the outside sound bar is Bose. When I connect to it via BT it sounds amazing is very loud if needed. For whatever reason the cable that's routed to the back of it is the old 3.5 mini pin (like a headphone jack) rather than a newer standard such as optical or other. I noticed that someone had spliced into it and the cable, if kinked in any way, makes the sound very quiet and distorted. I assume since they connect d this to the clarion head unit it may have been the only output choice from the source but I really wish they would have found another solution. I tried to find out where the cable routes inside the rig but can't without taking the televator and couch out and I don't have that kind of time. It will probably require service to correct and will be time consuming and labor intensive (and an unnecessary expense to Newmar) if I want it done correctly and to get rid of the hissing sound that accompanies the bad connection. In the interim I either connect it via BT to another source or move the cable around until I get a good connection.

If anyone knows how to gain access to the cable from inside the coach or how to replace it with something superior I'd love to know and I can try and tackle the task myself.

[tjZ06]

Originally Posted by Grburnette

I experienced a similar but possibly different issue with ours. For reference it's a 2017 DSDP 4326 and the outside sound bar is Bose. When I connect to it via BT it sounds amazing is very loud if needed. For whatever reason the cable that's routed to the back of it is the old 3.5 mini pin (like a headphone jack) rather than a newer standard such as optical or other. I noticed that someone had spliced into it and the cable, if kinked in any way, makes the sound very quiet and distorted. I assume since they connect d this to the clarion head unit it may have been the only output choice from the source but I really wish they would have found another solution. I tried to find out where the cable routes inside the rig but can't without taking the televator and couch out and I don't have that kind of time. It will probably require service to correct and will be time consuming and labor intensive (and an unnecessary expense to Newmar) if I want it done correctly and to get rid of the hissing sound that accompanies the bad connection. In the interim I either connect it via BT to another source or move the cable around until I get a good connection.

If anyone knows how to gain access to the cable from inside the coach or how to replace it with something superior I'd love to know and I can try and tackle the task myself.

Interesting... mine is similar (quiet with a bit of hiss). I bet it has to do with the switch they added in 2017 to choose between sources for the soundbar. I bet it's losing quality there. I haven't even tried just hooking up to the speaker w/ BT.

Do you recall if the speaker and the TV itself have optical audio ports? One quick/easy fix might be to just run an optical audio cable direct from the TV to the Bose speaker... but I suspect the TV won't have optical audio OUT.

-TJ

[RVOF5]

TJ - I'm not with the coach currently but I believe it even has an hdmi so that could work from the TV. I can tell you with certainty that not much seems to be lost at the switch. When the cable is positioned "just right" I can toggle between the TV signal and the clarion deck and both are loud and clear! However, if the cable gets moved a little in any direction it's back to quiet and hissing. I usually fiddle with it until it's working correctly or use BT and then both sound fantastic but it shouldn't need a bandaid and should work right out of the box correctly... especially for what it costs... at some point my cable movement trick will stop working and the spliced cable will sound just like that, a spliced cable.

[rewillia]

We're in the same boat - exterior entertainment center's OE Bose sound dock works great when streaming audio playback via bluetooth, i.e. from phone, but is very poor when selecting the radio switch which takes audio feed from the dash unit. We too asked about this problem during the PDI of our '17 Essex and were told its the cable connection that's losing signal (or something like that).

Since we're already scheduled to have our Year 1- maintenance done at the Nappanee factory in June, we expect to have this problem corrected. Meanwhile, if we use it, we do so via bluetooth.

[tjZ06]

I checked on my coach the TV DOES have an optical audio OUT and the Bose soundbar DOES have an optical audio IN.

I'm going to try running a cable directly between them to see if I get better sound quality/volume out of the Bose this weekend, I'll let you know.

-TJ