Rohan

The bypass works great. Thanks for posting a truely helpful mod. It's too bad this doesn't bypass the Navi... otherwise this bypass would have been perfect. On top of that, saved $145... spent $5 for parts. :P Someone was asking for other options to soldering. I used tap-in connectors. Cost a little more than solder, but it's a tool free connection and it's clean. Other than that, instead of grounding to chasis, I connected to a ground wire coming out of the Nav unit on the same wire loom. I DO NOT recommend trying this. Don't even consider this unless you are absolutely sure of what your doing. I just mention this as another option that works. Thanks again.

Testing to see if your system has DVD capability is easy. If your car is equipped with the Mark Levinson DVD player, it should be able to play DVD's with the car parked. Make sure you put the DVD in the main stereo and not the glove box (that is for the navigation system). Also, it is possible that the DVD system is code locked, so you may want to try DVD's coded for North America. If it doesn't work then I guess you don't have the DVD system, but I find it hard to believe that Lexus would change out different 6 disc players for all their specific markets.

There are two audio setting buttons from your audio screen. One is DSP and the other is Sound. DSP is your surround setting. It's a bit confusing here as the button is either lit or not lit. From my listening experience, it appears that in surround mode, the audio system is trying to convert all signals (even stereo... which is really strange) into 5.1 surround sound (basically center, front, rear, & sub). This means that it will try to filter all vocals to the center channel and will focus all stereo to the front two speaker, anything resembling echo or surround will be sent to the rear speakers. All low frequency will be sent to the subwoofer. If your wondering why this setting is even here, it's solely for the DVD. In my opion it's a confusing setting to have as you can only watch DVD's when the car parked. (..and yes I know about the work around. I already did it to my car for the bluetooth phone settings.) The Sound menu is where you will find bass, treble, and midrange settings in addition to balance and fader. If your still confused on the settings, please check your owner's manual in the audio section As for the comment on the subwoofer bass, I find it's nearly non-existant at lower volume levels. When the volume is increased, the sub starts to kick in. (I'm talking about volume levels at least well into the 30's). I personally like to keep the volume in the lower twenties for my average everyday listening, so I don't really hear much of the sub at all. However, when I get in those moods and turn it up, that's when I realize that there is a subwoofer in this system. As this is my first experience with the ML system, I can't comment on how it compares to previous Lexus ML systems. I would think however (from my past audio experiences), that previous systems would have sounded better, just from the sheer fact that its a simpler system... just making CD's sound their best. Adding DVD surround playback to the mix means that speaker/amp selection and settings in the current ML system was a compromise to get the best overall appeal to support all of its features. I hope this helps.

I too thought the Levinson system sounded wierd when I first got my GS. After tinkering with the settings, I noticed the surround setting for the DVD was turned on. I changed the setting to stereo and the system sounds much much better. Not sure if this is what your experiencing, but it made a huge difference for me.