What is that speaker in the middle of the dash? Is that just a speaker or is that the sub or what? Mercedes says my car has 10 speakers and a sub. I can only find 6. BTW, this is just a thread I'm starting because I'm bored.

 

That is the center channel for the Bose system, which you have. The other speakers should be a tweeter in each door near the mirror's, a speaker in each door(front), and one in the rear door I believe(I have a coupe so I have one in the front portion of the door and one in the rear plus a tweater in each and the center and sub in the rear for a total of 8), I think the C320 has two subs in the rear deck. That seems to be 9 so I have no idea where the last one is. I do not have a C320 so like I said mine has 8 and I think the sedans have two subs in the upper models.

 

You're correct about the front center speaker for the Bose. The C240/320 sedans only have 1 subwoofer in the rear shelf panel. The other 2 "missing" speakers are explained by the fact that the rear door speakers are dual-cone, and are counted as 2 speakers each. So, 2 tweeters near the A pillars, 1 center front speaker, 2 front door speakers, "4" rear door speakers and 1 subwoofer equals 10 speakers. The non-Bose has all these speakers except the front center speaker.

 

Your question is: What is with this speaker in the dash?

It is what is called a center fill speaker. It fills in the mid-range frequencies often lacking in a car audio sound stage. In other words, it is a sonic bandaid for your listening pleasure.

Ideally, you would have two sources (speaker arrays) for a stereo soundsystem and they would fool your ears into believing that the music was coming from, oh, about the tip of your car's hood.

In reality, the human ear is pretty good at localizing the source of sounds. Therefore, it takes a rather costly bunch of audio hardware that has been carefully installed to make this audio illusion work in a car.

A cost effective solution is to digitally filter the midrange frequencies from both right and left channels and feed it to a speaker placed where the sound should be coming from.

So it ain't exactly stereo anymore but to most ears it sounds better and it justifies the premium charged for a BOSE system.

I hope you aren't bored anymore.

 

So, the best place to listen to music in my car is if I sat on the middle arm rest compartment?

 

Thats pretty funny math that MB uses. A dual cone speaker is counted as 2 speakers ? Here is a case where something more is really less.

 

I have a c230k sedan, and i'm not exactly sure that I have a bose system. I believe I have speakers in the front doors, the center channel speaker (not sure if theres actually one inside there), two rear door speakers, and two speakers in the rear deck behind the headrests. When I sat in the backseat I noticed that there was no high frequency sound coming from ANY of the rear speakers, just midrange and low. The people in the backseat complained about the sound. Everything sounds like it's coming from up front.

Anyone know if the standard system comes with a place for a center channel speaker, but without the actual speaker?

I'm thinking of completely gutting out the speakers and replacing all of them, with a DVD player in the center console. Any thoughts? Has anyone tried aftermarket sound setups with this car?