Seeing as there's been a couple of threads with regards to upgrading the stereo, I thought I'd put in a few words and pictures of my journey. It's not quite complete just yet, awaiting a custom fit 10" subwoofer box to go in the trunk over the battery box for a stealth fitment.
Anyways, I quite like listening to music in my car, especially for the drives that are a bit more mundane etc.. My first step was to upgrade those horrible H/K speakers, and I found a used Bavsound set that I fitted. This yielded a very decent upgrade in my opinion, the "premium" H/K sound system was now IMO an ok upgrade if we were 20 years back in time.. Though with my car being a non-nav car, the previous owner had fitted a simpe bluetooth handsfree device that was hacked into the CD-changer input at the back of the head unit. It worked, but I often got a static noise and in general it wasn't a fantastic solution, just bearable..
So on to the good stuff. Everybody knows the OE H/K amp is no bueno, and I agree, tiny and flimsy, my first upgrade was a Helix V 12, 120watts over 12 channels with multi channel high-level inputs as well as a fancy software program to program it all.
Not humongous compared to the H/K, but vastly superior.
Out with the old and in with the new:
I was hoping for an easy install, and even bought a connector from Baris at Carphonics to integrate it easily with the cars original harness, though it turs out his cable only had the wires going from the amp to the speaker, as well as the remote trigger. A nice product though, but I had to extract the high level outputs from the old headunit and unfortunately hack up the harness a bit to fit these to the new amps inputs.
Next was fitting the amp, using M4 threaded rod cut to length and utilising 2 of the OE bolt holes and drilling a 3rd new in the chassis for the amp to get affixed at 3 spots, it's solid enough. A solution perhaps not good enough for some, as it pokes out through the carpet, which I just hacked up and covered up later.
(Not sure why the pics come out horisontally)
Some would probably fit the amp somewhere else, but I'm happy with the outcome, the power wire was ran from the battery along the car with of course a solid fuse:
That sort of completes the install of the amp. It is quite advanced with it's software but still I was surprised with the first power up test that it sounded pretty shit.. Though that will all be addressed in the software tuning later on.
Onwards with the headunit. I'm not going to splurge too much here, it's fairly straight forward. I opted for a single DIN Pioneer with a flip out screen since my other DIN space has the A/C controls as I've got some aftermarket VDO instruments above the ashtray. A nice unit, though I wish the screen was actual glas rather than this soft material, but I won't be using it too much, it's nice to have something that resembles modern infotainment now. Though I can see some would be hard core OEM this solution works for me:
I also upgraded the speakers in the front door cards to some nice 6.5" woofers from the same amp manufacturers, Helix Compose 3, and added some sound deadening material.
But again, i got to say that I get a good feeling about the quality of the Bavsound speakers, I'm keeping their midranges and rear deck woofers etc for now.
The final part is the software tuning, you know it's serious when the amp comes with it's own software and USB cable!
I bought a UMIK calibration microphone to go with the software to help me set the EQ,
Got some weird looks from my neighbours as I was waving this around my head :P
The software has it's own correlated pink noise that I played through the stereo. The amp knows the frequency response this noise has and can calibrate itself using the microphone easily, the process takes only about 30 seconds. Very impressive.
Though the whole setup process starts at the input side, making sure the input signal response is flat, before I set up all the channels, setting crossovers and levels.
The final step is time alignment to set the distance to the speakers so the bass arrives at my ear at the same time.
The result is very convincing, though I'm sure I can get this to sound even better if I invest more time in the software. The sound out of the box was underwhelming to say the least, but after running the Auto EQ feature the sound has really come alive, it's so strong and punchy, crips and clear!
Anyways, I quite like listening to music in my car, especially for the drives that are a bit more mundane etc.. My first step was to upgrade those horrible H/K speakers, and I found a used Bavsound set that I fitted. This yielded a very decent upgrade in my opinion, the "premium" H/K sound system was now IMO an ok upgrade if we were 20 years back in time.. Though with my car being a non-nav car, the previous owner had fitted a simpe bluetooth handsfree device that was hacked into the CD-changer input at the back of the head unit. It worked, but I often got a static noise and in general it wasn't a fantastic solution, just bearable..
So on to the good stuff. Everybody knows the OE H/K amp is no bueno, and I agree, tiny and flimsy, my first upgrade was a Helix V 12, 120watts over 12 channels with multi channel high-level inputs as well as a fancy software program to program it all.
Not humongous compared to the H/K, but vastly superior.
Out with the old and in with the new:
I was hoping for an easy install, and even bought a connector from Baris at Carphonics to integrate it easily with the cars original harness, though it turs out his cable only had the wires going from the amp to the speaker, as well as the remote trigger. A nice product though, but I had to extract the high level outputs from the old headunit and unfortunately hack up the harness a bit to fit these to the new amps inputs.
Next was fitting the amp, using M4 threaded rod cut to length and utilising 2 of the OE bolt holes and drilling a 3rd new in the chassis for the amp to get affixed at 3 spots, it's solid enough. A solution perhaps not good enough for some, as it pokes out through the carpet, which I just hacked up and covered up later.
(Not sure why the pics come out horisontally)
Some would probably fit the amp somewhere else, but I'm happy with the outcome, the power wire was ran from the battery along the car with of course a solid fuse:
That sort of completes the install of the amp. It is quite advanced with it's software but still I was surprised with the first power up test that it sounded pretty shit.. Though that will all be addressed in the software tuning later on.
Onwards with the headunit. I'm not going to splurge too much here, it's fairly straight forward. I opted for a single DIN Pioneer with a flip out screen since my other DIN space has the A/C controls as I've got some aftermarket VDO instruments above the ashtray. A nice unit, though I wish the screen was actual glas rather than this soft material, but I won't be using it too much, it's nice to have something that resembles modern infotainment now. Though I can see some would be hard core OEM this solution works for me:
I also upgraded the speakers in the front door cards to some nice 6.5" woofers from the same amp manufacturers, Helix Compose 3, and added some sound deadening material.
But again, i got to say that I get a good feeling about the quality of the Bavsound speakers, I'm keeping their midranges and rear deck woofers etc for now.
The final part is the software tuning, you know it's serious when the amp comes with it's own software and USB cable!
I bought a UMIK calibration microphone to go with the software to help me set the EQ,
Got some weird looks from my neighbours as I was waving this around my head :P
The software has it's own correlated pink noise that I played through the stereo. The amp knows the frequency response this noise has and can calibrate itself using the microphone easily, the process takes only about 30 seconds. Very impressive.
Though the whole setup process starts at the input side, making sure the input signal response is flat, before I set up all the channels, setting crossovers and levels.
The final step is time alignment to set the distance to the speakers so the bass arrives at my ear at the same time.
The result is very convincing, though I'm sure I can get this to sound even better if I invest more time in the software. The sound out of the box was underwhelming to say the least, but after running the Auto EQ feature the sound has really come alive, it's so strong and punchy, crips and clear!
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