Audio upgrade

Started by The Red Warrior, September 28, 2017, 07:15:24 PM

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The Red Warrior

As I mentioned in another thread, I'm upgrading my speakers in my GTI. Mine has the 10 speaker option and I'm just upgrading the 6 speakers in the two front doors. (Well, that's the plan for now anyway).
I've chosen Morel components (mostly based on Hennie's recommendation) and have gone with their Virtus 3 way components and their recently released 4 channel amplifier.

Initially I was going to install the amp in the boot behind the carpet behind the left wheel well. I wanted to install it under the driver's seat but it wouldn't fit there. I then decided I might try installing it under the passenger seat and move my Bluetooth module that is currently there to under the driver's seat. I removed the front seat this time to properly work out what could be done. I worked out that it only required a small amount of trimming of the carpet and removal of the seriously over-engineered housing for the airbag plug.

Under the carpet and sound proofing I found these 2 M6 studs on the floor:



I'm not sure what they are there for. Maybe to bolt down a factory amp? Anyway, I decided to use them to mount an adaptor plate that the amp could then bolt to. So I made the adaptor plate from 3mm aluminium:



I also turned up some stainless spacers to raise the adaptor plate to the correct height under the carpet:



and installed them onto the M6 studs:



and bolted the adaptor plate to the spacers which I don't seem to have a photo of.

Installing the amp here made doing the wiring much simpler as I ran the power lead along the left into the engine bay and will run the sound wires into the exiting holes in the carpet for the Bluetooth module and up to the radio.

After removing the housing for the airbag plug, it left this hole:



which was perfect for running the power and ground wires and then joining the factory loom. So a urathane grommet was turned up to go in the hole to protect the wires:



and installed into the hole:



The ground wire was attached the an existing grounding point:



and the power wire fed up along the factory loom and through the rubber grommet in the fire wall to behind the battery. I had already run a tube through here for my boost gauge so at least this step was familiar to me. I also wanted to connect the power wire to the bus bar with a factory fuse for a cleaner look than directly to the battery. I'd seen a few posts on this set-up before and definitely wanted to copy it. I picked up the necessary parts from a wrecker. They even came off a red Mk5 GTI so I couldn't have asked for a more OEM solution  ;) The fuse was also a 50 amp which was what the Morel amp recommended.



and bolted it all together:



So, that was the amp installed, and powered:



Next step was to install sound deadening to the doors. Fortunately the Mk5 outer door skins can be unbolted making applying the sound deadening simple. I used Dynamat as it was readily available close to my work. Initially I was going to use Stinger brand but it would have been the same price and taken time to deliver and I was keen to get started. I thought I'll do only the left door, then the right door as I can learn on the left before doing the right. That way I can still drive around with no passenger seat and left door card. So I Dynamatted (is that even a word?) the outer skin. I then removed all the wiring loom, grommets, woofer and crossover from the inner skin and Dynamatted that. I re-installed the loom and grommets and then the outer door skin. Hmmm, my door handle wasn't returning properly. Looking up inside the door I could see there is very little clearance behind the recess behind the door handle and the mechanism it bolts to. The Dynamat there was interfering with it's operation so I had to remove the outer door skin and trim back the Dynamat there. Doh!





Of course nothing was going to be straight forward installing different speakers and crossovers, but I knew that going in so was prepared to make what was needed. Measured up existing mounting points and bolt patterns for the new speakers and set about making some adaptor spacers.

Mid adaptors:



Woofer adaptors coming along nicely:



and complete:



That's about as far as I've got so far. I didn't have all the stainless steel bolts to bolt the adaptors and speakers on so that will probably happen tomorrow. I'm still waiting for my Stinger RCA leads and Audio Control line out converter to arrive too. Hopefully I'll finish all this next weekend.

After all this work and money it better sound good  ::)


schattenblau


The Red Warrior

#3
I was trying out using the Flickr app from my iPhone to upload a photo of my speaker spacers I'm making for my Mk5 GTI.
Obviously I've not worked out how yet. But when I do I'll edit the original post to include a few photos.

The Red Warrior

#4
Quote from: The Red Warrior on September 29, 2017, 08:04:50 PM
I was trying out using the Flickr app from my iPhone to upload a photo of my speaker spacers I'm making for my Mk5 GTI.
Obviously I've not worked out how yet. But when I do I'll edit the original post to include a few photos.

And done. Thanks to Worms and McDoof for the help   :)

McDoof

Nice work... Looks even better than mine.
Any chance you could turn me a set of the mid adapters? I'm still missing mine.
NZ New MK5 GTI - Tuned by HSP Tuning
NZ New B6 Passat Variant 125kw TDI 4motion
MK7 GTI - Tornado Red

Fizz


The Red Warrior

Quote from: McDoof on October 02, 2017, 09:25:56 AM
Nice work... Looks even better than mine.
Any chance you could turn me a set of the mid adapters? I'm still missing mine.

Probably not. I think I've used all the off cuts of aluminium we've got. As it was I had to buy the piece for the woofer spacers.
I can give you the drawing I've made for them though.

McDoof

That would be good thanks. I have a made that can probably turn me a set. PM me some details... Thanks

NZ New MK5 GTI - Tuned by HSP Tuning
NZ New B6 Passat Variant 125kw TDI 4motion
MK7 GTI - Tornado Red

The Red Warrior

Quote from: McDoof on October 02, 2017, 02:47:56 PM
That would be good thanks. I have a made that can probably turn me a set. PM me some details... Thanks

I've found my drawing. I thought I may have thrown it out but found when looking for speaker stuff. Il post the dimensions up here as it's no secret. Have to get on laptop to post the photo though.

The Red Warrior

The left door is now all done. I thought I'd finished the driver's door too but when turning on the radio the right speakers made a horrible noise and I turned it off.
I've discovered that the culprit is the woofer speaker. If it's not connected to the door i.e. just sitting on the floor, I can put power to it and it's fine. I can hear music playing through it. If it's bolted to the speaker adaptor which in turn is bolted to the door then it just makes a pop sound and then nothing when you put power to it.

I pulled my whole door wiring harness off and found many breaks in the insulation inside the accordion boot but no actual broken wires. I've repaired all that and reinstalled but still the problem remains.

Any ideas?

GLIDN

sounds like speaker is grounding to your alloy speaker mounts 

remove speaker from spacer and test again.
does it sound normal now?

what line out converter are you using?
if you are? switch channels around on front channels and see if the sound follows.

Otherwise you have a faulty LOC or wires are touching somewhere

if you get stuck? let me know. Swing past and I'll glady help.
Audi A4 DTM - K04 NZ New | All bolt-ons | Carbon Clean done
2012 MK6R Golf |Stage 3+ | Stage 4 DSG | Tuned & Built by HSP Tuning

The Red Warrior

The speaker could be grounding on the mount, but it's the same as the left door which is working fine.
Yes, if I remove it from the door/aluminum mount then it works.

I've not put the LOC in yet. Just doing that now since I'm stuck on the speaker problem. It's an AudioControl LC2i that I'm installing.

The Red Warrior

#13
So, after many hours trying to work out problems (reading more internet forums, having a chat with Hennie (thanks for your time, you sound like you're busier than ever) pulling my car to pieces even further it is all complete.

Prior to my last post I had also sorted out the mounting of the the tweeters inside the original mounts. Despite all my machining and keeping everything looking well made, at this point I did what most people at this point do. I used silicone sealant to hold in the tweeters. The Morel speakers had lots of different housings for the tweeters to suit different cars so I modified some that best fit the Mk5.



It's a bit hard to see in the photo but the mounts are slightly angled so I trimmed them in such a way so that I could mount them so they were angled more towards the front of the car. I then siliconed the whole assembly in place after wiring it to the factory plug.



Without being able to properly get everything working while I was having a problem with the right woofer I removed the door wiring loom as I mentioned earlier to find this:





None of the wires appeared to actually be broken, only the insulation, as pulling hard on them didn't pull them apart. So I just put some heat shrink on them and reassembled it.



As I also mentioned earlier, this still didn't fix the problem. So I turned up some plastic spacers to go between the aluminium mounts and the speakers and bought some nylon screws to attach them.
Meanwhile, my RCA leads and AudioControl LC2i line out converter arrived so I set about installing them too. Here's where things went from bad to worse. There is next to no room to install the LC2i along with the double DIN radio but I found I could just squeeze it in on the lower side if the frame that houses the radio and Climatronic controls. So I drilled a few holes in the frame and bolted it in place.





I cut into the front speaker wires just after where they start from the plug that goes into the radio. Here's where I made a critical error. I put the speaker wires coming from the amp to the plug going into the radio. Then the wires that go off to the crossovers and onwards to the speakers, I connected to the LC2i. So not only did I not get any signal going to the LC2i, I fed amplified power into the radio. It didn't pop the fuse in the radio and while I was trying to figure out why things weren't working, the radio got rather hot just behind the plug and started smoking. I unplugged it as quickly as I could, but the damage was done. RIP one RCD510.  :'(

Not wanting to kill another expensive radio, I bought a jap import RCD310 off trademe for the grand total of $29. Plugged it in, checked to see if it got hot behind the plug and sure enough it did. Another radio bites the dust. I was getting rather demoralised at this point. Systematically checked what I'd done so far and then realised my error. Unsoldered my wrong wires and then connected them up correctly. Plugged the radio back in and still nothing.  >:( Turns out the damage was already done to that radio but I wasn't sure at that point.  Went back to the trademe seller and got another RCD310 since they were so cheap. Plugged it in and it worked! Relief.

But being a jap import the only radio station I could get was MaiFM.  :( So I had to dig out my trusty CDs.

Even though it was working (and the woofer in the right door was now working too even though I hadn't installed my plastic spacers or bolts???) but not working properly. The amp would go into protect mode at only about 1/3 volume. More research, thinking about the advice I'd got from Hennie and suggestions from Andrew at DC Tech I tried a few things.

Removed the amp from it's mount as several places had said it shouldn't touch the vehicle body via metal anywhere except through its power and ground wires. That wasn't it.
At this point I changed a bunch of things. The LC2i was getting power and ground from the amp. I changed that so it was getting it from the cigarette lighter and added an inline fuse. I had the amp set to signal sensing turn on. I changed that and ran a wire from the LC2i to the amp and changed the amp setting to remote turn on. Best of all (but surely having no effect on the previous problem), I installed an RCD330 plus that I'd ordered from Aliexpress that had arrived. And everything worked as it should. Plenty of volume, no going into protect mode and it all sounded good.

Using the RCD330 plus gave me extra room to install the LC2i so I stuck it to the underside of the radio using adhesive backed velcro.



I ran all the wires neatly and attached them hopefully for the final time.



Fiddled with the different settings on the amp and LC2i until it was where I liked it best and then re-assembled everything.
I'd already refitted the door cards and found that I had to reposition the left crossover slightly to fit the door card on along with trimming the foam speaker enclosure. There really isn't much room but luckily the Morel crossovers are quite slim.

Went from this:



to this:



So in the end, all's well that ends well, right?
At least it sounds good.
It all went back together properly.
It all looks completely stock from the outside and I now have Apple CarPlay as a bonus.
There's also a lot less road noise with all the sound deadening that I installed in the doors.
Would I do it all again? Yes, as I learnt a lot along the way and my soldering skills improved immensely along the way.

The Red Warrior

Here's my drawing/sketch for the mid spacers Nick. Obviously the inner PCD and hole will be whatever you need to fit your speakers but you get the drift.
I also added a small bead of RTV sealant in the recess although I'm not sure this is of any help as I think the mids may be a sealed unit.




GLIDN

nice work man.
glad we were able to help you get the final result. 

If I recall correctly you got the 5ch or the 4ch morel amp in the end?

would love to hear this setup sometime.
Audi A4 DTM - K04 NZ New | All bolt-ons | Carbon Clean done
2012 MK6R Golf |Stage 3+ | Stage 4 DSG | Tuned & Built by HSP Tuning

The Red Warrior

I got the 4 channel one. No need for the 5 channel for me, as even if I got a sub at some time (I have no intention of getting one, but I've said that before about things with this car and then gone and got them) I'm no longer running the rear speakers so I've still got a set of outputs on the amp free. I was surprised to see that when you disconnect the rear speaker outputs from the plug on the back of the radio, it recognises it and removes the fader function and put all input to the front speakers.

Keen for you to hear it too and give your thoughts on it. You may have further suggestions for improvement too being a connoisseur of such things. Hopefully there will be an Auckland meet soon that we can both attend.

McDoof

Very nice. So much neater than mine. I'm more about functionality. Those Morel speakers look the business.
NZ New MK5 GTI - Tuned by HSP Tuning
NZ New B6 Passat Variant 125kw TDI 4motion
MK7 GTI - Tornado Red