Finally had a chance to get my dealer to install the famed amp service bulletin. It took doing an end around the service writer but with my boss/previous JLR service manager's help, we got it done. The Tech said the patch asks if it is been applied to a coupe or convertible so there must be a difference. Had a bunch of CEL's to check out too, we're about a minute from being out of factory warranty. Got a PCM upgrade. I didn't want to start destroying the existing factory sound system until I got this amp patch partly because I wanted to see if it actually made a difference and partly because I wanted the theoretical "best" available version installed as that will be the basis for the new system's build. So did it make a difference? Hard to say. There's a Shrinkological component that says if it has a different tune applied then it must have changed. But it seems like a pretty subtle change. I'd have to say the rear drivers are less prominent. The rear tweets aren't trying to drag the image to the back of your head and the bass coming from the subs seems sweeter. I reset all the audio settings and it feels much more balanced. The stereo imaging is marginally better. Overall, I'd have to say yes, it's better. And then I threw the wheels back on the TR8 (finally warm enough to leave the R888R's outside) and went for a drive. Now THAT stereo is what I'm after. Great stereo image, awesome voicing and hit you in the chest mid bass.

So what's next.
Still thinking about which components to use.
We just picked up the Hertz/Audison dealership for our area so now I have an expanded choice of high end drivers. The Hertz Mille Legend 280.3, 700.3 and 1800.3's look promising for the doors. My original plan was AudioFrog GB10's, GB25's and either the GB60's or the GS8nd2's for the doors. We are AF dealers and I already own these drivers. Took them out of my XC90 V8 when I traded for a Cayenne. I wanted to try and save the existing subs location with different drivers and a ton of dampening to the panels but my co-owner son wants to put a 12" driver right in the middle of the package shelf, pointed up into the rear glass. Which I have to say might look kinda cool.

And when to get going on it.
With the weather turning, we are going to be crazy busy putting everyone's boat back in the lake. Plus, I finally have all my eBay tech gray/turned Gyrodynes here from the UK so it'll be PS 4S season pretty soon. On the other hand, we have a cars n' coffee promo kinda thing coming up in early June for the store that we want the Jag ready for so...

1st step, we are going to pull the rear trim out, cut and extend the driver's leads to the back. Use our DM RTA to see just what frequencies the existing system is actually sending down each channel. Install a DM-810 and my stack of PDX amps in the back. I have a PDX-M12 for the subs, a PDX-F4 bridged for the door's mid bass and another PDX-F4 for the mids and tweets that came out of the Volvo. Unless we get the JL Audio dealership. I which case I'll go with the JL HD's stacked. Either way, there will be a pile of amps stacked in the bottom of the trunk.

Stay tuned!

 

Finally got a chance to start on the project.

Removed all of the interior trim from the way-back and behind the seats. Glued a 2" X 6" strip of 5mm underlayment in the middle of the trunk well and then glued a piece of 13 ply Baltic Birch (scrap from a sub box build) to the trunk well and the shim.

Made a couple 1/0 amp power wires with Stinger HPM power wire and Ancor Marine 5/16 lugs. Installed blue positive inside the Jag's bus bar (there's an unused bolt in there) and the silver negative to the main body ground.





Cut another section of 3/4 material (marine plywood, it's what I had on hand) to add height and then another wider piece for the amp rack. The pile of amps and the distribution blocks will be mounted to this sheet. I plan to add four stand-offs around the distribution blocks to add another level over them to mount the AudioControl DM-810. The DSP and the upper most amp will be flush to each other on top.





The factory amp is on the passenger side under the rear quarter window. We disconnected the wire bundles from the amp to have something to work with.

Color key amended from PDFs below. Thanks guys!
Left Tweeter: Green/Orange (+) & Gray/Orange (-)
Right Tweeter: Yellow/Gray (-) & Purple/Gray (+)
Left Mid: Green/Blue (+) & Gray/Blue (-)
Right Mid: Yellow/Gray (-) & Purple/Gray (+)
Left Mid-Bass: White (+) & White/Brown (-)
Right Mid-Bass: White/Orange (-) & White/Purple (+)

Subwoofers:
Left, coil 1: Gray (-) & Green/Purple (+)
Left, coil 2: White (+) & Blue/Green (-)
Right, coil 1: Yellow (-) & Purple (+)
Right, coil 2: White/Brown (+) & Purple/Orange (-)

Remaining speakers:
Left rear mid: White/Green (+) & Brown/Yellow (-)
Right rear mid: Brown/White (+) & Brown/Blue (-)
Center mid: White/Blue (+) & Green/Orange (-)
I didn't extend these because A) the DM-810 can only do 8 channels in and B) I'm doing a classic stereo configuration for a true "one seat" tune. We cut the speaker leads and added 10' loops of new speaker wire over to the location where the DM-810 will be.




I removed the existing sub's, cut the leads after the plug, popped the leads to identify factory polarity.

Coil 1: White (-) & Red (+)
Coil 2: Green (-) & Blue(+) The Mid's are Black (-) & Orange (+).

Then I cut the cone out of the bracket and cut off the cone's magnet support leaving a ring with bracket legs and a useless mid. I dropped the AudioFrog GS8ND2 into the ring and screwed the speaker into the ring.
I forgot to take pictures but I have to get back in there because, even though the bass sounds much better with the Froggies, something back there is resonating like crazy. I haven't had a chance to sound deaden all the trim bits back there yet, I just wanted to see if I heard a difference. Oh yeah, those factory sub drivers are letting the entire team down.

 

This might help you if you haven't identified polarity yet.

 

Nice, could you please share the remain pages or backseat wiring?

edit: this

 

Thanks for the PDF's! I amended the color key in my post.

Quiet Sunday morning on my side of the shop.





Installed the rest of the amp rack, the sub amp (for spacing) and the distribution blocks.





Here's the AudioFrog GS8's in the subwoofer brackets. I popped the trim out and no rattles at all.





Took the grill off the trim panel and put the panel back into the car and OH! that's a problem. The trim panel circle isn't cut out completely. Panel is resting right on the cone's surround.





Backside of panel.





Cut the rest of the circle out and put the panel back in the car.





Trimmed the grill. For my purposes, this is fine. You can't see back there when the seat isn't crammed all the way forward. But, this is a showoff project for the shop so we're going to come up with a grill solution.




Sound is now so much better. I have the treble flat, the bass turned down a couple clicks and the sub turned down about four clicks. Sub-bass is much cleaner. I plan to install the DSP and amps next and not change the door drivers until I have the new tune in place. I've said it before, I really like the way these existing door drivers are voiced. I just think the existing tune is crap.

 

Installed the three amps and their power cabling.

 

Pocket screwed the stand-off.




Mounted and wired the DSP.

 

Without the Lexan.




With the Lexan, which doesn't photograph very well.



Factory cover fits over the whole thing at the same level as it did.

 

That's really coming together!

 

Rats nest

 

Learning how to program the DSP.

 

You just have the Audio Frogs running free air - no isolation of the rear wave at all?

 

They have the same baffle as the factory set up, the rear trim panels.
Which now that I've had them disassembled and inspected their backside, I can see it's going to be hard to sound deaden them as I intended.
I'm beginning to see a sub box in my future.

 

I was asked in another post what frequencies the existing system sends to the existing drivers.
With the DSP installed and the software up and running we have the following:

Tweeter is getting 1.25k to 20k
Mid is getting 250 to 4k
Mid bass is getting 25 to 800
Sub is getting 25 to 400.

This is the range that I see on the graph. Hard to tell the existing slopes and the actual overlap.

I'm still playing with the new tune and the crossover points.
Tentatively I have it set to:

Tweeter is getting 2.5k to 20k
Mid is getting 350 to 2.5k
Mid bass is getting 80 to 350
Sub is geting 30 to 80

All slopes 24db.

 

So these are the factory frequencies you are seeing coming from the factory amp before and additional processing? Is yours a 380 or 770 surround system? Also what are the rear fill speaker frequencies?

 

It’s a 770. Yes, those are the factory frequencies. I don’t know what the rear fill’s are getting. They were literally the first thing I killed when I bought the car (by moving the fader all the way forward and not using either of the surround tunes). At this point, they are really really dead because I killed the wiring that goes to them. I don’t have the input channels available anyway, I’m maxed out on the 3-way doors and 1 coil from each sub.

 

What wattage is the alpine putting out per channel? Do you notice a difference from the so called 770 watt system. I think that rating is bogus anyway.

 

I have one F4 on the tweeters and mids, 100 watts available per channel. One F4 bridged on the mid bass, 200 watts per channel. The M12 is on the subs, 1200 watts. The biggest improvement is having a true “one seat” time aligned tune. The existing tweeters and mids really aren’t bad at all. Nice details and tone.

The extra power isn’t being appreciated by the mid bass. I ran the HP crossover up to 100 hz to get some of the bass out of the doors.

 

We had the AudioFrog rep coming to the store today and I wanted to get the sub situation figured out before hand so I grabbed one of my GB12D4's I had from the Volvo and threw it in a QPower box. Used a battery box strap threaded through those two elastic straps so it wont roll over. Ultimately, I think this is the sub I'll wind up using but I'll make a better box at some point.

I got the rep to look at the tune I've been working on and he says,
1st, some info on the car: Yes, ALL the bass goes to the 8's in the doors. The factory sub's are only there to shake your booty. So you can use just the 6 channels from the doors as inputs except,
2nd, I need to use the Dolby program in the factory system to do all the time alignment. But, I says, that center channel is too loud and throws off the staging. He says yes but,
3rd, you only need 1 out of the 4 sub channels for an input into the DSP which leaves you with one input you can use for the center channel. Then you use the DSP to tame it.
So I unbridged the middle F4 and am only running 100 watts per channel into the door's 8's (they seem happier) and I now have a couple free amp channels.
I just need to tear apart the car, again, and loop the center channel back to the DSP and amps.

 

What data/facts support the statement that the doors are getting full range without any cut on the bottom end? It doesn't make sense that a system with dedicated "subs", multiple amplifier channels, and DSP wouldn't treat the 200mm door speakers as midbass with something resembling appropriate x-over ranges. I'd think you should be able to determine this by measuring voltages at sub frequencies for the 200mm door speaker leads.

Also, with the DSP why would you need to use one of the DSP modes from the factory system in order to do time alignment - that definitely doesn't make sense. If you are collecting up the full range signal and for some reason want to still have a center channel the AC unit you have should be able to handle that. Why take shitty Meridian DSP, undo it all, and then reprocess it, instead of just running standard stereo mode and doing whatever you want?