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No worries, I have learned many of these in this forum with help of you guys. It also means I have tried everything to take mine back to life as well!
would one of you guys with premium audio confirms that so long as you switch to dolby or dts, it will make the sound virtually surround? Or it has to be a surround audio file to start with? The way I check it is to set the balance to rear end and see if parcel shelf speakers make any sound.
Unfortunately I think my AAM is broken but funny enough I am going to replace one chip that I guess might be faulty. Currently mine works like a mid-8 with higher quality sound.
That’s my last shot before replacing the AAM.
I can confirm that both DTS and Dolby Pro Logic II are decoders that were made for transform stereo sound to 5.1 or 7.1 sound, they work great with every high quality stereo input. I personally listen mp3s made from CDs and flacs, occasionally DAB+ and high quality spotify via bluetooth. Sadly it doesn't play any lossless sources apart from CD and CD-to-HDD. I like DTS more, it creates more soundstage but sometimes it suppress some sounds, Dolby Pro Logic II seems to be more accurate but closer to stereo sound.
From the front seats the parcel shelf speakers don't make a big difference, but surely the dashboard speaker do, you can turn your head as you want, the sound seems to come from everywhere. My car mounted only the doors speakers (stock), but luckily I found a complete set of speakers + subwoofer from a B&W car on eBay, bought a B&W center grill for the dashboard from my local Jaguar dealer, original cabling and aftermarket grills for the parcel shelf and replaced everything. The most painful part was cutting the shelf, but I'm glad in the end it all went good and the result is great.
After the amp I also added a DAB+ tuner, this was easyer than the amp because apart from installing the antenna amplifier, antenna cable and the DAB+ module I only had to update the CCF.
it was indeed a hardware problem I had. I opened the AAM and replaced the damaged chip and it’s back to life. It was a DAC chip which I could manage to find for about £9. It was extremely hard to solder such a small chip using a large 60W soldering iron which was only one I had due to lockdown.
not sure if there are other people that could damage their AAM. If there are I can start a know-how.
for now I can describe what is inside this AAMs based on my Prem-16 and I guess mid-8 or high-12 are the same hardware with less components installed.
the brand on pcb was Hardam/becker. It has a vertically mounted pcb which the Toslink is attached to. It receives the audio from ACM In serial and divides it to two SPDIF signals, each carrying 8 channels in serial. Most components on processor board except main controller are duplicated even DSP chips. (I guess on mid-8,high-12 second set are not mounted)
each SPDIF goes to one 8-ch DAC chip. One DAC is on top for surround speakers and one on the bottom side for normal speakers. There are four 4-ch amplifier chips. (I guess mid-8 and high-12 don’t have the second set)
B&W, Meredian, Harman/Kardan,... they are all brands that do the coding for the sound processor and maybe responsible for design or QC of speakers.
You can even bypass the processor and solder your audio signal directly to amplifier.
In an attempt to contribute to this thread, below is a link that contains a spreadsheet of engineering numbers and part numbers for the all of the amplifiers that are associated with the current JLR vehicles. This should assist with tracking down the correct VBF files to download based on the engineering numbers and amp wattages.
I have not yet attempted an amp upgrade yet, but it seems that locating the correct VBF files to download is vital in this process. I hope this helps and is useful in some way.
This sheet looks really useful, but it doesn't open correctly for me, I've tried different browsers, PC and phone and it's missing images, can't read headers etc. Is there anther link?
hello mate im stuck in a same situation would you be able to guide me though the process please, software download.htm keep saying communication error, any idea what could be it please
many thanks
Raj
I tried contacting him but got no response, luckily yesterday evening I managed to flash the correct firmware with the help of @enzofl2 and now the amp works perfectly with my car!
Maybe I could buy the right one this time
Please my audio amplifier stopped working while trying to update firmware. I’m using launch pad vii
05-07-2020, 04:44 PM
and now the amp works perfectly with my car! 
