Hi guys, I recently purchased a 2011 Infiniti G37xS, and naturally I want it to sound great. I did some research before selecting the car and have scoured both this and several G37-specific forums for info on the car's existing stereo, what will fit where, and how I might go about it. I've got some answers, but not all of them, so I figured I'd lay out what I'm thinking and see if anybody has any feedback on it for me. I've seen numerous people reference doing builds in G37's, so I'm crossing my fingers that somebody will have first hand experience to share.
First, the Bose "Studio on Wheels" stock system as it stands today. As many of you know, the factory system consists of 10 speakers:
The front doors have 10" flat woofers in the lower door, 3" midranges in front of door handles, and tweeters in the sails. (midrange and tweets are wired in series with a simple resistor - It's only 2-way from the amp) Rear doors have coaxials, the dash has another of the 3" midrange drivers, and there's a 6.5" sub in the rear deck.
The good news is that the factory HU sends line level unmolested to the trunk via balanced RCA. That can be plugged directly into a processor and I'll retain all of the factory functionality. It also appears that Infiniti/Bose used quality 16ga. wire to from the trunk to all the speaker locations, so that can be reused easily enough.
My goals for the system:
1. Obviously great sound is top priority. I'm not competing, though, and while I want to have some healthy thump I'm not somebody who listens insanely loud. Huge output is not a priority. This is just a daily driver for somebody who loves music and great sound.
2. I'd like to keep it stealthy from the inside. Bonus if nothing gets changed that can't theoretically be put back the way it was some day, but this isn't a lease, so mostly it's just for my own aesthetic preferences. That means dealing with factory speaker locations for the most part.
3. I don't want to lose 80% of my trunk. My last car had a pair of JL 12w3's in a sealed box with the amps attached to it, and I could sort of use the trunk, but certainly not put a suitcase in it. I'd prefer not to end up in a similar situation here. Because of this, I'd like to either go infinite baffle or choose a single, high quality sub that can live in a fairly small sealed box.
My plans so far:
Layout - I'm thinking I want to do a 3-way active setup with rear fill and sub. (and maybe center) The factory locations may present a challenge here, because I'll be faced with either difficult dimensions for both mid and tweeter, or I can just mount whatever nice tweeter I want in the factory mid location and go 2-way. In the end, I think the 3-way arrangement will support much better imaging, though, because the mid/tweet will be very close together. I'm thinking because of this that I can use a MiniDSP to cross between the midrange and tweeters in the front doors and then let the processor treat them as a single entity.
Processor - I've read up on the various processors on the market, and at the moment I'm leaning toward a JBL MS-8. The biggest reason is because of the quick auto measure and setup. I like the idea of being able to tweak, but not as much as I like the idea of not having to sit there with a laptop for 2 days getting it all set up just so. As long as I can dial the subs up and down a bit depending on volume and music type, that's probably all I really need on the fly, although it would be nice to be able to switch between profiles so I could toggle between a driver-oriented setup and one that is centered in the car for when I have passengers, for example. I also like that it has it's own built-in amp section. I could theoretically use one of those 20w channels to power the center, right? I wouldn't need it as loud as the other speakers, but I'd still need a fairly high sensitivity driver. Aaaaannnd it doesn't hurt that you can sometimes find an MS-8 used on the cheaps.
Tweeters - I'm not sure what I want to do for tweeters yet, and it seems clear that the factory location behind the sails will be severely limiting. I may have to back off of the stealth requirement enough to allow for replacing those sails with something that look like they could be factory, but sit deeper into the car and/or angle rearward a little bit. Still, if I could find something nice that will fit in there, I'd be happy about that. I'm eyeing the SB Acoustics SB29RDNC, but that's probably still too big.
Midrange - I know people have been able to fit the HAT L3SE into that midrange location because I've seen pictures of it. Because of this I'm really hoping I can fit Scanspeak 10F's in those spots as well, but I haven't seen any build logs verifying that. The 10F is only 3.5mm larger in diameter, and is actually less deep. If anybody has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.
Midwoofers - The midwoofers in the front will be easy, since most 6" drivers and a few 8" ones will fit. What I choose will depend a little bit on the midrange I end up with, since I'll want to cross them over above any major increases in distortion. Either way, I'm not inclined to spend a fortune on these since I'll be using them in a fairly narrow frequency band. I'm intrigued by the Peerless HDS drivers, but a little concerned about the low sensitivity.
Rear Fill - I could just slap some inexpensive coaxials in the 6.5" openings, and that's what I might do. There's an anal retentive part of me that wants to put the same mid/tweet as I use up front in these openings and cross them with another MiniDSP, but I expect my wallet to be a bit tired by the time I come to this point and that might encourage sanity.
Subwoofers - In a perfect world I'd have a single AE SBP15 mounted infinite baffle which I could power with a measly 500w, but looking at my car's trunk I don't think that will fit. Also, only the armrest actually passes through to the trunk from the cabin. Sticking a sub in a box back there might see the trunk acting as a ported enclosure with tuning headaches. I don't know what the material is between the seats and trunk, but it feels solid. Not sure if it comes out easily. I found a picture of somebody else's build where they removed it and put a pair of 12's in IB facing the rear seat. I don't know how much custom work that would require, but a pair of SBP12's could also be in my future.
Amplifiers - I had a very old MTX 500D I let go with the old car as it had some issues, but I kept the JBL PX300.4 that was powering everything else. I have really been happy with that amp, but it's going to be too large given the design restraints I'm putting on the new build. I'm going to probably sell it and go all class D. I've already snagged a real nice deal on a pair of Alpine PDX-F4's.
Anybody out there have experience with a G37, or maybe some of the specific components I've mentioned? I'm open to any feedback or suggestions.
First, the Bose "Studio on Wheels" stock system as it stands today. As many of you know, the factory system consists of 10 speakers:
The front doors have 10" flat woofers in the lower door, 3" midranges in front of door handles, and tweeters in the sails. (midrange and tweets are wired in series with a simple resistor - It's only 2-way from the amp) Rear doors have coaxials, the dash has another of the 3" midrange drivers, and there's a 6.5" sub in the rear deck.
The good news is that the factory HU sends line level unmolested to the trunk via balanced RCA. That can be plugged directly into a processor and I'll retain all of the factory functionality. It also appears that Infiniti/Bose used quality 16ga. wire to from the trunk to all the speaker locations, so that can be reused easily enough.
My goals for the system:
1. Obviously great sound is top priority. I'm not competing, though, and while I want to have some healthy thump I'm not somebody who listens insanely loud. Huge output is not a priority. This is just a daily driver for somebody who loves music and great sound.
2. I'd like to keep it stealthy from the inside. Bonus if nothing gets changed that can't theoretically be put back the way it was some day, but this isn't a lease, so mostly it's just for my own aesthetic preferences. That means dealing with factory speaker locations for the most part.
3. I don't want to lose 80% of my trunk. My last car had a pair of JL 12w3's in a sealed box with the amps attached to it, and I could sort of use the trunk, but certainly not put a suitcase in it. I'd prefer not to end up in a similar situation here. Because of this, I'd like to either go infinite baffle or choose a single, high quality sub that can live in a fairly small sealed box.
My plans so far:
Layout - I'm thinking I want to do a 3-way active setup with rear fill and sub. (and maybe center) The factory locations may present a challenge here, because I'll be faced with either difficult dimensions for both mid and tweeter, or I can just mount whatever nice tweeter I want in the factory mid location and go 2-way. In the end, I think the 3-way arrangement will support much better imaging, though, because the mid/tweet will be very close together. I'm thinking because of this that I can use a MiniDSP to cross between the midrange and tweeters in the front doors and then let the processor treat them as a single entity.
Processor - I've read up on the various processors on the market, and at the moment I'm leaning toward a JBL MS-8. The biggest reason is because of the quick auto measure and setup. I like the idea of being able to tweak, but not as much as I like the idea of not having to sit there with a laptop for 2 days getting it all set up just so. As long as I can dial the subs up and down a bit depending on volume and music type, that's probably all I really need on the fly, although it would be nice to be able to switch between profiles so I could toggle between a driver-oriented setup and one that is centered in the car for when I have passengers, for example. I also like that it has it's own built-in amp section. I could theoretically use one of those 20w channels to power the center, right? I wouldn't need it as loud as the other speakers, but I'd still need a fairly high sensitivity driver. Aaaaannnd it doesn't hurt that you can sometimes find an MS-8 used on the cheaps.
Tweeters - I'm not sure what I want to do for tweeters yet, and it seems clear that the factory location behind the sails will be severely limiting. I may have to back off of the stealth requirement enough to allow for replacing those sails with something that look like they could be factory, but sit deeper into the car and/or angle rearward a little bit. Still, if I could find something nice that will fit in there, I'd be happy about that. I'm eyeing the SB Acoustics SB29RDNC, but that's probably still too big.
Midrange - I know people have been able to fit the HAT L3SE into that midrange location because I've seen pictures of it. Because of this I'm really hoping I can fit Scanspeak 10F's in those spots as well, but I haven't seen any build logs verifying that. The 10F is only 3.5mm larger in diameter, and is actually less deep. If anybody has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.
Midwoofers - The midwoofers in the front will be easy, since most 6" drivers and a few 8" ones will fit. What I choose will depend a little bit on the midrange I end up with, since I'll want to cross them over above any major increases in distortion. Either way, I'm not inclined to spend a fortune on these since I'll be using them in a fairly narrow frequency band. I'm intrigued by the Peerless HDS drivers, but a little concerned about the low sensitivity.
Rear Fill - I could just slap some inexpensive coaxials in the 6.5" openings, and that's what I might do. There's an anal retentive part of me that wants to put the same mid/tweet as I use up front in these openings and cross them with another MiniDSP, but I expect my wallet to be a bit tired by the time I come to this point and that might encourage sanity.
Subwoofers - In a perfect world I'd have a single AE SBP15 mounted infinite baffle which I could power with a measly 500w, but looking at my car's trunk I don't think that will fit. Also, only the armrest actually passes through to the trunk from the cabin. Sticking a sub in a box back there might see the trunk acting as a ported enclosure with tuning headaches. I don't know what the material is between the seats and trunk, but it feels solid. Not sure if it comes out easily. I found a picture of somebody else's build where they removed it and put a pair of 12's in IB facing the rear seat. I don't know how much custom work that would require, but a pair of SBP12's could also be in my future.
Amplifiers - I had a very old MTX 500D I let go with the old car as it had some issues, but I kept the JBL PX300.4 that was powering everything else. I have really been happy with that amp, but it's going to be too large given the design restraints I'm putting on the new build. I'm going to probably sell it and go all class D. I've already snagged a real nice deal on a pair of Alpine PDX-F4's.
Anybody out there have experience with a G37, or maybe some of the specific components I've mentioned? I'm open to any feedback or suggestions.
