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Hey guys,
Before i get into the build log, let me say that this build turned out to be one of our favorites.
As you may know, I have always enjoyed doing installs that has an understated, almost OEM appearance. My perfect build would be one that upon seeing it for the first time, nothing jumps out at you and screams AFTERMARKET, but you realize there is a lot of fabrication involved and the small details slowly starts to flow into your mind.
My own skill set and experience was always a limiting factor before, but now with Joey on board, that barrier has been busted clean through...and in my opinion everything really came together for this projects.
The car is a 2013 VW Touareg Tdi, owned by one of our own forum members. The goals were:
1. achieve a nice level of sound quality utilize the oem headunit
2. maintain as much room as possible in the cargo area and retain the spare tire
3. achieve a look that completely flows with the vehicle's interior
initially, this was going to be a pretty straight foward build, with a simple carpeted amp rack and sub enclosure on the two side walls, but as we got into it, and upon realizing that no stretchy carpet matches the stock shade at all, things took an interesting turn and joey really went all out to make it "factory looking custom"
lets get started.
With the factory navigation headunit, we had to work with the stock signal source. so as customary with any new car's oem headunit, i analyzed the signal, here ist he factory curve with the bass setting slightly elevated (or else it drops out like a cliff below 60-80hz), at very low to pretty high settings, as you can see, for most of the volume setting, there isnt much dynamic eq and its generally flat with the exception of the bottom end and the dip around 125, both of whcih i corrected a lil bit for with the input eq on the dsp:
for processing we used a Mosconi 6ot8DSP, and all tuning can be done from the front seat via a BT enabled laptop:
I installed the amp's remote bass control knob in a blank panel right behind his shifter:
which is actually a lil modular piece that i had to take apart and hide the guts of the bass knob:
lets move on to the front stage, which is all morel.
a set of Morel Elate MW6 woofers went into the stock lower door location. First i ran new speaker wires into the door:
and placed a coupla blocks of focal blackhole tile behind the speaker opening:
then the rest of the door card got some STP deadener treatment:
i then fabricated these spacer rings by match routing the oem spekae mounting flange:
and coated it with several layers of truck bedliner to protect them against the elements:
the spacer was then bolted back in place using oem hardware:
and the morel secured in place:
we also got to use a pair of foam baffle rings from a friend of ours in the industry, it helps to eliminate unwanted reflections behind the stock door grille. it double sticks to the baffle perfectly and when the door card goes back on, crushes it slightly and forms a acoustic seal of sorts.
a bunch of focal BAM xxxl composite damper went onto the door card to both reduce resonance and to provide a barrier between the metal door panel and the plastic door card:
the same process was then repeated on the passenger side:
for the rest of the front stage, we went with a CDM880 dome midrange and a Supremo piccolo tweeter. the decision was made very early on to do them in the A pillars. Originally, i wanted to sink them as much as possible as the customer once again wanted to balance SQ but still keep a low profile.
but upon taking off the A pillars, i realized there is a metal brace, along with a crap load of wires and hoses that prevents me from sinking the speakers in. this means that i had to start from the surface of the oem pillar cover and if i did both relatively on axis, it would result in a very protruding pillar and the tweeter would need to be spaced out quite a bit to precent it blocking the midrange almost completely.
so after some experimentation and drawing on past experience, i aimed the midrange, which is better off axis, more towards the front dome light area, while the tweeters were aimed relatively at the opposite listener.
the one really cool thing that happened is that while flipping through an upholstery book, we found a material that is almost an oem match! the only thing is that it was a headliner with a foam backing. nonetheless, we ordered it.
after some bitching, i managed to peel the foam completely off the front cloth material, and wrapped the pillars with them. this resulted in an oem 100 percent OEM match!
I will just have the pics do the talking
Before i get into the build log, let me say that this build turned out to be one of our favorites.
As you may know, I have always enjoyed doing installs that has an understated, almost OEM appearance. My perfect build would be one that upon seeing it for the first time, nothing jumps out at you and screams AFTERMARKET, but you realize there is a lot of fabrication involved and the small details slowly starts to flow into your mind.
My own skill set and experience was always a limiting factor before, but now with Joey on board, that barrier has been busted clean through...and in my opinion everything really came together for this projects.
The car is a 2013 VW Touareg Tdi, owned by one of our own forum members. The goals were:
1. achieve a nice level of sound quality utilize the oem headunit
2. maintain as much room as possible in the cargo area and retain the spare tire
3. achieve a look that completely flows with the vehicle's interior
initially, this was going to be a pretty straight foward build, with a simple carpeted amp rack and sub enclosure on the two side walls, but as we got into it, and upon realizing that no stretchy carpet matches the stock shade at all, things took an interesting turn and joey really went all out to make it "factory looking custom"
lets get started.
With the factory navigation headunit, we had to work with the stock signal source. so as customary with any new car's oem headunit, i analyzed the signal, here ist he factory curve with the bass setting slightly elevated (or else it drops out like a cliff below 60-80hz), at very low to pretty high settings, as you can see, for most of the volume setting, there isnt much dynamic eq and its generally flat with the exception of the bottom end and the dip around 125, both of whcih i corrected a lil bit for with the input eq on the dsp:
for processing we used a Mosconi 6ot8DSP, and all tuning can be done from the front seat via a BT enabled laptop:
I installed the amp's remote bass control knob in a blank panel right behind his shifter:
which is actually a lil modular piece that i had to take apart and hide the guts of the bass knob:
lets move on to the front stage, which is all morel.
a set of Morel Elate MW6 woofers went into the stock lower door location. First i ran new speaker wires into the door:
and placed a coupla blocks of focal blackhole tile behind the speaker opening:
then the rest of the door card got some STP deadener treatment:
i then fabricated these spacer rings by match routing the oem spekae mounting flange:
and coated it with several layers of truck bedliner to protect them against the elements:
the spacer was then bolted back in place using oem hardware:
and the morel secured in place:
we also got to use a pair of foam baffle rings from a friend of ours in the industry, it helps to eliminate unwanted reflections behind the stock door grille. it double sticks to the baffle perfectly and when the door card goes back on, crushes it slightly and forms a acoustic seal of sorts.
a bunch of focal BAM xxxl composite damper went onto the door card to both reduce resonance and to provide a barrier between the metal door panel and the plastic door card:
the same process was then repeated on the passenger side:
for the rest of the front stage, we went with a CDM880 dome midrange and a Supremo piccolo tweeter. the decision was made very early on to do them in the A pillars. Originally, i wanted to sink them as much as possible as the customer once again wanted to balance SQ but still keep a low profile.
but upon taking off the A pillars, i realized there is a metal brace, along with a crap load of wires and hoses that prevents me from sinking the speakers in. this means that i had to start from the surface of the oem pillar cover and if i did both relatively on axis, it would result in a very protruding pillar and the tweeter would need to be spaced out quite a bit to precent it blocking the midrange almost completely.
so after some experimentation and drawing on past experience, i aimed the midrange, which is better off axis, more towards the front dome light area, while the tweeters were aimed relatively at the opposite listener.
the one really cool thing that happened is that while flipping through an upholstery book, we found a material that is almost an oem match! the only thing is that it was a headliner with a foam backing. nonetheless, we ordered it.
after some bitching, i managed to peel the foam completely off the front cloth material, and wrapped the pillars with them. this resulted in an oem 100 percent OEM match!
I will just have the pics do the talking